Baikal - Baikal (2007)

One of the best releases of 2007. Two heavy jams by what is essentially Bardo Pond.

"Baikal is a new burner from Bardo Pond brothers John & Michael Gibbons along with fellow Bardo Pond members Clint Takeda and Jason Kourkonis. This time they ventured down the route of heavy free-improvisation and a Last Exit style hard rock approach coupled with a hard psych bend. With two tracks each weighing in at over 30 minutes in length it’s clear that Baikal is a deep voyage underseas with yet another Bardo Pond sideproject featuring Bardo brothers John & Michael Gibbons as your tour guide."

pal de babies

Aethenor - Deep in the Ocean Sunk the Lamp of Light

"Aethenor is the trio of Stephen O’Malley (or SOMA) on guitar, contact mic and electronics, Daniel O’Sullivan on piano and percussion and Vincent De Roguin processing, mixing and playing organ. All three are credited with “room,” whatever that means, and I have an idea. On “Deep in Ocean Sunk the Lamp of Light” the trio mines a brooding amalgam of cycling, industrial clatter and improvised/composed pieces, all seamlessly edited together to invoke a dark, meditative deep listening experience. Squealing hinges, droning guitars, rustling chains and bells banging up against concrete and wood add up to a room-saturating nightmare at high volumes that takes cues from sources as disparate as ancient Greek fantasy and modern minimal drone masters like Mirror and irr.app.(ext).

Across four untitled tracks the trio explores a subliminal sound sculpture reminiscent of the grim crawl of Nurse With Wound’s pulsing masterpiece, “Salt Marie Celeste,” (as evinced on the incredible opener “Untitled”—all tracks here are untitled), AMM and Organum’s organic-metallic free-falls, among others. What gets me though is the way the trio combines beautiful minimal drones taken from the early Krautrock drone handbook with striking found sounds (a cawing crow is employed brilliantly on the phenomenal second track) and unorthodox live percussion. And it’s all coated in a surreal glitchy haze to help throw even the most mesmerizing passages at least a little off-balance.

As for the album title, it’s a line from Homer’s “The Iliad,” which is hardly off the beaten path for O’Malley and his typically ancient concerns. The reading of many an epic sea-faring push into the oceanic abyss would likely benefit from an aural injection of this dark mood soup. “Deep in Ocean Sunk the Lamp of Light” is one of the finest experimental albums of 2006." - Lee Jackson

Sink

Boris - Akuma No Ute (2003)

Boris' Akuma no Uta not only continues on from the heavy rocking of Heavy Rocks but also incorporates some of the other genres the band has played with before. It sort of sets the stage for 2005's Pink. The cover is a tribute to Nick Drake' Bryter Layter.

Easily identifiable by its rather clever, Nick Drake/Bryter Layter-inspired cover art, Boris' Akuma No Uta and label mates in many ways offers a back-to-front cross-section of the Japanese trio's entire career, in all of its many stylistic varieties. Both the nine-minute, molten lava introduction and the closing title track delve in ambient drone tendencies (reminiscent of Earth and label mates Sunn 0)))), while a pair of comparatively brief submissions -- "Ibitsu" and "Furi" -- offer succinct, rudely distorted acid garage psych (think the Stooges, only cruder and heavier, or Spine of God-era Monster Magnet, but more energetic). As for the mid-album piece de resistance, "Naki Kyoku," it takes all of 12 minutes to carry out a gradual crescendo: from its mildly psychedelic, oddly "Freebird"-esque beginnings, through an extended mid-section offsetting equal parts guitar soloing and vocal chanting with fluid bass twiddling over ambient space rock sound effects, before finally arriving at a suitably shuddering sonic earthquake with its feedback-laced finale that's fit to level Tokyo. Standing out negatively amid all of this is the loose and unfocused, mid-paced jam number "Ano Onna No Onryou," which comes off both overlong and uninspired by comparison. Still, five winners out of six attempts is nothing to wrinkle your nose at, making Akuma No Uta almost guaranteed to please both longtime Boris aficionados and newcomers looking to sample a good summary of their talents.
-- Eduardo Rivadavia, allmusic

what happens when the numbers run out nicolas cage?

Sunn O))) - Black One

I'm not even going to try to explain this one since this does it perfectly:

"For the last decade, the duo of Stephen O'Malley and Greg Anderson have been taking the doom side of heavy metal so far from those three legendary chords from Black Sabbath's immortal "Black Sabbath", it feels like a completely separate dimension, as if you expect to slip into a black hole for eternity. The blackest of the black, the bleakest of the bleak, Sunn O))) combine high art with brutal power like no other, composing music that dares listeners to sit through it all, locking them into sludgy grooves so slow, so hypnotic, it will either have them repulsed, enthralled, or better yet, both. It's easy to shrug off Sunn O))) as nothing but pure, arbitrary noise, but the more you delve into their work, the more you begin to sense a structure to the music that's as lethargic as it is dreary. It's mood music for the worst of moods.

Like the voice of the undead, it's pure cinema, a blend of shock rock, black metal, and ambient music, and the overall effect is devastating."

Báthory Erzsébet

Tarantula Hawk - Untitled (2002)

Spaced out prog with elements of doom/drone, psychedelic rock, post rock, and Neurosis/Isis-esque metal. It's on Neurot, what else do you need to know? 

"Instrumental super heavy ritual music, bass-heavy majestic murk with grinding prog rock keyboards and intense, energizing drumming, spacey stretches of ominous gloom... it's ambitious, intense, creepy, and ultimately "prog" in the best sense of the word."

Get it

Boris - Absolutego (Special Low Frequency Version)

The first album from Japanese Dronedozers Boris, feedbacking their way through skulls all over the earth. Single-mindedly roaming around the frequencies that make Hades crack a smile. This is the Special Low Frequency Version designed to shake your bowels and trigger uncontrollable episodes of flatulence. Pure joy.

Evildrone

Badgerlore - We Are All Hopeful Farmers, We Are All Scared Rabbits (2007)

"Badgerlore is the collective effort of Rob Fisk (ex-Deerhoof, 7 Year Rabbit Cycle), Ben Chasny (Six Organs of Admittance, Comets on Fire), Tom Carter (Charalambides) and Pete Swanson (Yellow Swans), Glenn Donaldson (of Jewelled Antler renown) and Liz Harris (of San Francisco’s Grouper). Each of these distinguished artists comes from a very different background, however in Badgerlore all their skills are focused into a very beautiful collection of sound."

Rumplestilskin's a good man

Nurse With Wound - She And Me Fall Together In Free Death (2003)

NWW is Steven Stapleton.

cuntly placed