drone

It wouldn’t take a keen eye to spot newer dark noise acts like Boris & Sunn 0))) are redefining the black/doom concept mixing it with electronic noise and ambience. I used to listen to black metal a lot in the 90’s but I have to admit that even the Northern stuff didn’t sound half as evil as the 2000’s black metal. Now Sunn 0)))’s Stephen O’Malley and Peter Rehberg aka Pita from the pioneering Austrian noise/glitch label Mego has a project called KTL (which has its roots in a soundtrack for a play called Kindertotenlieder which is a modern take of Gustav Mahler’s musical adaptations of Friedrich Rückert’s poetry) that I really thought twice before featuring here (Sorry for you guys!)

To tell the truth if I listen to KTL’s album from the beginning to end it would challenge my psychological sanity so much that I take one song at a time, but the duo has gone on to construct a sound so extreme, it wouldn’t be fair not to mention them and hopefully my last 2 posts justify this post. All of the compositions here are over 8 minutes while the opener “Estranged” goes to a whopping 24 minutes. The song “Forest Floor 3” has a horribly sinister drone, gritty noise, guttural screams and a brooding tempo of 45bph (just kidding) the song literally churns your stomach. If hell has a soundtrack I bet it’s KTL.

KTL - Forest Floor 3

German Stephan Mathieu and English Janek Schaefer are two big names from the “academic” sound composing scene. Their latest collaboration “Hidden Name” is an exceptional journey through ambient textures and field recordings.

* The second release of Musica Excentrica
* The Steve Reich exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
* Another experimental compilation by 12rec.