Prepare to be marionetted through a whimsical journey of soundscapes and synths with Kirk Barley's latest creation, "Marionette," an album that's as enigmatic as it is enthralling. Released by the end of November 2023 via Odda Recordings, this opus of organic minimalism is a testament to Barley's prowess as a composer and producer.

Drawing from a melange of influences – field recordings, found sounds, instrumental improvisations, and synthetic processes – Barley masterfully crafts compositions that unfurl like intricate tapestries, revealing layers of complexity with each listen. From the gentle crackle of vinyl to the hyper-real spaces his music inhabits, "Marionette" is a sonic exploration of rural England and its Victorian charm, as hinted by the quaint garden print adorning the album cover.

Tracks like 'Seafarer' transport listeners to turbulent waters with repeated synth swells, while the title track 'Marionette' conjures eerie scenes of shadows flickering by an open fire. 'Lake of Gold' takes plucked strings on a mesmerizing journey, creating a rhythm reminiscent of raindrops cascading on a tranquil lake.

Barley's sonic palette, influenced by jazz, minimalism, and techno, showcases his meticulous attention to detail. His alter-ego, Bambooman, found acclaim on Matthew Herbert's Accidental imprint, while under the pseudonym Church Andrews, he delves into synthetic, beat-focused music. With performances at festivals like Rewire and Waking Life, and nods from luminaries like Aphex Twin, Barley's versatility knows no bounds.

"Marionette" is a limited edition gem, released on black vinyl with a risograph print by artist Oliver Pitt, ensuring a tactile and immersive experience for listeners. Whether you're a seasoned aficionado or a casual listener, Barley's "Marionette" promises to pull you into its enchanting world of sound and leave you mesmerized long after the final note fades away.

In this avant-garde musical odyssey, Wallraf delves deep into the realms of surrealism, concocting a cacophonous symphony of tapeloop-based chaos.

Hailing from the potential avant-garde mecca of Hamburg, Herr Wallraf is more than just a noise artist – he's a veritable theorist, a sonic philosopher if you will. His work delves into the repressed and uncanny sonic residues of everyday life, crafting soundtracks for the existential crises that plague our modern existence. Move over, Spotify playlists – Wallraf is here to soundtrack the creeping disaster we call life. And so, for example, it seems to hear the nightmare seizing in the form of creeping distortions, the sleep of the snoring subject in the opening track "He Bit His Tongue In His Sleep"), or the patterns of wallpaper seem to evoke nightmares that crush the observer into deviations that might recall those of the narrating subject in Gombrowicz's Cosmos (on the following track "Where Nothing Happens But The Wallpaper"), and so on, on contemporary plots where drones of sounds, increasingly suffocating and vaguely reminiscent of the corrosive noise rock of Starfish Enterprises (the prodromal project of Koen Lybaert before it mutated into Starfish pool), become protagonists of these concrete nightmares.

But don't let his academic credentials fool you – Wallraf's sonic explorations are anything but dry. His works have graced the shelves of numerous international tape labels, proving that noise knows no borders. And if that wasn't impressive enough, he's also dabbled in the live scoring of silent films, because what's better than watching a silent movie accompanied by a cacophony of industrial noise?
"The Commune of Nightmares" is more than just an album – it's a manifesto, a rallying cry against the banality of capitalist realism. Each track is a tape-looped fever dream, crafted from a hodgepodge of discarded cassettes and dusty 4-track tapes from the bowels of the late 90s. It's a musical game of cadavre exquis, played with random strangers and former versions of Wallraf himself. Because who needs sleep when you can have nightmares this avant-garde?

So, if you're ready to embark on a sonic journey that will leave you questioning the very fabric of reality, look no further than "The Commune Of Nightmares" by David Wallraf. Just be sure to buckle up – it's going to be a bumpy ride through the depths of the uncanny.

I had the chance to listen to both the debut and the recent second album by the Tuscan band Tanks and Tears, and despite their self-proclaimed claims of originality, their sound seems to cling even more like a symbiotic organism to the trunk of new wave and synth-pop from four decades ago, which undermines those aforementioned self-certifications. However, it must be said that amidst the many makeovers of those sounds, mostly made famous by Depeche Mode in the years when the aesthetic torches that characterized the early years were beginning to fade, the stylistic choices of this bunch of rascals are interesting. So, if we are to speak of originality, it would be at most a relative originality rather than an absolute one.

The almost 2-minute Intro (not exactly concise, but oh well), oscillating between post-apocalyptic tones and the harmonies infused by In The Nursery, almost made me fear that at some point a dulcimer or a medieval lyre would emerge along the lines of certain industrial neo-folk, but the title track made me breathe a sigh of relief with a breathtaking beat and melodies with a nostalgic touch where the past (or the departed) seems (or seemed) to resonate in a gloomy present so much so as to not foresee a better-defined future (the times when it was allegedly written were those in which it was fashionable to go out gagged to filter who knows what...).

Even more soaked in a tasty New Wave nostalgia sauce, the subsequent "Nightmare," released a couple of years ago but reissued after a remix and remastering, as well as "Darkside," which according to the band's words could be regarded as a model for their newly darkly catchy sound, according to a concise but fitting description always provided by the band. If you've vaguely framed the territories within which Tanks and Tears have concentrated their blitz, I won't take away the pleasure of discovering the rest of the album through rather pleasant tracks, among which, in my humble opinion, "Galaxies" and "Vampire Bite" stand out for their particularly melodic lines.

For several over-forties, the album may seem more like a historical evocation, and there is a feeling that those years are known more as an inheritance from some previous generations than from direct experience. I have to say that I don't know the age of the band members, but it would be commendable if they were millennials or slightly older, which would infuse some hope into the bleak musical landscape fueled by some younger listeners, despite the abuse of agogo (or similar artificial version of ethnic idiophone there were so popular in those years) and electronic drum equipment and synthesizers that the more seasoned listeners won't struggle to recognize, it's quite well forged!

Compared to a not too distant past, the German label Frank Mark Arts and many of its stalwarts and regular collaborators, whose artistic incontinence seems to be an existential hallmark, appear to have veered towards the relative abandonment of experimentation on electric guitars and processed, sometimes mannered, dives fully into forms completely free from patterns and migrations towards territories of improvisation and electronics, which seem to be functionalized to make one abandon listening to their own mental digressions. So, it becomes very likely that, listening to some artifact of the Frank Mark brand, one might forget about the underlying structures of the citaredic interweaving of the various tracks to let one's mind embark on abstract journeys submerged by a set of aural stimulations as in an imaginary Lily pond. And one of these listens could be the one proposed in this album, the result of the munificent collaboration that has already gifted very interested moments under the aegis of Frank Mark's label, between guitarist Roman Leykam and composer Frank Meyer. As in other previous episodes, the Steinberger owned and played by Roman remains the absolute protagonist, evoking forms that constantly change with the application of effects. Shapes that hover within clouds sometimes reassuring (as in the initial "Blind Trust" and the sci-fi streaks of "A Sphere of Time and Space") sometimes alienating (as in the refluxes of "Enduring Effect" or in the progressive saturations of "Time Out of Joint") of synths, which intersect in oscillating digressions between ambient sounds that strongly evoke glorious rides of ambient predecessors like Brian Eno or Robert Fripp and elasticized forms (because they really seem stretched like an elastic band) of certain psychedelia of 80s rock, adapted to the aesthetic translations of some new laboratory polymer. Recommended for enthusiasts of the genre.

CrAwE is the work of one Adam Colman, who hails from Norwich, UK and describes his music as "Solo Improv Dark Ambient Guitar Soundscape Dronez with occasional contributions, the sound of the impending apocalypse and fridge buzz." I had previously reviewed "TogetherWeSashayThroughVariationsOfHell" and enjoyed it, so I was interested to see how this disc compared.

"IntelligenceExplosion" kicks it all off with a nice, dark composition with a simple beat and a heavy, droning guitar line. This is hypnotic and lovely. " Death " switches gears a bit with an intro of man speaking about Asimov's 3 laws of robotics before the main composition kicks in with heavy, plodding drums and a simple guitar line, which increasingly becomes more insistent and intense. In fact, "intense" would be the best descriptor for this album. For example, "ReturnToTheDesert" features heavy, plodding drone and drums and "DroneSwarm" brings us the sounds of pounding on metal dissolving into droning guitar. For me, the best tracks were "Kargu-2," which opens with an intro about machines taking over before diving into a minor tone multilayered composition with a heavy beat and "CapitalismInvestsInDeathNotLife" which would be right at home on an old school Projekt Records release (think Lycia or Black Tape for a Blue Girl).

Overall, this album is really solid, and the closest comparison I can come up with is Lycia. If you like droning, apocalyptic music, Cr(A)wE has got you covered. If there is a criticism to be had here is that the compositions are similar in feel, but if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Unlike most Inner Demons discs, this is not a 3", but a full length album. This album weighs in at around 58 minutes. However, like most Inner Demons discs, this is limited to 42 copies, so you’ll want to get this before it is gone.