Friends, I am pleased to announce a new Instinct Primal release. Here is my contribution to the ‘re:cyrcle series’ on the Attenuation Circuit label. In this set of releases artists deconstruct, recycle, re-use and rebuild previous sounds and make them their own. The original source sounds for this project came from EMERGE. “Two other artists have already recycled the track, NYM and PBK, and now I am the third…” The release is free (pay as you like). I hope you enjoy.
Brand new Instinct Primal track entitled “Time is a fundamental dimension”. The track is a tribute to Juan Antonio Nieto, who passed away last february 27th. It was published on the compilation: A Sonorous Spirit by Tree Trunk label.
“Two K” is a result of Jan Kruml’s and Gintas Kraptavičius’ recomposition exchange. They never met in person, but sonically it’s like if they knew each other for decades.
Jan worked with the historically first and last track that Gintas published. Gintas reworked tracks from Jan’s (Instinct Primal) live set from January 2021.
“Environmental Framework” is an album of absolutely free experimental recompositions, that let the author’s inner voices speak.
CONTAGIOUS ORGASM | INSTINCT PRIMAL: GIANT FISH (2014)
Reviewed format: CD Album on sssm
Catalogue number: sssm-113
Welcome
to my new review series Unstable Matter. This series will focus on
releases I ordered through online mail-order, chance discovery (by
random choice) as well as music I bought at concerts. The focus is on
discovering, reviewing and sharing underground music in particular the
Noise, Industrial and more extreme forms of experimental music as well
as related Sound Collage and Field Recordings embedded works through the
old-school way of finding it “in the wild” on CD, tape or special
format and I’ll also obviously talk a bit about the artwork and
presentation of every release in these reviews. This can also be a nice
way to discover gems that might not be on Bandcamp or the major indie
shops so let’s now dig into the first release in this new series. I
found this album through the NORTHERN HERITAGE FREAK ANIMAL RECORDS
WEBSTORE on which I’ve previously found an excellent archival Industrial
compilation, in this case the CD was only labeled with the artists who
recorded the album, CONTAGIOUS ORGASM and INSTINCT PRIMAL. No other info
other than that this is a collaboration album was given so it was
definitely an interesting “mystery release” I found. When I received the
CD in the mail after ordering I was surprised in a very positive way.
First of all, I already knew a bit about Japanese artist / group
CONTAGIOUS ORGASM though I haven’t listened to his music before, but
INSTINCT PRIMAL was still an unknown artist to me. Second of all, the
artwork and packaging of this album on CD is very nice and gives off a
more organic, nature themed atmosphere than the Industrial rawness I was
expecting but this definitely increased my feelings of being intrigued
as to what the music would be like. Now, before the review of this
music, I’ll talk a bit about the artwork. The pictures of this will be
up on Instagram (@polarvisions). As you can see, the album cover depicts
the GIANT FISH from the title as hovering through a very dry red
mountain landscape. It’s a monochrome image blended in with the nature
which hints a bit at a connection between the landscape and the animals.
Underneath the fish the artist names are added in quite rounded
uppercase type in yellow, giving a nice balance in colours in the image.
The fish definitely adds a calm feeling to the image and suggestion of
ambience of the music but the red / orange colour of the image also
gives it an intense kind of urgency as it hints to not expect calming
Ambient really. This cover artwork is by Sasha Sakir and Prokop Vocadlo.
I couldn’t find a lot of information on the artists but it’s a great
image definitely. On the spine of this cardboard gatefold sleeve the CD
is housed in you can find the artist names and album title, again in
uppercase yellow type to the left and label catalogue number to the far
right. The cover artwork extends to the spine and also forms a
background for it. On the back, on a brownish colour matching the front
cover we can find the tracklist in normal writing style, again in yellow
type, the album credits underneath and the label catalogue number,
label name and Facebook link and the sssm label logo to the right. On
the inside of the gatefold you can find another great artwork picture
which continues with the theme from the cover, featuring a different
photo of the dry mountain landscape as the background of a collage of
blue fish all following each other in a gorgeous cloud like shape that
leads to them swimming into what looks like abstracted white shapes of
doors, great artwork again which is spread over the two inside panels of
the gatefold. The CD is housed in a die-cut on the right panel and as
the cardboard is quite thick, it’s also not too tight fitting, so
there’s less risk that you’ll scratch the CD when you take it out. The
face of the CD itself features more minimal artwork than the sleeve with
the artist names and title of the album in a different serif uppercase
typeface at the top. The artist names in black and album title in which
on black bar. Several of the fish on the inside gatefold are seen
swimming on the CD and on the bottom right you’ll find the label logo,
catalogue number and CD logo. All these elements are separate on the
face and there’s no additional background colour or image.
Now,
let’s move to the music on GIANT FISH. As I mentioned, before I knew
which album I was about to receive by mail and what kind of music is on
this CD I did already have some kind of idea about the style of at least
one of the artists on this album, CONTAGIOUS ORGASM, with him being
quite a well known and prolific figure in Industrial and related harsher
experimental music styles, but what struck me as a pleasant surprise on
this album was that the music on GIANT FISH, while not being purely
Industrial is in fact so varied in style and atmosphere. First track
Machines Of War starts of the album as a quite energetic piece of music
which blends various field recordings of vocals with clattering
Industrial Noise, strong low bass pulsations and some great mechanical
rhythms. These low bass pulsations, or rather, thump bass in general is a
recurring element on this album, with even the more atmospheric pieces
often still featuring some quite thick bass frequencies but these are
fortunately pretty well balanced with the other elements of the music.
Machines Of War forms a great progressive introduction to the sound of
this album which blends elements of Industrial and Noise with field
recordings and sound collages as well as Dark Ambient atmospheres.
Machines Of War with its build up of intensifying bass pulsations mixed
with detailed clattering, noise, feedback and eerie resonances is also
the noisiest piece on the album but the following pieces do still often
carry quite a dark energy within them. This first track does definitely
showcase the great interplay between CONTAGIOUS ORGASM and INSTINCT
PRIMAL, both artists are active in Industrial, Noise and (Dark) Ambient
music, blending various textures and sound sources together and there is
a seamless blends of elements in the album which makes the music feel
truly coherent as one experience. The next track Dismal State Of Mind is
a short piece that blends an excellent choppy rhythmic sound collage of
crowd noises, shocked gasps from a girl and bell sounds with dark
mysterious highly resonant shifting metallic drones and a mixture of
interference sounds, stutters and synth noises. A truly otherworldly
ambience of sonic textures is created in this piece which feels both
disturbing and intriguing as the eerie evolution of the sounds and sonic
elements floating only raises questions in your imagination about
what’s happening and you’re also starting to connect the eerie metallic
sounds to the mental state of the girl. A great piece again and I love
how the duo of artists can create such immersive, heavily abstract but
also very captivating soundscapes that vary from track to track but
still retain a coherent sense of mystery and at times dark clouds of
uncertainty as the music sometimes suggest a hidden threat we don’t yet
know about. Then in Solitude we are brought into a spooky ambience
consisting of a dark repeating hollow filtered melodic pattern
accompanied by muffled Industrial clangs mixed with clouds of circling
feedback loops. Field recordings of walking in snow also feature that
add another creepy element to this piece which emits a very nice horror
film soundtrack like ambience of walking outside at night in the snow
during the winter season, not knowing what danger might be lurking
outside. But you keep on walking and walking, still with scared feelings
about what might happen. The music has a lovely classic Industrial
sound to it with its layering of concrete sounds, feedback and in the
first half also what sounds like a string drone. Very nice music and a
lovely evolution throughout the piece. In next track Back World an
awesomely “moving” metallic filtered drone ambience forms the background
of a string of various metallic sonic events many of the sounds being
quite percussive and moving from texture to texture. Ranging from short
choppy rhythmic noise bits to full on filtered metallic synth effects to
clanging mechanical processes the piece combines a continuous hissy
drone with a lot of exciting sound manipulation which triggers your
imagination to draw pictures of all these exciting new sonics but the
background drone still suggests a bleak kind of Industrial ambience even
with the at times quirky nature of the metallic sounds. The piece is
playful but there’s still a mysterious darkness underneath the fun. Time
Axis Distorted is a shorter piece with more of a Techno feel to it. The
piece features a mysterious but also quite playful hissy noise synth
melody over low slightly bell like bass synth tones that are backed by a
slow rhythm of punchy Industrial Techno kicks and hollow Industrial
pulsations, water like resonances and some quirky glitchy synth effects.
It’s a more light hearted piece after the darkness in some of the
previous tracks and showcases the at times more Techno like direction
the music on GIANT FISH moves in. Time Axis Distorted feels like the
soundtrack to a satirical science fiction film with its mixture of eerie
alien textures with some more positive spirited elements in the form of
the synth melodies and drum rhythm. Very nice again. Cleft then blends
various intensely rhythmic and quite metallic sound elements together
into a piece that finds a very curious balance between many field
recordings from sounds varying from people outside, glass, drilling and
much more with a pretty funky breakbeat groove and quite uplifting PWM
synth drones. It’s a quite hearted piece again that blends richly
texture concrete sounds with an Industrial edge and Triphop like
atmospheric groove. A very good piece again and the minimalist
background melody adds a quirky sense of “comfort” to the piece, like
the music even with its sometimes harsh Industrial edges asks us to calm
down and relax, very fun piece, great performances by the artists
again. Practice And Enjoy brings us back into the darkness again and
this time we arrive in a thunderstorm, rain is pouring down on our heads
as we head, towards our doom? Indeed the music is quite mysterious in
this piece, being more minimal in its composition and based around
continuous drones, shifting resonances and the aforementioned
thunderstorm sounds the feature in most of the track. Bass pulsations
feature quite heavily especially in this track and the eerie melodic
patterns combined with ghostly metallic sounds make you feel cold even
if the actual temperature is not like that. I love the depth of the
layers and very urgent feeling this music radiates, the all
encapsulating hazy clouds of sound really feel genuinely dangerous and
as the piece progresses it feels like a document of a particularly tense
event you experience in a thunderstorm, very thrilling and captivating.
On the next piece No One Is Safe II we have an equally tense kind of
ambience, though without the rain featuring even more field recordings
and classic style delayed clangs forming sweet Industrial rhythms. This
piece feels particularly cinematic with the many door creaking and
speaking sounds giving of a strong feeling of unease like exploring an
abandoned building that’s partially collapsed and discovering dark
secrets about it still being in used, with its residents hiding in
corners but coming to you soon for sure. The richly texture two note
melodic drone pattern also adds a very nice doom filled touch to the
piece, excellent interplay between CONTAGIOUS ORGAM and INSTINCT PRIMAL,
I can’t praise their music enough on this album, it’s excellent. Final
track, Giant Fish, the title track of this album begins with an eerie
mass of highly resonant metallic filtered textured and rhythmic phone
dial tone patterns but in the second half a 4/4 Industrial Techno beat
kicks in. Indeed, quite unexpected even for this album, but it really
works and the strangely upbeat combination of eerie ambience with jumpy
almost rave like Industrial Techno beat ends the album with a very nice
blast. While it’s not as layered as the other pieces the evolution in
textures and exciting Techno rhythms make this an excellent closer of an
equally awesome album.
GIANT FISH by CONTAGIOUS ORGASM | INSTINCT
PRIMAL is an awesome album of heavily immersive experimental music
which seamlessly blends soundscape elements with Industrial music and
the collaboration between both artists created a very good collection of
music on the album. This is an amazing discovery of an album which
variety, captivating performances and awesome sonic crafting make this a
highly recommended listen, an album to relisten many times as well. If
you like Industrial, Noise, soundscapes or Industrial Techno or all
combined you’ll definitely love this album but also if you don’t know
these styles yet, this album is a great introduction to the field as
well as a highly immersive journey of quality underground music. Highly
recommended, go check this out.
I ordered this CD Album from the NORTHERN HERITAGE FREAK ANIMAL RECORDS WEBSTORE, unfortunately at time of writing it is down for maintenance. You can however pick up the CD Album from sssm too, through their Bandcamp page here:
uni.Sol XVI project was mixed and just published. Material was recorded on Winter Solstice 22.12.2019 from 08 – 10PM. Feel free to listen, download and share.
here are my first field recordings from 2020. They were recorded right after midnight in the first minutes of new year for special uni.Sol_threshold 2020 project.
The task was: While recording – make a wish! Listen here:
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