★Utech Records
Kampanerura
Kampanerura is the name of a boy appearing in the children's story Night on the Galactic Railroad by Kenji Miyazawa (1896-1933), Japanese poet and author of children's literature. A boy with pure soul transmigrates and becomes a dissipated man around a trip to the bottom in Asia. From accompanying text by Masayoshi Urabe 'What are my legs on? What are my feet standing on? Sand? I feel something sharp and pointed! And a gentle breeze where am I? The sea? I feel it flowing! I've crossed ove…
Centering and displacement
To manipulate a recording of the improvised process is to directly dilute spontaneous conception, and thank god for that. Centering and Displacement was composed in the winter-summer of 2008 in Chicago. A body of improvised source material was collected, segmented and organized by a simple chance operation. These segments were then orchestrated into a sound program and arranged by order of the strict composed form. At times, the score also regulated post-recorded effects to manipulate the origin…
Bengt
Bengt is the new solo recording by Mats Gustafsson and is dedicated to Bengt Nordström. Mats Gustafsson plays a plastic alto sax. A classic Grafton sax. The type of sax that was used by Charlie Parker, Ornette Coleman and Bengt Nordström. Nordström is best known having produced Albert Ayler´s first recording Something Different!!!!!! on his Bird Note imprint. It is in his own role as a sax player Bengt was truly inventive. Bengt was playing solo sax improvisation already in 1962 (!!!) Nor…
Dark Places
Certain places are more horrifying than others, closer to the source of primordial terror, be it the netherworld, the glacial outerspace of Lovecraftian ancient evil or simply the subconscious. Such places are sources of myth and awe. For their second album, Owwl tapped into these sources. Dark Places channels the world's sinister sites. The results are minimally shifting walls of drone, oppressive and entrancing like stars in a forlorn place or the historic pitfall of ground drenched with…
Anro
A narrow path of safety extending through the gloom, its edges bleeding into the fearful zones of disorder and formlessness that enclose it. Paths create borders, they limn the known from the unknown, the clean from the unclean, the citizen from the exile, the present from the past. But while paths create boundaries, they themselves are ambivalent, neither here nor there, neither now nor then. The act of making a path where none existed always involves the subjugation of the unknown and f…
It All Falls Apart
The debut release from Polish composer Adrian Aniol, It All Falls Apart, is a slow, fog-enshrouded journey upriver into the mouth of madness. Slow, frigid waves of sound seep in from the misty distance. White noise clashes with subsonic percussive crashes piling on the unease and tension that builds to an appropriately lunatic conclusion. The B-side features a remix of the entire piece by Steven Hess (Locrian, Ural Umbo). No computers were used on the remix. The piece was literally done …
Urania
From the opening pulse through the flourish of its conclusion, Urania is an auditory capsulization of outer space. Like the magazine it draws its title from, strains of evil, surrealism, and technological grandeur exist in an oxygenless environment. Urania is the sound of various futures, from modular analog synth textures to bizarre, unidentifiable soundtracks created with alien technology. From idyllic utopian societies to scorched, apocalyptic lands, Architeuthis Rex examine the myster…
Delusion Of Hope
With an eldritch terror that could just as easily be from another dimension as the darkest ocean comes the latest release from Ural Umbo, Delusion of Hope. Feedback and melody barely escape from the murky crevices, tinged with a sense of grinding tension. Sharp, acidic percussion slices through the blackness with violent urgency, while electronic blasts and organic drones entwine and ensnare. Some dim instinctive memory vaguely resurrects a shadowy scene wherein black drums roar madly, and monst…
New dominions
This collaborative release brings together two of the most exciting artists operating at the forefront of the underground. The groups' willingness to explore new sounds, textures, and moods sets them apart from other artists operating in heavy music. New Dominions may be the most intense and brooding releases by either group. The album consists of two extended tracks. 'The Gift' begins the record with slowly building layers of bowed and looped percussion, harsh vocals, glistening tremolo guitars…
Malpais
Malpais is the first collaborative effort between William Fowler Collins and Gog. With both musicians based in the American Southwest (WFC in New Mexico and Gog in Arizona), the music is layered with hallucinatory visions of abandoned mines, atomic bomb blasts, genocide, and space travel. The listener is taken to a place that feels as though it could be the surface of the moon or a scorched earth strewn with bone dust and ash. Photograph by Max Aguilera-Hellweg.
The Persistence of Meaning
New York duo of Joshua Convey and Luke Krnkr. Blistering, overdriven shards of noise obscure the almost entirely hidden melodies. These musical moments are few and far between, as The Persistence of Meaning is more about reveling in destruction and decay, emphasizing raw feedback and hollow, rhythmic loops that shamble like the walking dead. Dirges from the deepest ossuaries can almost be heard, pained notes buried by locust swarms of static. While occasionally the pair engage in erratic Krautro…
Ecotono
“The word Ecotono is built from two roots. Eco (oikos/casa) and tono (tonos/ tensión). An ecotono, or ecotone, is a habitat created by the juxtaposition of distinctly different habitats; an edge habitat; or an ecological zone or boundary where two or more ecosystems meet. It is a transition area between two distinct habitats, where the ranges of the organisms in each bordering habitat overlap, and where there are organisms unique to the transition area. An ecotone region provides conditions of b…
Surface of the Earth
Gunn Amps and Smashed Guitars. Surface of the Earth was recorded live to cassette, using two microphones in a wooden community hall in Wellington, New Zealand. The lp was gathered from two or three recording sessions in 1994/95. Back then we used to book out the hall for a couple of days, set up our gear and then record everything. It was a very atmospheric room for recording. Tony and Donald would put their guitars through their two old Gunn valve amplifiers and get to work. Tony often used thi…
The Crystal World
LP version. A marked change had come over the forest, as if dusk had begun to fall. Everywhere the glacé sheaths which enveloped the trees and vegetation had become duller and more opaque. The crystal floor underfoot was occluded and gray, turning the needles into spurs of basalt. The brilliant panoply of colored light had gone, and a dim amber glow moved across the trees, shadowing the sequined floor. At the same time it had become considerably colder.The Crystal World, the third studio album f…
Terre Paroxysm
Terre Paroxysm is Daniel Menche's second release for Utech Records and a continuation in his bringing back the vehement nature of sound. A pure acoustic-electronic recording of storms: wind, ice and rain. The field recordings were captured by Menche and densely mixed and treated in a manner to create a sense of the earth sleeping then cracking open with violent emotion. An air of electronics crackles and slides around the storm recordings in a way that only can be described as acoustic-electro. …
Point of Convergence
Trapped on an ocean of disparate languages, sound gravitates towards meaning, escaping the obsolescence of mother tongues by denying the slow decay of time. In the biblical tale of the Tower of Babel, God punishes the tower builders by scattering them across the earth, unintelligible to each other. As they departed their blissful prison of same-think, they became drunk with new songs, washing down their newfound 'auditory cheesecake' with sectarian babble. In as much as their speech had be…
Apparitions
Bleak analog electronics and voice from Justin K Broadrick. Apparitions is a dark, insalutary recording of sub bass throb, scathing frequencies and sheets of feedback unleashed with the ferocity of early power electronics sides. A material electric attack from places unknown. Photographs by Paul Lee. Edition of 500."
A Natural History Of Failure
Emotional distance. Scientism. Abuse. Greed. Love. Self destruction. A study of modern, alienated, forced-individualists, wired together in our hell. Initially a collection of high-volume live pieces by Unks and Graham, this work was crafted into album form with contributions from a group of like-minded friends who performed together during the tours of the same name in 2009. Weapons-grade Trogotronic electronics utilized throughout. Four-panel poster sleeve. Photograph by Olli Kekäläinen…
Mubomuso
Mubomuso is a neologism, made up from two extant words. Mubo suggests the unadorned and unaffected, while muso means to be in a state without thought or preplanning. All parts of the release lead the listener towards the consideration of a very specific topic Ð namely, war and violence, and the deeper connections to human nature. Stripped of the clothing of civilization, etiquette and socialization, we slowly become aware of reactions and purposes that exist deep within us embedded comma…
Finstrenis
ALUK TODOLO are a recondite creature: part okkult black metal fiend & part snide kraut menace. Dry, spare percussion grievously mines the scrapes, shrieks, & shimmer of mutated guitar & bass. Recently feat. at 2009's WFMU Fest in Brooklyn, NY