Nadja – "Radiance Of Shadows" - (Alien8 Recordings – ALIENCD72) 2007

One day we will look back at the CD era with fond affection for the times we selected a CD from the endless racks in HMV or Virgin megastores ,endured the minuscule text,and proceeded to listen to an hour and twenty minutes of whomsoever the lucky band were,but pressing stop on the remote at around the  40 minutes mark whilst stifling yawns .....ironically, the length of two sides of a vinyl LP. A natural ending point for any album in the modern age of pop.

There was a compulsion for artists raised in the Vinyl era to put as much material as possible on this new extended format,even if it was the shite usually reserved for the 'Bonus Disc' of  an anniversary remaster.

So what we have here is an artist determined to fill up every nano-second of memory space provided by the aforementioned Digital Compact Disc format,rather than just satisfying the ever shortening Human attention span. Mine is currently about twenty minutes max of anything.A limit I have always adhered to in the live arena. Twenty minutes, then its off to the bar.

First wave Ambient Doom originators Nadja, are very typical of the CD age .Releasing a dumpster full of very similar sounding drone metal versions of wonky airport noises that very rarely clock in at less than twenty minutes a track,like a fuzzy Tangerine Dream fed through a cheap Flanger.

One of  those unfortunate groups who sadly fall between several stools of the 'Metal' category,so frequently get labeled as any one of the following: Doom Metal.,Ambient Metal,(my personal favourite) Dreamsludge (?), ambient-doom, and shoegaze-metal.

Sounding more like My Bloody Valentine rather than Sunn O))) , the Metal label is becoming a more and more tenuous a description for any experimental Rock band,but if it contains any hint of a 'Heavy' riff it's 'Metal',filtered through a barrage of pro-nouns ,prefix's and suffix's.

Topical Oppenheimer references aside, It has it's quiet moments,so Ambient Doom is arguably the most accurate sub-genre of the available choices? Not a large section in your resurgent vinyl store, but I'm sure it exists somewhere?

Am I getting too mainstream?

Tracklist:

1 Now I Am Become Death, The Destroyer Of Worlds (23:26)
2 I Have Tasted The Fire Inside Your Mouth (27:26)
3 Radiance Of Shadows (28:59)

DOWNLOAD and become not death metal but a destroyer of sub-genres HERE!

Die Sonne Satan – "Fac-Totum" (Slaughter Productions – T. 07) 1993

As background music to your Tupperware themed fondue soirée, this isn't gonna put you off that much needed purchase of  the resealable Salad tosser......you tossers.It does,however, have a Tupperware party favourite from  "Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares" album on 4AD,nicked,sampled and adapted ,only slightly, for the average Italian dark ambient fan,and renamed "Dismal Chant"? If you have any trendy art gallery attendees who dress like members of Chumbawumba (NHS Glasses and black polo-necks) as friends,this will go down like a Flux of Pink Indians remix at a Yoga class.......generally attended by actual Pink Indians, with a cloakroom full of ethic textiles awaiting their departure to hang out in the organic section of an ethically based supplier.All kept fresh in the very same recyclable Tupperware knock-offs that have put Tupperware out of business.One down several billion to go.

A stone carving appearing to predict Donald Trump appears on the cover ,depicting "The Donald" showing appropriate reverence,(Fear), upon meeting the very same vengeful Deity he so recently adopted as his own personal explanation for his own undeniable greatness.

As for, One Man band, Die Sonne Satan's very deniable greatness;again, its very listenable Dark Ambient for the decernable misanthrope's tea-party.Nothing original, or disturbing going on here,especially the clubby number with 'beats'?;but, it makes for a similar type of background music that James Last provided the extinct beast that was the suburban housewife with, in the 70's; except this is for the Subhuman housewife of the post industrial 90's.

You can play this whilst staring at yourself in the mirror pretending that life is a really terrible thing....and you'd be right, but not for the reasons you think it is. If you like John Carpenter's soundtrack music,and wearing black,This is very you. And it says 'Satan' too....TeeHeeHee.

Gee Mom you're so square,Satan's been cool since the first Black Sabbath LP.He/her/they have all the best tunes...except for that Hair Metal bunch of reprobate twats that is.I'd sell my soul to Jesus if he could sort out some eternal pain for Motley Crue.....who wouldn't?

(The tracklisting's up there innit,so i won't bother pasting it in here)

DOWNLOAD and fac totem fac Donald and fac you jesus HERE!

Two Daughters – "Gloria / Kiss The Cloth" (United Dairies – UDT 026) 1981

Two Daughters...Two cassettes!? Who'd have believed it?

On this one they courted the ear of Steven Stapleton,yes he of Nurse With Woooooounduh.....sorry, I nearly dropped off there for a minute. 

So this is on United Dairies as a result.

The Burkes,Anthony and Paul, upped the ante in the tape loops department,and eagerly manned the fader knobs on their cheapo mixer. Whereas NON made loops of Nazi marching bands,the Burkes shockingly use 23 Skidoo-style loops of Gamelan orchestra's,something the Skidders took to its logical limit,and please don't do it again,on the studio side of the otherwise brilliant "The Culling Is Coming".

Blatant copying, some call it 'Inspiration' was thinly disguised in the early industrial world,the most popular source of inspiration ,along with many other item's Cab-like,was Cabaret Voltaires' found dialogue method.....of which there are thankfully none on this tape, well-done Daughters.Others went for Cosey's space-echoed badly plsyed Cornet....see 400 Blows (and indeed 23 Skidoo again)for that one;also not nabbed by the daughters. With relief they also don't plagiarise Genesis P. Orridge's obsession with murderers and Nazi's,or any obvious pilfering of anything William S. Burroughs. All clichés that induce within me a inescapable desire to sleep....even more than that bloody Nurse With Wound List for prog rock trainspotters like me. But they obviously had a chat with the Turnbulls of Skidoo fame, who evidently lent them an album of the music of Bali to indulge their zest for making tape loops.

Having said that, if this tape had a couple of Skidoo style funky workouts, it would have wiped the floor with anything the Skidders did......which,frankly isn't saying much.

Update: I just listened to the extended version of Seven Songs and its fucking brilliant...although on a couple of tracks they do sound uncannily like Modern Romance or Haircut 100,but whats wrong with that?..so ignore that last paragraph,print it out, burn it,eat it, and swallow the evidence......but they (23 Skidoo) went shit rather rapidly after that;going Hip Hop is an unfathomable and unforgivable crime worthy of being indicted by the Hague international court of terrible music, of which i am the self-appointed and only Judge.

Tracklisting:

Kiss The Cloth

A1 Part 1
A2 Part 2
A3 Part 3

Gloria
B1 Part 1
B2 Part 2
B3 Part 3
B4 Part 4
B5 Part 5

DOWNLOAD something loopy HERE!

Two Daughters – "Two Daughters" (Methane Music ) 1980

More Old Skool Industrial chaps ,chapettes and other types of chaps? Anyone whose gender self identity I've not included,write your name and address on a postcard and send it to Vladimir Putin who has recently come out as a Chick with a Dick......no....wait....small error on my part...a bloodthirsty dictator and child killer.Please feel free to add that definition on your postcard.

This cassette was made by a couple of Burkes,Anthony and Paul, who had excitedly just heard about the festive joys of Tape Loops and 23 Skidoo's more ethereal percussive moments. Add to that zesty cocktail a stiff portion of cheap effects and you've got one thick slice of DIY Industrial, 1980 style.The watershed year for popular music.

Suitably analogue and darkly ambient, I could could listen to this in a darkened room for at least an hour,non-stop, breaking only for tea and biscuits and a nice long piss. Hang on, this only runs for fifty minutes, so it's not a shop bought brand name C-60,these Burkes spent money on it!The sell-outs!

Of course, newly rediscovered cassettes like this are lauded as works of near-genius by culture starved geeks hither and yon,but back in 1980, everyone was doing this.....some still are,like a UK Subs of Industrial music.What d'you want?....A Medal?

Tracklisting:

A1 Ladder Of Souls 

A2 Return Call - We Are

A3 Sad Horizons

A4 So I

B1 Return Call

B2 Drums

B3 Air Lair

B4 Aaaaaar

DOWNLOAD and arrange a visit from your daughters HERE!

Jonathon Briley ‎– "The Loss Of Innocence" (Broken Flag ‎– BF 54) 1986

Blimey Guvn'r, Briley got on a proper UK Industrial Noise cassette label too! Broken Flag,as run by Gary Mundy , late of premium power electronic outfits Whitehouse,Sutcliffe Jugend, Ramleh, Kliestwahr etc.
Somehow ,the devils' representative on earth, the 'evil' Jonathan,or the very silly Jonathan, got his work on cassette in the UK,whereas the rest of Sleepchamber didn't.

Ahaaaaa, 'Loss Of Innocence',an occurrance I mourn deeply within myself. I wish I didn't know about Dachau,Bestiality,Bloodfucking,whimpering wails of woe...well...so-called 'evil' in general really.

You may laugh,but I have managed to claw back a modicum of denial within the black whole of experience in my soul, but after watching that Polish War film "Wolyn" the other night,I think I've returned to square one! Bloody Hell Humans are capable of such bestial deeds that I'm beginning to be frightened of my own reflection. I wouldn't call it 'Evil' though, we merely represent the brutal ruthlessness of mother nature,and the will to survive.There's no place for morals in this fruitless struggle just to survive for one second longer than your opponents,or your neighbours.

In Nature, Innocence is just weakness;but being blessed, more accurately Cursed, with some kind of insideous intelligence, we are placed in a position of contradiction between higher being and beast.....and the Beast invariably wins out.

This is basically what Industrial culture bangs on about to the point of cancelling itself out. The music has become nothing more than the background musick to a lifestyle,or a pose,however entertaining. Scrapes,deep fried electronics,and self-immolating effects have replaced mantovani's string sections, and Richard Clayderman's syrupy piano as the muzak of the early 21st century. I, in particular enjoy cooking to the sound of Sutcliffe Jugend's "We Spit On Their Graves" especially. This may be a symptom of my unending search for my Innocence,but it's true.

Even Jonathan Briley has a tribute track to Mellow Jazz Chanteuse Sadé at the end of side one.....or is that 'de' Sadé or 'de Sade',as in the Marquis of?.....I'm sincerely hoping for the former. There IS a place for humour in Industrial culture....isn't there????

Tracklist:

A1 Feral 4:22
A2 Blackfields 4:09
A3 To The Power 4:33
A4 Corpus Experimentale 5:51
A5 Whimpering Wails Of Woe (Live) 4:13
A6 For Sade (Live) 3:45
B1 Bestiality 4:51
B2 The Long Thin Line Between A Whisper And A Scream 11:43
B3 Last Exit To Dachau 4:47
B4 Bloodfucking 2:55

DOWNLOAD jono's big break HERE!

Jonathan Briley ‎– "Darker Profits" (Inner-X-Musick ‎– XXX 26) 1985

 

Well I like this stuff, even if it is akin to listening to Green Day (or Brown Day as I prefer) and saying you're into Punk Rock. It does also represent the blind alley that making Industrial musick leads one into. One can only listen to Throbbing Gristle, and their a-likes from the old Skool era so many times before you wish there was someone else making similar tones that everyone hated because they were "jonny-cum-lately's", yet if we didn't know what we know we would have a different attitude,would we not? Hearing something you haven't heard before does have its merits.However after saying that, I would never allow a Green day album anywhere near my record player no matter how many times i've heard The Clash.....I could always dig out 'Sandinista' if i wanted something sobering,even though I don't think i got through the first side before filing it away in a dark corner of my attic.Another band that shouldn't have made a second album!Like Sleepchamber,but nobody noticed the forty plus 'second albums' they released from 1983 onwards.

Tracklist:

1 Whimpering Wails Of Woe 4:24
2 Sea Of Bones 3:31
3 Arbeit Macht Frei 5:07
4 The Pain Of Sleep- Soundtrack Excerpt 7:08
5 Seranade Grute'sque 5:57
6 Into The Abyss 3:53
7 Metal Erection 5:37
8 Please The Lord (In Praze Ov Hymn) 4:04
9 The Hunter 5:59
10 At The Alter Of Lies 5:29
11 Site Of Pain, Site Of Pleasure 7:17

DOWNLOAD and profit from jonathan's darker moments HERE!

Jonathan Briley ‎– "The Will To Power" (Inner-X-Musick ‎– XXX 34) 1985

 Hmmm a Nietzchean title, images of torture on the insert,inverted crucifix's, the odd reference to the Marquis de Sade,faux biblical text readings....this must be a mid eighties Industrial tape?

Heavens to Murgatroyd,it IS a mid eighties industrial tape dagnabbit!

The opening track,Requiem To A Small Blind Boy,has the most hilarious amateur dramatic rendering of some silly alternative Bible style parable,probably something to do with Satan or things equally as daft.It seems that our Jonathan is a frustrated actor,and he'd do any Faustian deal to be famous.

He so wants us to think he's evil, the poor lad.

The music is a nicely relaxing style of Industrial Dark Ambient of the Lustmord variety,encrusted with lots if Industrial bling.Especially pleasing are the dialogue sections on the rather controversial subject of Vivisection,which i assume the 'evil' Jonathan is all for?

Tracklist:

1 Requiem To A Small Blind Boy 4:32
2 Wheels Of Agony 6:23
3 Vivisection 5:43
4 Scorn Of The Sireens 8:37
5 The Breathing Meathod 4:44
6 For Silling (The 120 Days) 3:58

7 Insanity Loop 3:31
8 Of Purest Blood 4:59
9 13 Steps To The Whipping Pole 3:23
10 Metropolis 4:58
11 Shemham Forash! 7:05

DOWNLOAD from a mid-eighties hell HERE!

Jonathan Briley ‎– "From Kain To Abel......." (Inner-X-Musick ‎– XXX 45) 1987

Enter another Sleepchamber member who made better music on his own.

He was the one from the eighties incarnation who looked like a naughty school teacher.

It's all well made standard Dark Ambient Industrial style muzak.Real good as background sounds to a board games evening with a group of special friends.Which is probably why I don't have any friends anymore?

This stuff may get dismissed as american late-comers by those Industrial snobs who were....er... "There"... when these things were happening,but its jolly good fun to just absorb the silence by.

Right, now where's me Toast?

Tracklist:

A1 Vortex-(Instrumental Remix) 7:51
A2 Heaven's Sounding Sweeter All The Time 5:21
A3 Rize Ov The Carrion 3:02
A4 Dead Virtues 6:45
A5 Sermon Sur La Mort 4:00
A6 Kiss Ov The Whip 2:43
B1 (Untitled) 2:13
B2 To Baudelaire 6:41
B3 Hour Ov The Wolf 4:53
B4 Rituals 4:00
B5 The Last Time We Made Love 7:09
B6 Final Vision 3:50

DOWNLOAD as a sacrifice to Yahowa HERE!

7 From Life ‎– "Tantra Vendetta" (Inner-X-Musick ‎– XXX 40) 1985

"Nostalgia is an act of Cowardice", says Lawrence Van Horn on the insert for this score for a Ballet about the Chinese invasion of Tibet. Whether its pro or anti-Tibet is anyone's guess. I may run a small opinion poll,....For the Occupation; Against the Occupation; Occupation,what Occupation?;or Don't care!,are your choices......I rather think 'Occupation,what Occupation?, would win comfortably, with 'Don't Care!' clear in second place.

Whenever a left field underground artist starts writing music for a Modern Ballet, it's a sign that he's finished as a creative force.

As Nostalgia is now a form of Cowardice,according to the philosopher that is L. Van Horn, then this blog is full of Cowards,and I don't like being called a Coward ,mainly becuse I am a Coward;and let's face it, this Blog overfloweth with Nostalgia......otherwise why the hell would we be listening to a bunch of 35 year old cassettes by Lawrence Van 'me?A Coward, Naaah' Horn? Nostagia for the invasion and occupation of Tibet doesn't seem to bother him one bit.

The music itself is like walking through a fog of tear gas during a slow motion riot....which in itself is a kind of Modern Ballet.Actually its a Ballet i'd probably go and see,as long as it's coreographed by actual rioters.It can start off with a real innocent man being shot in the back by some dumb Cops,then take it from there until the theatre is in flames.

Tracklist:

Act One
A1 Tonal Reflection #1 : An Ocean Of Stars 15:00
A2 Spellbondage 6:02
A3 Panic In A State Of Grace 2:43
A4 A Face Full Of Pie-In-The-Sky 5:33

Act Two
B1 Tonal Reflection #2 : Horizans In Flames 21:56
B2 Llaman Lamentation 5:50
B3 Guerrilla Mantra 3:53

DOWNLOAD tantrically HERE!

7 From Life ‎– "Coral Assault" (Inner-X-Musick ‎– XXX-21) 1985

 
In a time when Coral is under assault from all angles due to the stupidity of the human race, it seems Lawrence Van Horn, of 7 From Life, wanted to draw this idiotic anti-life violence to our notice thirty years before it was even mentioned? Well maybe not,maybe he just wanted to creep us out, and make doomy music? It does have a tune about the bombing of Dresden on it,of which my father was a very rare witness.He was on a forced death march from poland back to the fatherland,when they rested on a hill over looking Dresden on the evening the British were bombing it flat.I could add the relevant section from his memoirs,but it would take over the post, and poor old Lawrence would feel ignored.....just like he must have been by all of woman kind......(you can download the entire memoir HERE if you're so inclined. He described it as being a "lovely display of colour's like a firework display";not a mention of the innocent civilian life being lost in the ensuing firestorm. That's what he was like,stoic and emotionless,which were the talents that got him through the whole of the war.

Oh Yeah, the tape!?
I dunno about you's but by 1985 I'd had enough of all this industrial and Punk shit,and had adopted an ironic Miami Vice look,and was starting to get into easy listening. But in america, they were only just getting into this Industrial fad,and duly claimed ownership,just like they did ten years after Punk Rock had died. Richard Hells' haircut wasn't enough evidence,especially when confronted with a picture of Bowie on the cover of Space Oddity's re-released version in 1972;when RichardMeyers was still in reformed school with Verlaine,who also didn't invent symbolist poetry,and also wasn't in Quicksilver Messenger Service,which was basically Television in bad clothes. The USA did in fact invent Rock'n'Roll,but why aren't they satisfied with that?
We may have all been bored with Industrial by 1985, but 35 years later we can now appreciate the late-comers contribution ,and it seems to have come from so far back that it all sounds as thought they had invented this pop-fad after all; and in the future, with all this revisionism going around, who knows, but maybe "7 After Life" did invent it all after all?...maybe he even invented Rock'n'Roll..I dunno anymore, or, care!?

Tracklist:

A1 Tombs Of Maya 5:41
A2 Shroud Of White Darkness 7:21
A3 Fome And Tide 4:13
A4 Hash Of Masks 6:07
A5 Cobra Dance 1:50
A6 Dresden 1945 4:05
A7 Insolation 2:15
B1 Invocation 3:07
B2 Stigma Machine 5:14
B3 Beyond Worms 4:21
B4 Chello Tango 2:18
B5 Nous Sommes Tous Sauvages 2:15
B6 Light Vector 4:31
B7 Mental Anguish Psyhic Reflex 5:31
B8 Withdrawl 3:07
B9 End 0:16

DOWNLOAD the gunfight at the not ok coral HERE!

7 From Life ‎– "Sting Of The Honey Spider" (Inner-X-Musick ‎– XXX 27) 1985

 He had the name of a Porn Star, and the looks of a toilet cleaner, but Lawrence Van Horn's recorded output is probably the best stuff on the Inner-X-Musick label.Another from the Nurse With Wound sonic collage school,who had in turn nicked it from former 'Homosexual' Jim Whelton,and his various terminally obscure cassette releases; the most well-known being L.Voag. It turns out that NWW had appropriated virtually everything to make their first album,and i'm sure Larry uses the same time-trusted method with his sound sources.

To blot his copybook a tad, Van Horn was in several line-ups of the not-so-good,and very dated sounding, Sleepchamber,but don't let that put you off.

Tracklist:

A1 The Cliffs Of Oblivion 5:52
A2 Lagoon Noir 2:44
A3 Necklace Of Tears 8:09
A4 Phantom Pain 3:30
A5 Anathematical Arousal 2:26
A6 The Gathering Thorns 4:43
A7 Rain Of Ashes 2:23
B1 Resisting The Limit 3:32
B2 Fruits Of Abuse 4:21
B3 A World Of Pure Salt 3:12
B4 Bitter Rapture 5:27
B5 Plate Tectonics 4:29
B6 Ascendancy In Tatters 3:16
B7 Intermezzo 2:13
B8 Lying In Wait 4:33

DOWNLOAD some sweet arachnophonics HERE!

Various ‎Artists – "Musical Offering / Музыкальное Приношение" (Мелодия ‎– С60 30721 000) 1990

The Soviets insisted that anything the capitalists could do,they could at least match it,usually making these things on a budget of close to zero,held together with straw and snot, like their version of Concorde,the supersonic passenger jet,Concordski,which crashed at the Paris airshow in 1973. As soon as the "more Equal Than Thou" members of the Polit Bureau heard of the EMS synth,they wanted their own 'Socialist' version, that their great and glorious electronic composers could all use.......this was called, the 'ANS' synthesizer;notice any similarities there?
One of the first synthesizers in the world (aka in The USSR), it was created by the Russian engineer E. Murzin over a period of twenty years from 1937, and it created music using light, rather than electrical variations, unlike all other synthesizers,except Daphne Oram's Oramics machine of course.This replaced the soviet version of the synth which involved high voltage cables attached to the genetils of 88 Oboe playing dissidents,and a series of levers that, when thrown in a sequence, would apply the adequate voltage to make the dissedent play his allocated note on the Oboe stapled to his mouth. This was fully polyphonic,but had its drawbacks, like the oboe player dying, and it emitted an awful smell of burning ball-bag hairs.Now that's what i call 'Electronic Music'!?
For Murzin's light synth,he,or the KGB, invited,or ordered, young,but qualified, composers to come and work on some new electronic pieces....this time without electrodes or any pointing guns,and the resulting works are showcased on this post Berlin wall collapse album released by crumbling state label Melodia.

Recorded between 1964 and 1971,these bizarre dark electronic excursions didn't see the light of day until 1990,as the communist bloc was collapsing;but the rest of the recordings that never made it onto the album were rediscovered and are now included here as bonus tracks.Whoppeeeee.......now, where did I put those electrodes,and where are those cheap economic migrants I bought?

Tracklist:

1 –Oleg Buloshkin- Sacrament 3:34
2 –Sofia Gubaidulina - Vivente-Non Vivente (Alive & Dead) 10:44
3 –Edward Artemiev - Mosaic 4:00
4 –Edward Artemiev - 12 Looks At The World Of Sound 12:52
5 –Edison Denisov - Birds' Singing 5:05
6 –Alfred Schnittke - Steam 5:50
7 –Alexander Nemtin - Tears 4:41
8 –Alexander Nemtin - I. S. Bach: Choral Prelude C-dur 2:30
9 –Schandor Kallosh - Northern Tale 5:38
10 –Stanislav Kreitchi - Voices Of The West 2:00
11 –Edward Artemiev Music From The Motion Picture "Cosmos" 12:15
12 –Stanislav Kreitchi - Intermezzo 2:00

DOWNLOAD or you may accidently fall off a balcony HERE!

Edward Artemiev ‎– "Solaris Original Soundtrack" (Мирумир ‎– MIR 100705) 1972

Dunno if its because I'm pissed (drunk, not angry, you americans!) but this is fantastic!
Everytime I've seen 'Solaris',the Soviet funded answer to '2001', I've been pissed and woke up thinking it was Fantastic.
Then I saw it sober, and fell asleep,woke up thinking that it was an incredibly boring crock of shite!
It's a film that you need to be in the correct time and place, and state of mind to enjoy.Unless you are a psuedo intellectual who would never admit to being bored by Tarkovsky.
Right now,i'm Loving this dark ambient foray into the darker energy of the ultimate isolation on the shores of a lifeless infinity.
No-one captures emptiness better than Artemiev.....unless you're sober that is.
A contemporary of the equally demanding "Andromeda Strain",which I have seen very sober in the daytime, and thought it was a masterpiece....then saw it drunk with some mates and we all thought it was a boring crock of shite,then switched over to watch 'Godzilla vrs Mechagodzilla', which is a work of unappreciated genius!
What is good and what is shite is a complicated science indeed;but right now i'm saying Solaris is one of the greatest films ever made, as is 'Godzilla vrs Mechagodzilla'.....as for 'the Andromeda Strain',i'll see next time i'm off my tits on strong continental lager......i may have already labelled it 'dull' in the previous post featuring the hexagonal soundtrack album that mashes up your stylus.
However both soundtracks are unsttling dark ambient excursions into the black heart of the human condition.......can't really say that about the "Mecha-godzilla" soundtrack,but i will post it for a classic 'contrast and Compare' moment.


Tracklist:

1 Part I 2:48
2 Part II 2:32
3 Part III 2:22
4 Part IV 3:13
5 Part V 2:27
6 Part VI 7:18
7 Part VII 3:55
8 Part VIII 2:56
9 Part IX 1:26
10 Part X 0:38
11 Part XI 2:09
12 Part XII 1:42
13 Part XIII 4:44
14 Part XIV 0:44
15 Part XV 4:36
16 Part XVI 6:19
17 Part XVII 1:21

Beam me down scottski HERE!

Gil Mellé ‎– "The Andromeda Strain (Original Electronic Soundtrack)" (Kapp Records ‎– KRS 5513) 1971

One the very few records whose sleeve cost 200% of the gross profit,and the hexagonal ,unique in itself,record inside destroyed your turntable if you forgot to switch it to manual......how cool's that?
Jazzer and electronics dabbler Gil Mellé,was commisioned to make a weird electronic soundtrack for one of the most painstakingly boring science fiction movies this side of Tarkovsky's 'Solaris',which also had a electronic soundtrack too ,did it not, by Eduard Artimiev?
A tiresome science-fiction techno-thriller documenting the efforts of a team of scientists investigating the mysterious outbreak of a deadly extraterrestrial microorganism/Virus.Hmmm,where have I heard that before?These ambient style horror electronics are really the work of the Synth rather than the 'artist'. Give a chimp a go on a EMS synth and something similar will emerge....you don't even need an infinite number of Chimps either....maybe one or two,or just one aging Jazzer looking to move into soundtrack work.
This was the first all-electronic soundtracks ever released,but not the first to be commisioned.No-one thought anyone would want to listen to this stuff in their homes until the seventies.It's sonically challenging, ominous and discordant. Like a haunting electro-acid patchwork of analog synthesizer experiments...but,experiments that could be done by the infinite chimp that resides in all of us.For that reason alone this should be praised;and then there's the packaging,and the stylus mashing record shape.Which makes this all quite perfect.It's a perfect soundtrack for a film about containing an outbreak of an extra-terestrial virus,and perversly turns out to be the perfect soundtrack for these times...there's a virus outbreak apparently that's slaying 0.004% of the human population....run for your lives,but wear a mask, disinfect your hands,and listen to the soundtrack of "The Andromeda Strain" while you're running,not dying.

Tracklist:

1.Wildfire 2:41
2.Hex 3:57
3.Andromeda 2:33
4.Desert Trip 4:14
5.The Piedmont Elegy 2:22
6.Op 2:43
7.Xenogenesis 2:40
8.Strobe Crystal Green 4:45

DOWNLOAD the soundtrack to the constipation problem in our nearest neighbouring galaxy HERE!

Tristram Cary, and The BBC Radiophonic Workshop ‎– "Doctor Who: The Daleks/The Dead Planet" (BBC TV) 1963

Ahhhh, at last it's Lustmord's new dark ambient album.......no.....wait!......the label says Its Trstram Cary's soundtrack to some television programme from the early sixties,made when Lustmord was still gestating. 
Yep,thanks to Doctor WHO , the BBC Radiophonic Workshop invented 'Dark Ambient' music as well as synth pop,popularizing Musique Concréte and many other means of sound production that the two Brians, Brian Eno and Brain Williams(lustmord), could have only dreamt of when this soundtrack was commisioned nearly sixty years ago!Cary is a greatly ignored God of electronic..err..music(?), no matter If you love or hate the TV programme, the sparse and carefully judged music adds so much menace and atmosphere to this already creepy episode that you are forgiven if you shit yourself...twice!
Doctor Who was a terrifying experience,especially in those monochrome days,but backed up by this creepy music it would have been too much for most children, and most adults, when broadcast at teatime on a saturday evening in the early Sixties. Both myself and Lustmord weren't even born when this Dalek story was first transmitted back in 1963.The world was just waking up to the simplistic jolly melodies of The Beatles,which when Juxtaposed with the sinister sounds of Britains most popular Science Fiction show must have sounded like nursery ryhmes.....no wonder everybody loved 'em?! 
Doctor Who sounded like real life,whereas Those loveable Moptops represented the average person's dreams and aspirations.....love, money,fame, things.....there was none of this stuff on Planet Skaro;just death,repression, fear,radiation, pollution,mutations and disease.....just like modern Earth I hear you say? Indeed, I think the Daleks are a visual metaphor for our future,and Skaro is the future Earth. A stark warning going unheeded. Just listen to the opening Dalek Speech,then contrast and compare that with whats happening today.....

"Look, The Disease has reached us in Here!" says Dalek no.1.
" Is This The End Of The Daleks?", inquires Dalek 2 demurely,.
"We need radiation to survive!" emphasises a now panicing Dalek number 2.
"We will have to explode another Neutron Bomb!",offers Dalek 1.

If that conversation hasn't taken place already in the Whitehouse Bunker then I'm a Dutchman!? (said in a Dalek Voice.....which was achieved,incidently by speaking through a BBC ring modulator.)
I can see that in the near future, when the world population consists of just a few thousand Dalek-like Cyborgs of rich people,who exist on a radiation scorched planet Earth after the MacDonalds sponsored robot wars of the mid-twenty-first century.After the sucessfull invasion of China....the chinese Robots used used cheaper components without full warranty.....the Cyborg elite,all speak with the only voice unit available......oh no, please exterminate us now.....the only human voice we will hear in the future will be a cross between the Daleks Ring-Modulator chic, and Donald Trump's monosylabic anglo-stoopid.Even the Bill Gates and George Soros cyborgs will speak with his voice....I think there will be another war after the next one,consisting largely of suicidal Dalek types,embracing death to get away from the monster that is 'The Donald',who changed his name to 'Davros' creator of the Human Daleks....this is just the start of a very long ending maaaaan!

Just like Donald L.Trump becoming president was predicted on The Simpsons, the Trump inspired fate of our planet was predicted by Dr Who and Tristram Cary provided the soundtrack to it.
He knows what scares you, children. Uncle Tristram KNOWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!......and I'm not just referring to the unmade Science Fantasy movie called "President Donald L.Trump"!?
If that script was offered to the BBC as an episode of Dr Who, it would have been rejected as "Highly Unlikely".....yes the Existence of Cybermen was once thought of as more likely than Donald Trump becoming leader of the Western World!....Uncle Donald knows what scares you and your children kiddies...Uncle Donald KNOWS!!!!!!!!!...sadly Tristram Cary is no longer with us to provide the soundtrack.......maybe Kanye West will do it?....now that is truly HORRIFIC!!!!!!!

DOWNLOAD from planet skaro HERE!

Ashtray Navigations ‎– "The Black Clock" (Matching Head ‎– Matching Head 44) 1996

A black clock is alright as long you've got alternatively coloured hands, white for example.Unless the Black Clock is a metaphor for the inexorable tick-tocking of the countdown to ones inevitable demise. In which case this dark ambient, glitchy, smear of a recording would be the soundtrack. The difference being the Black Clock runs backwards,but cassette players normally only play forwards.An interesting juxtaposition yes? Therefore each should theoretically cancel the other out, and time will stand still.We will escape death but be forever stuck in a limbo of our own creation.....and bored shitless!
But, at least we could listen to this Ashtray Navigations tape for eternity. Its good, but even an eternity of listening to something good, great even, would have the most bulletproof constitution screaming out for Aquas "Barbie Girl" (a terrible number one hit from the nineties that thought it was being 'ironic')."Com'on Barbie, Let's Go party"!? If these scandinavians were actually warbling about Klaus Barbie, the 'Butcher of Lyon', rather than the kitch childrens dolly and gay icon,then this would be a supreme example of the art of Irony. Leaving the notion of Partying with a Nazi war criminal very much to the darker side of ones imagination. Maybe this is the description of Hell that the Bible failed to include, if so i'm gonna start praying and grovelling for redemption from any God that will listen.

Tracklisting:

1. Black Clock part 1 (22:38)
2. Black Clock part 2 (22:21)

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Autumn ‎– "I Invite" (Micrart ‎– MCD 8011) 1980 / 2003

More mellow ,inoffensive minimal beatless synth tunes agogo, from the very unbelgian Belgians in Autumn.
This one was a cassette release in 1980, but re-released by the reanimated Micrart label on CD-r in 2003.I'dhave used the original artwork if I could find it anywhere,instead of the awful turn of the millenium computer graphics that adorns this cd-r.This is also the ers from which Cd-r's started to disintegrate after a few years.CDs/Cd-r's really were the worst medium for music storage ever unleashed on the unsuspecting record re-buying public!
CD gripes aside,this really does sound like it could have been made today by some Serbian kids obsessed with the Minimal Wave era of 79-84........but,with the vital ingredient of 'the Drum Machine' very missing, crucially.
Can't really call it Ambient New Beat, well I can.......it's Ambient New Beat.
Maybe they just couldn't afford a drum machine, which is a better reason than any artistic/creative reason any day of the week!

Tracklisting:

1 Behind You 4:58
2 HB Invitation 5:01
3 Inexistential Ocean Voyage (Sitting On Trainbanks) 7:48
4 Striking Terror 2:48
5 A Message To The End 10:00
6 Valium Babies 7:25
7 Dropping Gutter (The End Of An Ice Age) 10:53
8 Rasha 5:05
9 My Liquid Eyes 3:55
10 Pictures Theme 2:43

I invite you to DOWNLOAD it HERE!

Autumn ‎– "Experiments With Environments" (Micrart ‎– MC 8207) 1982

Another understated Belgian dark-synth outing for the Micrart label from 1982. There are many murkily mellow moments lurking among a dusky mixture of Vangelis, Soft Cell, without Almond, and Yazoo, without Alf.Mostly it sounds like autumn,as in trees without leaves...the season,not the band.One for relaxing in the bath in candlelight.

Tracklisting:

A1 Ocilado Q
A2 Memories
A3 Twilight World Part 1
A4 Towards Tokio Part 1
A5 Reach You From Behind My Walls
A6 I Still Care
A7 Gardens
A8 Friday
A9 Mystery Screen
A10 Twilight World Part 2
B1 My New Friend
B2 PSI, A Destiny Experience
B3 Metal Dream
B4 The Possession L.
B5 7.49
B6 Towards Tokio Part 2
B7 Experiments With Environments
B8 Pale Mist Meditation
B9 Delayed Mind Creation

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Negative Reaction ‎– "Negative Reaction" (Terse Tapes ‎– trs012) 1980

Australia did a good line in Dark Industrial, and Negative reaction are a fine example of the lesser known part of the thriving early 80's Aussie Industrial sub-culture.
What have Australians got to moan about one may ask? Sunshine,large open spaces,high standard of living....er....sunshine.
Well, for one, its a country full of loudmouthed 'Jocks',whose overcompetitiveness tends to annoy somewhat. So no wonder the pale young boys of Australia seeked solace in the dark pleasures of Industrial culture. Eternal sunshine can be a real downer also,not to mention the heat of the long antipodean summers.Overexposure to such a climatic strait-jacket can lead to a longing for the grey skies of the mother country, The UK, and the cleansing properties of rainfall.

Tracklist:

Jubilee 3:25
Frustrate Flats 1:13
The Desert 8:04
Mass Culture 5:03
Street Paranoia 3:29
Dead 2:44
Theme 1 6:10
Vietnam 10:58

Live at I.C.E

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Alien Brains ‎– "Live At The Basement 14/02/82" (Aeon ‎ Tapes) 1982

Nigel Jacklin is joined by Richard and Phillip Rupenus, of New Blockaders (anti-)fame, in the basement, Newcastle on Valentines day in 1982, to make a very New Blockaders version of Alien Brains.
The 'make do and mend' amateurishness of Alien Brains earlier tapes, has been replaced with competant avant-industrial professionalism.
Its a quite impressive dark ambient rumble, but the Brains have lost their charm in the process.....it happens to us all eventually....even me!?

Tracklist:

A Untitled 47:15
B Untitled 38:20

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