A spectacle of Sorcery with FLUFLAFEN, KHUNATHI, MAGRAVA, TORU, ZAÄAR and ZAGUŠLJIVI DIM

You know it by now, there are few releases by the French-Chinese one-man label WV Sorcerer Productions I can resist. So most of the time Ruò Tán sends me a package in contains albums from different pre-orders, just what has come out of the pressing plant recently.

Well last time I received my biggest bunch so far, as my purchases had accumulated to eight releases - so what you're seeing above isn't even all! I have already reviewed the Ghostmass tape in the latest edition of my cassette craze chronicles and the fantastic new album of Sophia Djebel Rose over on Veil of Sound.

So here's - only - the rest of this bunch:

MAGRAVA - Et Attendre (CD) (2022)

Yes, this is one album I didn't buy immediately, since it is a pricy one for a CD, especially if you choose the version which includes photographic artwork on glass plates - which I didn't. Still the presentation of the Black Edition in a black envelope with stamped in print and two thick cardboards, of which one also holds the CD, is quite special. It's not the most practical thing I must admit though. Especially getting the disc of its mount can be a pain in the ass.

The musical reward however is at least worth it. It's the live recording of improvisations by the Experiminental musicians Rodolphe Laubatière (drums) and Cyril Meysson (guitar), which is obviously a direction other artists on WV Sorcerer have explored before. But besides Sheng Jie with Shen Jing or Li Jianghong I also feel reminded of works from thisquietarmy, Jörg Schneider or the Free Post Rock duo Miira. Especially the twenty-five-minute centerpiece "S'Inverser Entre Soi" is an expressive tornado of Noise, while the following "Hors Séparateurs" almost abstractly explores the deepest depths of minimalist Drone.

ZAÄAR - Ovules (CD) (2025)

Recorded in three sessions in Belgium Zaäar's "Ovules" is a new mini live album by the improvistional primeval Jazz collective. The 7" sized packaging of the CD suggests a kinship to the similarly presented "Musique Cryptique" and indeed this almost feels like a continuation. But while the quintet line-up is the same there are some key differences in how the cosmic creative chaos emerges this time.

We're not following them inside a natural cave and back with an electric bass instead of an amplified santur - and generally a slightly lower proportion of folkoristic sounds - Zaäar commit themselves more to the huge and heavy side of their sound, with several passages crossing the threshold to the Industrial/Noise intensity and droning Doom Metal of their sister collective Neptunian Maximalism. Which of course still puts "Ovules" way outside of your conventional Jazz or Rock experience.

Zaäar are planters of surreal megafloral fern gardens. Wandering in them is a passage to timeless raw spirituality, pre-civilizational freedom. Or maybe just an awesome Psychedelic Jazz jam. Music before music, once more.

FLUFLAFEN - Sorcery Sauce (Lime Green vinyl LP) (2023/2025)

We're still staying in the field of completely improvised music with the vinyl reissue of FluFlaFen's self-released debut album. The line-up of the Chinese trio consists of drums, electric guitar and clarinet, a constellation which reminds me of the Polish Avantgarde project -S-. And indeed there's a certain kinship in aethetics and spirit. For the most part however the music on "Sorcery Sauce" must be labeled as Heavy Free Jazz with Classical and Progressive Rock influences.

FluFlaFen are not the types for endless jams with slow changes. No, they have the ability to contain their improvisations from beautifully emotive motifs to chaotic outbursts with chugging guitar and screaming clarinet in relatively small doses with many twists and turns. This leads to the fascinating effect that while created on the spot a lot of stuff happening within these eleven tracks could easily be the result of weeks of compositional Math.

The production is very immediate and satisfying, especially the panning of the drums - just listen to the drum solo which starts "German Shepherd"! Exciting brain-swirling stuff.

TORU - Velours Dévorant (Smoke vinyl LP) (2025)

In typical WV Sorcerer fashion we're flying back from China to France with a band at least equally as mental as FluFlaFen. Toru however are both more chaotic and more systematic - it's like the same spirit, but channeled by Noise Rock / Math Metal band. This is loud, wild, bonkers. New York Jazz Metal vibes meet Brötzmann meet Aluk Todolo and Ni.

And these five instrumental tracks are not rapidly firing on full attack all the time. There's not only room for beautiful Post Rock layering or jazzy freakouts, but also for long quiet deep listening passages, after which the next assault hits all the harder. Toru just get the hang of pulling off a perfectly balanced, unpredictable mess of the musical and the ridiculous. "Velours Dévorant" is a killer album. And what is it about France with all those amazing Avantgarde Metal bands there?

ZAGUŠLJIVI DIM - Durchfall der Lebensmaschine (Purple Doom vinyl LP) (2025)

"Diarrhea of the Life Machine" - now that's an album title. This combined with samples from 1970's Croatian horror fantasy cinema as well as German-American psycho analyst Erich Fromm and a Russian Patriarch already indicates that Zagušljivi Dim are not your usual let's get high and jam band.

Not long after "Dolina Kralja Viktora" Suffocating Smoke are back with their special take on Psychedelic Rock and once again it feels as if the Croations are reinventing themselves twice as often as there are songs on the album (which is four this time). The trio actually doesn't even keep its line-up for the whole forty-two minutes, as two different bass players are credited and the electronics-heavy second track "Milost Za Milost" is performed solely by guitar / synth player Martin Geček and a drum machine.

"Durchfall der Lebensmaschine" is a kind of weird and enigmatic, but always catchy roller coaster ride which includes ecstatic uptempo freakouts, jaunts into Düsseldorf and Berlin school and almost Industrial Electronics as well as rumbling Stoner Rock / Metal, Library Music sounds and even the folk-ish spaghetti western Waltz ("Trinaesterokutno Krivnalo") you never knew you desperately needed in your life.

This is a fantastic fearless Neo-Krautrock album and definitely a step up from the already great debut.

丘瑙底河 KHUNATHI - 潮氣吹過後山破廟時 Misty Mountain Pagoda (Smoke vinyl LP) (2025)

Last but not least in this frankly pretty spectacular selection of albums Khunati's "Misty Mountain Pagoda" fully embraces both a powerful Rock sound and the dreamy escapist side of Psych, which is aided by instruments like the Japanese shakuhachi, overtone flute, tabla, dagu and singing bowl on the all-Asian side and mandolin and udu on the European and African sides. With inspirations borrowed, but not strictly authentically derived from ethnic traditions, this album is all about vivid imagination, a positively naive fantasy journey through strange beautiful lands and exciting adventures.

The Chinese quartet is by the way also only the second band after Zaäar here with (not sampled or narrated) occasional lead vocals. In its excellently delivered purity - both in the mystical experimentalism and the straight-forwardly rocking, sometimes surprisingly punkish parts "Misty Mountain Pagoda" is just an enormous inspiring joy to listen to.

In the center of the expectedly harmonious cover artwork there is a noticeable empty area. My take is that this a canvas we're meant to fill in our heads with the images Khunati are painting. Luckily those are plenty.

The black and transparent vinyl Smoke pressing of this gem are already sold out, so WV Sorcerer has just released a new Silver Stone edition. 

new sonic spells from the WV Sorcerer feat. DOLPO, FEN, HYPNODRONE ENSEMBLE, IFFERNET, OTAY:ONII and P/O MASSACRE

No, I don't see these particular label specials disappearing as a returning segment on this blog anytime soon! Over the last months I've gathered three pre-orders from WV Sorcerer Productions again and now received a package containing five out of the total of six items. And when the last one is due in several weeks I might have already added something else... Who knows? But for now let's take a listen to what was in the current magick box:

P/O MASSACRE - Sonic Oblivion (2CD) (2024)

There cannot be enough Russian anti-war music right now!

The expatriates Anton Ponomarev and Anton Obrazena thought so too and destilled even more material from the sessions which formed their massive 2023 statement "Aural Corrosion" into another release. And this is not just an EP of leftovers as one might expect, but a double album too inconveniently ginormous to be released on vinyl, as the first of the four tracks alone already endures for forty minutes and the whole thing has a total playing time of two hours. Two hours mostly filled with pure apocalypse created by Obrazeena's scratching, screeching, serrating guitar, by crumbling walls of electronic noises, found sounds, synths and Ponomarev's doomsday saxophone on top.

It's always hard to determine what makes Harsh Noise like this listenable, what makes it good, especially when there are no completely outlandish ingredients like on the aforementioned opener "Progressive Collapse", which is just an endless havoc of pure destruction. The key may be that there's actually always something interesting and headphone-worthy bulding up and going on throughout this whole relentless assault. It's not just an alienating hostile statement you somehow have to live or die with, but it allows you to immerse into it.

"Love Waves", which is not a schmaltzy or sexual, but a scientific term in seismology, takes a similarly patient approach of slowly evolving its soundscape without straying from its main idea, as a minimalist Earth-like guitar lick gets more and more cornered by swarm of sharp Noise glitches, until after twenty minutes (which is two two thirds of the track) in my favorite dramatic moment of the album a very bold brötzmannish Jazz sax enters the crumbling building. In the end, just like finishing one round of a natural cycle, the debris settles close to where the track began.

"Nonslaught" certainly is less noisy than the rest, since it is mainly made by clean guitar and modified pocket trumpet. This is very frantic and unsettling though. The guitar plays in a completely chaotic Free Jazz fashion which I have come to expect in contexts like Jörg Schneider collaborations or the more aggressive side of Dirk Serries' body of work. The trumpet on the other hand seems to emulate a small warplane. And that is only before the atmospherically thick second half of the track...

But speaking of planes: The final track "Kirkenes-Tromsø" is actually based on one continuous sample of a propeller aircraft - while Obrazeena himself was flying it over Northern Norway, fleeing from Russia to escape being drafted for Putin's war in Ukraine.
No, nothing on "Sonic Oblivion" is just noise. This is art - evocative and powerful!

The double CD is a collaborative release of WV Sorcerer with Utech Records.

HYPNODRONE ENSEMBLE - The Problem Is In The Sender — Do Not Tamper With The Receiver (CD) (2024)

Still a long album with over seventy minutes playing time, but surely easier to access and digest than the P/O Massacre we just barely survived is this new recording by Hypnodrone Ensemble.

As you would expect from a band centered around the two prolific Canadian guitarists Aidan Baker and Eric Quach the group stays true to the premise of its name with a wall of Shoegaze, Ambient, Drone and Doom packed in indeed hypnotic, psychedelic, slowly developing long tracks.

In striking contrast to most releases of their respective main projects Nadja and thisquietarmy however this ensemble features real organic drums - and a lot of those. One, two, three drummers are working here in unison, there in polyrhythmic chaos under the long guitar notes and noises and the steadily pumping bass lines. As a whole you could file this slighty tribalistic, transcendent sound either in the Kraut or in the Post Rock folder. Is Space Gaze a genre? Wonderfully trippy escapist stuff.

But wait, that is not all! This session was recorded without an audience, but while Hypodrone Ensemble was on a European tour with special guest Chinese-American singer Otay:onii, who lends her special voice to all five tracks, adding an enigmatic mystical vibe and emotional resonance to the music, which makes it even (significantly) more special.

Besides classic digipaks it seems WV Sorcerer has found a new favourite packaging for CDs, as just like the last Zaäar live album "The Problem Is The Sender - Do Not Temper With The Receiver" comes in 7" vinyl single format with an Obi strip. (You choose if you prefer the black or white side of it.)

The multi-label release is also - more or less - available on vinyl and cassette, offered by Wolves and Vibrancy and Cruel Nature Records.

OTAY:ONII - 冥冥 Míng Míng (Sanguine vinyl LP) (2021/2024)

Speaking of Otay:onii: Here's a vinyl reissue of her amazing album "Ming Ming"! Yes, this is undoubtly the most unnecessary purchase of this bunch for me, because I already own it on CD.

But sorry, I just couldn't help it. After all this emotionally gripping Experimental Electro Folk Artpop Noise masterpiece is one of the most essential works on the label so far. Having seen the Elizabeth Colour Wheel singer dedicate the most breathtaking performance of Roadburn Festival 2023 to it elevated the deeply personal concept album about her two-world identity even further for me. Music seldom gets more powerful than here.

The transparent red vinyl comes in a completely new alternative artwork. And with "Enter The Wound" it also features an excellent six-minute bonus track.

FEN - 結構 Structure 1603 (CD) (2022)

And here's the long overdue purchase. I had saved this CD to get alongside with something else for a while and now finally the time had come. It's a thirty-five minute live performance of experimental improvisation inside a historical castle in Kyoto by a collective of four musicians from Japan, South Korea, China and Singapure, with the biggest name probably being Otomo Yoshihide.

Even though the performance of guitars and electronics starts and ends with a mean feedback which made even my half-deaf cat look up a little annoyed for a moment, the core of it actually is a very introspective and meditative experience.

Fuzzy warm, bubbling and buzzing frequencies and neuron-stimulating impulses in Ambient equilibrium. Entering Zen through Fen.

IFFERNET / DOLPO - Split (Dark Red vinyl LP) (2024)

And now some nasty dirty rancid low-fi, but somehow still pretty epic Black Metal! There's not really much I can say about the French Black Metal duo Iffernet, except that they are reminding me of a raw caveman version of Misþyrming - and fuck yeah I dig it. But their two tracks are only the first half of this split release.

The B side belongs to the Italian Drone Doom group Dolpo, whose previous album "Inner Himalayas" still has a special place in my heart and on my cassette shelf. Their new longtrack "The Gonzo Anthropologist: Advanced Techniques" takes a long while to fully embrace Metal territory. Most of the time the closest element to that is the Stoner Doom bass line, which could just as well be labelled as Psychedelic Rock. The rest is an interesting mix of traditional Tibetian wind and percussion instruments, a rather tribal, shamanic rhythm approach and a dynamic tapestry of layered guitar and Ambient sounds culminating in a beautiful Post Rock fashion. Great stuff!

The transparent red vinyl looks good, actually very similar to the Otay:onii record, and the packaging... is something. Nice cover artwork, obi strip, lyric sheet and postcard for Iffernet, so far so good. But then there's that booklet for Dolpo. WTF? Do you know that Erich von Däniken Space Jesus  conspiracy VHS tape weirdness item from the vinyl version of Blood Incantation's "Hidden History Of The Human Race"?

This thing, which absolutely cannot even be meant to be in any way conclusive or even readable (I'm not even showing the worst pages below), plays in the same ballpark. Absolutely bonkers, all over the places insanity? Enlightment? Whatever? Not exactly what I would have connected with the music, which just doesn't sound like Skeletor speaking in emojis at all, but it's a fun extra anyway.

And definitely a thing where some other underground labels would probably have stopped the artist to save money. But WV Sorcerer Productions is of course all about special stuff slightly outside of the norm.

Great split LP. And what a great haul as a whole! 

cassette craze chronicles XXXV feat. BRÍI, DIABOLIC OATH, ERSHETU and HAVE BLUE

Hey, finally! It's tape spinning time again. So without further ado let's start with  blasting some sick Blackened Death Metal!

DIABOLIC OATH - Oracular Hexations (2024)

Oh, I worded that wrong: Let's start with that one of these mini reviews I could totally skip! Because yes, I've already written about this slab of disgusting fretless Dissonant Death Metal back in April. As with most releases from Sentient Ruin Laboratories it just took a while until it was available in physical format in Europe.
Of course this album is still a sick blackened nightmare of awesome performances deliberately drenched in cavernous abysmal chaos. It's absolutely delicious!

And as nice as it had been to have the digital (promo) copy, it felt a little too convenient and untrve that you're actually able to read the tapeworm track titles like "Rusted Madness Tethering Misbegotten Haruspices" on the screen. No, this needs to be in a challenging font, printed red on black!

DIABOLIC OATH - Aischrolatreia (2022)

Well, if you love the album you will also love Diabolic Oath's previous EP. It's the same brand of Technical Death Metal which doesn't care to showcase its Progressive chops, but just uses those as one of various elements to create stress and exhaustion. It also features the band's trademark of exclusively using fretless guitars to even enhance the twisted nature of their maelstrom invocations.

The song titles alone are pure Death Metal bliss again:

"Thrones Before Slobbering Gods"
"Grand Atrocities Through Foul Miscreations"
"Poisoned Bodies of Swine Imbuing"

The arrangements are not quite at the point they achieved later with "Oracular Hexations", but on the other hand this is even a bit more filthy, raw and chaotic. This dunks your bones in demon blood soup, makes you bathe in it and feeds the fire under the kettle. Blessed are the diabolic.

BRÍI - Último Ancestral Comum (2023)

It took quite a while until the latest Bríi was finally released on cassette. So long in fact that I thought there maybe just wouldn't be a tape this time and ordered it as a CD from the Chinese label Pest Productions. And of course even before that one arrived the cassette came out. Ordering it too admittedly was collector's greed, just because I already have the three previous albums of the Brazilian project in that format. If you can get your hands on the disc - that one's absolutely fine as well.
On the other hand the cassette is quite a beautiful item and definitely features my favorite shell of this bunch.

And musically? In four long tracks once again Bríi hallucinates its weird dream of Ambient powered up with Electronic club sounds infused with Post Rock and smashed down by brutal epic Black Metal. Many movements on this album flow into each other very smoothly, others are sudden absurd bursts. And both approaches work on this exciting, highly unpredictable album.

The only thing which bothers me is that the production of the Metal parts could really be clearer. Low-fi attitude or not, the way the musical richness is drenched in swampy dullness sometimes is just too much. Especially since the Electronic grooves can be so satisfying (love the trance of the final track "Cada Canto Du Universo") that makes the production feel unbalanced. The only solution as a listener is to compensate with volume. And if you boosted "Alienígena Interior" enough to enjoy it, you will surely also have a great time with all the rest. The unique genre mix this artist is once again presenting here deserves it.

ERSHETU - Xibalba (2023)

On the level of being something different Ershetu can surely rival, if not even beat Bríi. The concept of the band which among others features vocals from Solefald and guitars from Blut Aus Nord is the meaning of Death in different cultures. The debut album starts this exploration with the Maya.

So yes, between the blasting cinematic orchestral Black Metal with harsh and clean vocals you should expect some pan flutes and other ethnic sounds, which are probably as authentically Mayan as Wardruna are Viking. Has anyone heard Central American music from that epoch? There you have it, let's rather file this under fantasy!
And that's not meant as a downgrade, because this stuff actually is super creative, unique and epic. Actually, had I endulged in this earlier it maybe could have been among my favorite releases of 2023. 

A nice bonus to the cassette is that the digital download also includes all six tracks as instrumental versions.

HAVE BLUE - Minus Minus (2024)

And now a more recent album again! Is the title a Jazz reference? And didn't I only just feature Have Blue's last release "Trübe" in the previous edition of my cassette craze chronicles?

Recorded in the beginning of 2024 in the band's rehearsal space, the eight German and English tracks on "Minus Minus" once again show us that Punk shouldn't be defined solely by sound, but mostly by attitude.

Because while the raw immediacy, D.I.Y. sound and spirit of their music always screams Punk, Have Blue are not afraid to add proggy time signatures, bluesy or funky parts, Garage Space Rock, Noise Rock and Metal influences whenever they see fit. In some fast and heavy instances the trio even reminds of the punkish side of Voivod including chord choices and the gnarly bass sound.

And all that happens without Have Blue never actually not being Punk anymore. I have absolutely not been raised on the genre, but this blend just is the shit for me. I think I still slightly prefer "Trübe" though, but that's above all a matter of quantity, since that album simply was twenty minutes longer than this quick half hour.

  

cassette craze chronicles XXXIV feat. DARSOMBRA, HAVE BLUE, KARKARA, SUNRISE PATRIOT MOTION and WHERE MERMAIDS DROWN

Tomorrow I'll be on my way to Copenhagen for the next festival, so it's time to review at least a part of the haul from the last two, right? Plus two new other recent releases... Here we go: part thirty-four of my cassette craze chronicles!

DARSOMBRA - Dumesday Book (2023)

Ok, no beating around the bush, that big VHS case is of course the most intriguing object in this picture. So what is it? The duo Darsombra played an absolutely fascinating, very fun and DIY, but also immerse and magical multi-media show at Roadburn - and this two-tape boxset represents the band's balance of home-made charme, humour and actual art / great music perfectly.

The box contains two cassettes in slipcases, a high format booklet, a poster, a sticker, two pins and a miniature "thing", which resembles the one on the album cover. And - which sadly seems to get less popular these days - also a Bandcamp download card. Not knowing what to expect I was very happy when I opened this box. How can you not love independent artists, who put so much love into their releases?

And the music matches the visual side. The seventy-five minutes consist of mostly instrumental tracks based on loops, synth and guitar and very few actual rhythmic instruments. But you actually don't miss those, because everything here sounds exactly like it's supposed to sound. A gorgeous mixture of Space Rock, Ambient soundtrack elements and drone in a somehow very personal, but still wide open and epic format. Yeah, this is weirdo stuff. This is hippie shit. This is White Hills, Earth and Sula Bassana summoning the Kraut spirits of old and binding them into a dreaming Roboter. Call the doctor and sing along!
I am so freaking glad that I took the plunge of buying "Dumesday Book". It's really everything I wanted it to be - and more.

SUNRISE PATRIOT MOTION - Black Fellflower Stream (2022)

No, visually the other tape I bought at Roadburn definitely cannot keep up with Darsombra. The music however is more than fine; a dark and desperate take on Post Punk / Gothic Rock with lots of keyboards, lead guitars and a big industrial building echo, made by dudes coming from a Black Metal background. While mostly staying in the same up-tempo (or the half-time of it) the band comes up with enough variety to make this half hour fel like only twenty minutes.

The memory of the drummer playing with so much feral energy as if he was trying to smash his kit into pieces is for sure helpful to enjoy this mini album. But even without that aid this is damn good stuff from a group positioning itself comfortably in their own sonic niché.

HAVE BLUE - Trübe (2023)

Yet another merch table purchase, but this time from the much smaller Dazed & Spaced Festival in Hamburg. We're starting from a similar musical point somewhere in the early Eighties, but then the mostly German-language "Progressive Punk" of Have Blue from Berlin takes on a completely different life on its own. In spirit and at the base of their sound is indeed raw Punk, but interspersed with Funk and Surf licks, creative bass lines and some surprisingly elaborate rhythmic ideas. Above all however all this makes just one half of Have Blue's sound with the other half being firmly rooted in various flavours of Psychedelic Rock. No, these guys aren't afraid of experimenting and actually playing their instruments, while still keeping a believable Punk attitude.

With over fifty minutes this album offers a lot and not too much, because this is just very cool stuff. And don't bother about the language barrier, if you don't understand German; I'm confident you'll enjoy this anyway!

KARKARA - All Is Dust (2024)

This is probably the "biggest" release here - at least in Kraut afficionado circles. After their evolution from "Crystal Gazer" to "Nowhere Land" I was pretty confident in the French trio Karkara to give us another uptempo banger for fans of (old) Slift, (old) King Gizzard or (recent) Servo, but with many new impulses to keep it fresh and exciting.

The nine minute opener "Monoliths" may not deliver the biggest originality yet, but it already leaves no doubt that these dudes have grown golden hands for this style. It's just so fucking good. I even really like the vocal performance now. And for my taste it gets even better in the more aggressive second track "The Chase" - especially when you think the song has told us everything it has to say, but then breaks down to a slower tempo and lets a sick guest saxophone burst into the space it has just made. Fucking excellent!

I won't go through all six tracks here, but be assured, those are all bangers! Great bass and guitar tones, cool Desert Rock orientalisms blowing through the dust, tasty analogue synth sounds and B-movie spoken word passages...
If you wanted just one song suggestion to check out "All Is Dust" it would probably be "Anthropia" with its killer earworm chorus and guitar licks. Or the title track? So majestic here, wo unhinged there- and it has a Mexian trumpet solo.

Great album and a nice orange tape shell. The coloured vinyl versions are probably more spectacular than this cassette, but this is fine, it was was cheaper - and a more exclusive limited edition, if we're talking in collector's value.

WHERE MERMAIDS DROWN - Stellar Frequencies Session (2024)

And finally... those Post Rockers from France again? Is it something new? No. So just familiar songs played live... again? Yes,, it's a studio session though. And you can also watch it on YouTube. So there's actually no reason to buy this on cassette, is what you're saying? Well, is having it on cassette not reason enough? I guess so.

There you have it: the "Stellar Frequencies Session" is far from a quintessential release, but the Mono style epic instrumental Post Rock of Where Mermeids Drown hasn't stopped being great, the recording sounds flawless, the tape doesn't cost much, has a beautiful shell again... and if you already have three tapes a little bit of collector's greed might play a role, too.