It's the end of the year as we know it!

Hey it's that time of the year when there is no more time!

While I realize that I've been slacking around with the blog (for several years by this point) I  did manage to do a few things in the outside world this year. I wrote a scientific paper and did a lecture on it. I have it in PDF so I might share it (it's nothing spectacular and honestly not that interesting) but for now I don't think I will due to it having my actual name and surname on it. Maybe when I get more comfortable with sharing my personal details on the internet. I also got a job in designing electrical systems for industrial projects. It's demanding, nihilistic but ultimately interesting to do (for now at least) so the past year I've been busy improving my knowledge in engineering. And that's pretty much what I've been doing in those post-less months this year.

Aside from personal things I've decided to kickstart Terror Noise Audio again as my interest in noise and experimental music has resurfaced on a large scale recently. I've been slowly accumulating interesting albums which I intend to share as much as I can on there and hopefully expand the blog into areas of free jazz, free improv and musique concrete. For now I only did like five releases but I have at least 20 prepared to upload and post. This also extends to FT; I've been busy writing and discovering interesting jazz and highlife albums which I intend to post as soon as I get a bit more time to just sit down, listen to it and write things out. My upload speeds are still from the stone age so I can't just sit down and upload 20 albums in an hour.

I've been thinking about making posts more frequent and less reliant on my personal thoughts/writings. I intend to make these short, brief posts of recent (several) discoveries. Those posts will be interwoven with my usual more thought out posts.

That's all the news I have.

Happy new year everybody and have a good time celebrating it!

And as usual, here's a list of albums from 2016 that I've liked:

Metal:

Altarage - NIHL
Arkhtinn - II
Ash Borer - The Irrepassable Gate
Battle Dagorath - I - Dark Dragons Of The Cosmos
Behexen - The Poisonous Path
Bekëth Nexëhmü - De Glömdas Ursjälar
Blood Incantation - Starspawn
Caveman Cult - Savage War Is Destiny
Celestial Grave - Burial Ground Trance
Cénotaphe - La Larve Exulte
Chthe'ilist - Le Dernier Crépuscule
Circle of Salt & Taggarik - Split
Conan - Revengeance
Cult Of Fire - Life, Sex & Death
Dark Funeral - Where Shadows Forever Reign
Darkthrone - Arctic Thunder
Death Fortress - Deathless March Of The Unyielding
Deathspell Omega - The Synarchy of Molten Bones
Deströyer 666 - Wildfire
Drudkh / Grift - Betrayed By The Sun / Hägringar
Ellende - Todbringer
Endlichkeit - Teile I-XIII
Furia - Księżyc milczy luty
Gevurah - Hallelujah!
Gorguts - Pleiades' Dust
Howls Of Ebb - Cursus Impasse: The Pendlomic Vows
Irkallian Oracle - Apollyon
Krypts - Remnants of Expansion
Mare Cognitum - Luminiferous Aether
Mare Cognitum / Aureole - Resonance: Crimson Void
Martröð - Transmutation of Wounds
Naðra - Allir Vegir Til Glötunar
Red Fang - Only Ghosts
Ritual Death - Ritual Death
Saor - Guardians
Schattenvald - Der Winterkönig
Skáphe - Skáphe²
Sol Sistere - Unfading Incorporeal Vacuum
Sun Worship - Pale Dawn
Throane - Derrière-nous, la lumière
Time Lurker - I
True Black Dawn - Come the Colorless Dawn
UADA - Devoid of Light
Ulcerate - Shrines of Paralysis
Urzeit - Anmoksha
Ustalost - The Spoor of Vipers
Vektor - Terminal Redux
Vintrü - Libération
Void Omnia - Dying Light
Waldgeflüster - Ruinen
Zealotry - The Last Witness
Zhrine - Unortheta
Ересь - Жестокосердие

Other:

Airbag - Disconnected
Alcest - Kodama
Aluk Todolo - Voix
American Football - American Football (LP2)
Bat For Lashes - The Bride
Ben Wendel - What We Bring
clipping. - Wriggle EP
Dinosaur Jr. - Give A Glimpse Of What Yer Not
Frankie Cosmos - Next Thing
Genocide Organ - Obituary Of The Americas
Henri Texier - Sky Dancers
Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramids - We Be All Afrikans
Jack DeJohnette - In Movement
Japanese Breakfast - Psychopomp
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Skeleton Tree
Noname - Telefone
Rome - The Hyperion Machine
Shabaka And The Ancestors - Wisdom of Elders
Swans - The Glowing Man
Vangelis - Rosetta
Venetian Snares - Traditional Synthesizer Music
Weekend Nachos - Apology

John Coltrane - Impressions

Listening to jazz giants is like coming back home from a long trip. Sure you've been places and had fun but there's no place like home. Every now and then it's good go come back to what you know for sure is good material. With that said this record was among the first that popped in my mind when I decided to dedicate some time to good old John.

This album finely sits in that balance Coltrane had for a few years when the jazz he played was free enough but also melodic enough to hit that sweet spot of organized chaos. Along with his usual sidemen he is joined with Eric Dolphy on the two long tracks who plays the bass clarinet rather routinely on here. The core of the album are two tracks recorded live where he played with aforementioned Dolphy and each "side" of the album also have a bit of padding with two filler tracks. Fillers serve their purpose, perhaps to offer a bit of a rest from the very energetic live performances. The live tracks are fantastic although I wish Dolphy had much more freedom on there, he sounds very tame compared to how he sounds on his own solo albums.

All in all you won't be disappointed with this album if you're into Coltrane's middle period.

Get it.

Warloghe - Womb Of Pestilence

Keeping on with the kvlt theme here's another relatively hidden gem. Warloghe was/is a Finnish black metal band which has been going for a while now quietly putting out material from the late 90s up till now.

They have two albums and a couple of side stuff but this, their second album, is probably the pinnacle of their craft. They're a kvlt band thru and thru featuring grimy production, tremolos and raspy vocals but it's done so right you can't really imagine it sounding any different. They keep the flame brightly lit with this album. There's nothing really left to say about it; if you like raw 2nd wave black metal then you should definitely grab this one and if you're a false don't entry~

Get it here.

Annthennath - States Of Liberating Departure

A month or so ago Deathspell Omega announced a new album. This was great news to me because I was wholly convinced that the band is done. While I was anxiously waiting for the new album I spent some time revisiting their older and much less popular (or meaningful?) part of their discography. I'm referring to their pre-SMRC era of old school traditional black metal. Checking out all those splits they did and first two albums made me more interested in what the hell Shaxul was doing all of these years rather than to just revisit old DsO material. So I ended up getting a bunch of his bands and went on an adventure.

Reading his interviews and listening to bands on his label roster or bands where he played you'll quickly understand that he is old school and unchanging to the bone. He and people like him are the spirit of the underground scene. Sadly and I think inevitably they will eventually become ghosts as I feel at the moment that there will be no people to replace them.

In any case Annthennath is the best thing he has ever done in my opinion. This is what DsO would have sounded a few years down the line if Shaxul was in charge of things. Musically this albums is as traditional as it gets but it's not marred down by shit production or bad songwriting. The album is an expansive and interesting exploration of what can be done in the frame of black metal alone. There are plenty of riffs but they are not fun in a conventional way as they offer only darkness and cold. Another interesting thing about this album is that it actually has a very audible and well played bass. And by that I don't mean that you can hear it every now and then in the breakdown it's actually present at all times, complementing the guitars. This is both good and bad as it can sometimes detract from the overall sound (or maybe I'm just not used to hear bass that loud in black metal). All of this joined with Shaxul's unique vocal sound makes States Of Liberating Departure an underappreciated gem of finely played black metal.

Get it here.