EIGHTH TOWERS' THE ERASERHEAD. MUSIC INSPIRED BY THE FILM OF DAVID LYNCH

David Lynch's Eraserhead is an extraordinary, dark and surreal venture, which has been dissected and ruminated upon since its advent in 1977. 

Eighth Tower Records has commissioned a fantastic, industrial tribute to the movie, entitled The Eraserhead. Music Inspired by the Film of David Lynch, compiled by various, avant-garde artists who touch upon the creation's themes of isolation, loneliness and vexing, parental responsibility (in this case, for one of the most unusual babies ever conceived). 

The tracks are as follows, with artist listed on the left and titles on the right:

1) Grey Frequency ... Lapelle's Factory

2) Adi Newton ... Contra Ciel II

3) Oubys ... Meta Video Dub

4) Richard Begin ... the factory makes erasers

5) Sonologyst ... Silent Dinner 

6) Kabra ... Behind the scenes

7) Mario Lino Stacata ... Man in the planet

8) Mark Hjorthoy ... The Lady's Radiator

9) Wahn ... Labyrinth Man

10) Macrogramma ... Thermal Subconscious

11) Bruno Dorella ... Radiator Folies

12) 400 Lonely Things ... Dear Hearse

13) Nikos Sotirelis ... Metamorphoses

The results of this special curation touch everything one could imagine and desire for an Eraserhead salute, taking the movie's textures to new Lynch-ian heights, as well as into their dank, factory-grimed bowels.  

The Eraserhead. Music Inspired by the Film of David Lynch is, without question, an ideal accompaniment for one's melancholic heart, and it can (and should) be preordered on CD and download at 

https://unexplainedsoundsgroup.bandcamp.com/album/the-eraserhead-music-inspired-by-the-film-of-david-lynch

LAMASTU PER CHAIGIDEL & NERATERRAE: FORBIDDEN TRACKS/FORBIDDEN TREKS

The trailblazing Alessio Antoni has shared with me a cavernous-climate triumph, produced by Cyclic Law and promoted under the Chaigidel & Neraterrae banner (i.e., composed by Antoni, behind his guise, Neraterrae, teamed with Mattia Giovanni's Accinni's acclaimed Chaigidel). The experimental outcome is labeled Lamastu. 

Like Michael Ferentino's recent masterpiece of the same name, Chaigidel & Neraterrae's Lamastu covers the undercurrent crevasses of the feral, birthing goddess, creating audio scenarios shaken from her allegorical wings. We're talking the venturesome landscapes of Jules Verne, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Ruth Rose: tribal patches of the untamed, each ferocious and eclectic.

"Da'at" starts the album as an unadulterated anthem for any chosen Middle-earth or maybe more so, Hollow Earth. It thunders like Kong, to be exact, its hissing-horned ascent accompanying a beast who pushes through trees to grab a maiden fair or if need be, destroy any aggressor who should get in his way. With this stated, "Da'at" is ominous, threatening and as such, an apt intro for the rest of Lamastu's discomposing queue. 

"A'Arab Zaraq" counters the colossal base by being imminent within its saber-swiped spot. It's sandy and reedy in aura, etching forbidden paths toward weird, occultist abodes: an audio nightmare that needn't happen within one's mind, but could be found in any crack-house neighborhood, at any misdirected turn. 

"Entrails of Souls", however, returns to monstrous exotica. Through implication, it's Temple of Doom or Fuad Ramses during a virginal Blood Feast. Either way, its gutsy construction reimagines "A'Arab Zaraq'"s terrestrial cage, galloping over an innards-spilt stretch that must be heard to be (a-hem) disbelieved.  

To instill that disbelief into religious terms, "Mac Benach" welcomes a Gaelic-guru exaltation. Its mean moans and swooning wisps are Svengali-like and highlander transcendental, its chords invoking Stonehenge turbulence, summoned by a sick sorcerer's incantations.   

"Purson" is more (person)able, perhaps. That is, it alludes to something human, something common, but reverted to its bestial roots. This track is Moreau-esque, creating shuffling, hybrid noises that only bipedal freaks could make, in a voyage of conundrum from which no pedestrian could dare escape. 

Speaking of bestial aftermaths, "Satariel" goes down another tawdry path. This one's tailored to ribbit and does so in reference to Ray Milland and Sam Elliot near a frog-ridden swamp: nature striking back, as it were, rising small and hitting hard. This one sounds eerier than the previous mentioned, for it slithers right in the unassuming pit of one's backyard. 

Perhaps my favorite Lamastu track is "Eloi Eloi Lama Sabacatni", which grazes the austerity of "Satariel" and "Purson", but here we have wee, pale people corralled by meaty Morlocks as drums and chimes mock. The composition is timeworn yet futuristic and like the other tracks, occupies frenzied corridors, with steampunked hints that are specialized for the dim, dank and hungry. 

"Malkuth" ends the epic, presenting a kingdom of terror from the inside out. "Malkuth" is about possession (and therefore, invasion) via pain-inducing demons like Lamastu: those shrieking, sadistic deities that mess one up and wrack one's soul, that turn one from ecstasy to anguish through trails left best untraveled and maybe, just maybe, unheard. 

But Chaigidel & Neraterrae's bewitching Lamastu must be traveled. It must be heard, if only to fortify one's mental mettle; so prick up one's ears and strengthen one's heart. Lamastu calls at 

https://www.cycliclaw.com/music/chaigidel-neraterrae-lamashtu-cd-181st-cycle?fbclid=IwAR0ahz7zroK7nU3R0y5M2_JvEGc81MjPv1AkXeBDoJn5V3m1pw21fAQtmDo 

IANJU: SERENITY BY IANQU AS JUNGLER

 

Adarcah Ianqu, performing as Boo Jungler, gives listeners one of his smoothest, most contemplative rides in what has become a long line of industrial travels. This latest is called Ianju. 

I absorbed Jungler's creation while feeling melancholic, a pensive period in which sleepless seconds ticked by, and though slumber still evaded me, his content proved placating, romanticizing my sorrow to the point that a ghostly prowess entered my mind. 

The opening track, "ecstasy or poetry [no sailor matter]", is a floating-at-sea advent, a place where one's soul wanders in hopes of calming down, where the water merges with tears to distill their dismal impact. The sound is slow, soft, soothing and welcoming. (I lost myself in this one, and as much as it mirrored my dread, it chipped away the sharp edges.) 

In the case of "The block the beer the loft and red flocks", Jungler jostles one's inner wild child, transporting one to the ground floor of  departmental awareness. The track creates a fairyland scraping that rubs beyond one's wounds to unearth the things that once mattered, its aura as ecstatic and sublime as the initial sample.

With "the red snow fox [take two]", the vibration presses deeper into tempting hopes and dreams. It's an audio reset, where ideas and ideals are prepped and fluffed, numbing the mind, as well as the spine, with the promise of sequelized adventure.

"Happy epilepsy and psychosis" is a reminder of what one must (re)avert and (re)gain. Its entrenching notes invoke a fleeting time of innocence lost, though not innocence of the languid kind, but the sort that inspired one to combat Captain Hook. It's conflicting and shameless at heart, reckless and redeeming in its at-all-costs, escapist reach. 

The final track, "the serenity of the small hour listeners", salutes those who've mastered life's rough roads. Its streamline flow is an intoxicating award for having traveled one's own quiet path in and out of desperation.

Jungler's sojourn is an Ianqu masterpiece: one worthy of repeat listens and cleansings.

Coddle Ianju's audio therapy at

https://adarcah.bandcamp.com/album/ianju?fbclid=IwAR2u8M5Ce_T6Byn2NXc5_ZB1AEDvcXu-LxOC2q5u-MMVai2GQqPYUWMizk0

EAMON THE DESTROYER: SMALL, BLUE CAR RE-MADE/RE-MODELLED

The emoting Eamon the Destroyer has returned, and accompanying the crafty artist is an album remix of his mood-cranked Small, Blue Car, delivered by the outside-the-box Bearsuit Records. 

The Re-made/Re-modelled edition holds the same intent, but it's shaken in such a way to bounce upon one another in a unique, sequelized succession. 

That means we get another queue of sleek, Tom Waits groans and electro-pop, dystopic shoves, more crashing and burning screeches and heated halts, and above all, more fortune through accident. 

Yeah, Re-made/Re-modelled sure does live up to its name, adding more gas, more traction to each track.

For example, "Silver Shadow", as recharged through the Yopeneko and Ryota Mikami reinterpretations, presses harder (the former whirring like a broken robot and the second like a pinball machine that's lost its springs), as does Moth Poet's slippery "Slow Motion Fade", a companion piece (one might now argue) which blurs a long, breezy streak before flopping toward sedation.

The prickly hymn, "My Drive" (with either the Michael Valentine West, Hanali or the House of Tapes remixes) and the sugary-vocalized "Nothing Like Anything" (thanks to the Senji Niban and Like This Parade remixes) are still dreamy in their ominous steaminess, but also wetter around the edges, whereas Harold Nono's "The Tide to Steal Away" revision hits a new, cloudy intersection, before rolling back in a track that aims for Heaven through Hell, or perhaps a sequestered pit where Clive Barker meets Henry Ford. 

The fly-buzzed "Avalanche", with its Bigflower and Ememe resurrections, is just as either should sound, creating a duality of thunderous collapses to snuff one's racing senses; but "Humanity is Coming" (as served through John 3:16 and Stricknice) plays like a solemn, severed faith that lands louder than any avalanche, squeezing calamitous normalcy from ambitious flesh.

"Tomahawk Den", as filtered through Societe Cantine, severs the brain, unleashing the gamut of unfettered emotions. To accompany this road-kill lobotomy, Schizo Addict's "Uledaru" rattles in a series of attractive collisions, mounting a mashup of discordance with the high sublime, like some poor sap's religion (or lack thereof) that's been redefined. 

Andrei Rikichi's re-stirred "The Conjuring Stop" now caps the metal carnage, even if it comes much earlier in the audio game: a wee premonition, if one will, that permits recommencement on a road that appears common even as it subsides: the evident, whole point of this recharged compilation.  

For a ride in Eamon the Destroyer's renewed, blue abyss, insert one's key at

https://bearsuitrecords.bandcamp.com/album/a-small-blue-car-re-made-re-modelled

IANQU'S ASSUMPTIONS: INEBRIATED TRACKS

Adarcah Ianqu's Assumptions is Ray Milland's Lost Weekend and Dick Van Dyke's Morning After rolled into one. It's an album that assumes suffering, its consequential addictions and the desperate means to snap from an opiate's shackles. 

It starts with a long "second" drilling into one's head, a simulated salvation that only shoves one deeper into Hell's heart. It also turns one's "second" chance into an album all unto itself, exploring the sort of erratic toot that one wishes to end, but gets nurtured all the same, buzzing along with and without refrain. 

But "drunk {the first bottle}" is the real kicker. It guzzles down and sloshes the cerebral throat, blurring the vision and wobbling the knees. Its sounds are cool and defiant (a nod to junkie pride), but as it progresses, it becomes an unceasing, diabolical transmission, whizzing like a mad scientist's machinery, creating something big and bad.

With "drunk {the last drop}", the intoxication has struck its satanic summit. It sounds like a wistful whirlybird sputtering ever onward, but going nowhere. It mocks. It taunts. And for better or worse, it lives. 

"Try" is the feature-length reply, filled with tingles and chills. In Ianqu's notes, the need to untangle, to clear one's doubts becomes the obsessive pursuit. It feels like going to church, even though one is forever damned, but even so, one must try--try and try again!

Perhaps "tomorrow" will be better. Perhaps, one will see the light, even become anointed by it, cleansed and free of one's poisonous prison. A robotic melody creaks through this track, even more epic than those that preceded it, cranking like a vampire's fingers, daring not to melt, to fade away, cutting into the rays, demanding unmitigated hope. Yes, tomorrow will be brighter. Tomorrow one will be cured. It's all one can presume or else what's the point?  

Ianqu's Assumptions lays it all on the line, never apologizing, never resigning, and because of it, it's the best treatment plan one can embrace, so if one is snared by the Devil's mix, partake the moody maestro's audio allusion as quick as one can: 

https://adarcahiancu.bandcamp.com/album/assumptions?fbclid=IwAR30GoO4X1azoWi2-cr_X1SRNElydO_jzSQaL6iCaenlU-PrT3viomQBBDc