[LISTEN] Closed Circuits | Lucifer

They say the Devil has the best tunes... 

This is a work of Fire, and Fire will illuminate and burn without discretion. 

It was written and recorded during a time when large parts of the World were quite literally aflame. 

It is a reminder of your strength and your sovereignty. 

And with that in mind, this one is for me. 

credits

Releases April 3, 2020 

All songs written, performed, produced, and mastered by Chris Page 

Cover image and design by Chris Page

https://closedcircuits.bandcamp.com/

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Puce Mary // The Drought

Building from a reputation of arresting live performances and critically acclaimed releases Puce Mary breaks new ground with The Drought, evolving from the tropes of industrial and power electronics to forge a complex story of adapting to new realities. Remnants of noise still exist, sustaining the penetrative viscerality offered on previous records, however The Drought demonstrates an intention to expand on the vocabulary of confrontational music and into a grander narrative defined by technical and emotional growth. 

Bringing together introspective examination with literary frameworks by writers such as Charles Baudelaire and Jean Genet, Puce Mary’s compositions manifest an ongoing power struggle within the self towards preservation. The traumatised body serves as a dry landscape of which obscured memories and escape mechanisms fold reality into fiction, making sense of desire, loss and control. The Drought presents both danger and opportunity; through rebuilding a creative practice centred on first person narrative and a deliberate collage of field recordings and sound sources Puce Mary injects an acute urgency across the album seeking resilience. 

“To Possess Is To Be In Control” makes use of lyrical repetition as an ambiguity of two selves, or a divided self, attempting to consume one another, while “Red Desert,” named after Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1964 film, portrays the individual subsumed by surrounding environmental forces. The seven-minute epic “The Size of Our Desires” acts as the emotional tipping point of the record; amongst the ominous drone and dense feedback flutters almost-beatific melodies, while the lyrics reveal a romantic call to be swept up in the midst of an increasingly uninhabitable world.

Rather than escape, The Drought dramatises a metamorphosis in which vulnerability is confronted through regeneration. Noise and aggression no longer act as an affront to react against but part of a ‘corporeal architecture’ where space, harmony and lyricism surface from the harsh tropes of industrial music. The Drought chronologises a transformation through a psychological famine, new ways of coping akin to plant survival in a desert – to live without drying out.

The album is mastered by Rashad Becker, featuring cover art by Torbjørn Rødland. 

https://puce-mary.bandcamp.com/

https://www.facebook.com/pucemarypucemary/

Australia's Bonnie Mercer unleashes aural carnage on new retrospective "Mystic Decade"

'Mystic Decade' is a 10 year retrospective; a collection of recordings made between the years 2007 - 2017 by Bonnie Mercer. All tracks (except the last & most recently recorded, 'Eat Guitars') have appeared previously on compilations in Australia, North America and Europe.  Based in Melbourne, Australia, guitarist Bonnie Mercer continues to explore the unknown worlds of unrestrained feedback, hallucinatory white noise and hypnotically evolving sonic guitar experiments. 

The album is a sonic journey through a black hole of aural carnage and mind manipulation which cleverly weaves a hypnotic web of sound. Mystic takes you on a trip through grimy feedback and dark alley ways of the mind all unknown. Bonnie's sound is uncompromising,  harsh, raw, an audible chimera of an experience not easily forgotten. 

Bonnie's evolution as a key experimental guitarist and indeed a visceral one has never been more highlighted than on this retrospective where you can audibly not only feel and vicariously experience  the evolution of her use white noise and hypnotics penetrate you.

[ "The idea for 'Mystic Decade' came about earlier this year when I realised that it had been ten years since I had started playing solo. Playing solo is a constant emotional roller coaster for me, it is truly full of ups and downs and I am often too hard on myself...but at the same time, it is most definitely one of the most rewarding things I do. I have been given so many wonderful opportunities - supported some of my favourite bands, met amazing new friends, toured around the world, and collaborated with so many talented musicians.

Compiling the 10 year retrospective for 'Mystic Decade' largely a process of self-reflection - looking back at some of those achievements and all of the music I have created over that time. It was a way of acknowledging a significant period of time in my life and making the conscious decision to keep pushing forward...recognising all of the insecurities that have haunted me along the way, embracing all the things I love about playing music, and making the decision to stop being so hard on myself - the start of a new decade." - Bonnie Mercer ]

http://www.bonniemercer.com/

https://www.facebook.com/bonniemercermusic

https://bonniemercer.bandcamp.com/

http://www.psychichysteria.com/

LORN // REMNANT

Self-described as "Pain Management" LORN's "REMNANT" is the personal embodiment of struggle and the audible bloodletting is testament to that internal battle. LORN takes refuge in manifesting his melancholy and desolation through his art and it shows. There is an evolution in LORN's sound, a rawness and eagerness to let go and what he leave behinds with REMNANT is a musical pilgrimage of fearlessness and hope. 

"clouded, farther than the periphery, smeared electronics flood the stairwell. banished formants glow through chain links. a distant storm, an empty breeze is stuck on pause. shapes contest their own shadows in the noise. my mind is hunted, tangled and wrung out by endless phantom waves. offer them the REPLIKA."

http://www.lorn.ws

https://lorn.bandcamp.com

https://www.facebook.com/lornnn

https://www.instagram.com/lorn.ws/

DunJIN // The Tragedy, "Man"

DunJIN is an experimental project spanning ambience, drones, musique concrete, and atmospheric soundscapes. Created using layered guitars, organs, pianos, field recordings and samples, DunJIN's music is both heavily atmospheric and atmospherically heavy. DunJIN is a one man project based in the Northeast of England. 

The Tragedy, "Man"  is taken from the album The Conqueror Worm. This track is an atmospheric and eerie soundscape that takes you to a place of loss and beauty. The ambient textures evoke a sense of emptiness and almost a sense of a forewarning of what is to come. Is that tragedy? The tragedy of man? It feels like an awakening from an ending or maybe its just a different beginning. 

"...But see, amid the mimic rout, A crawling shape intrude! A blood-red thing that writhes from out, The scenic solitude! It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs, The mimes become its food, And seraphs sob at vermin fangs, In human gore imbued. 
Out—out are the lights—out all! And, over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall, Comes down with the rush of a storm,
While the angels, all pallid and wan, Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, “Man,” And its hero, the Conqueror Worm." 

From The Conqueror Worm
BY EDGAR ALLAN POE 

https://www.facebook.com/dunjin000/

https://dunjin000.bandcamp.com

https://soundcloud.com/dunjin000

Depersonalisation by Nite Fields