Inner Demons has been branching out, and this is on a 5” CDR, rather than on their signature 3” discs. INFELIX hails from Seattle, Washington, and describes their music as “Death Ambient, Blackened Death Industrial, Doom Drone.” Their previous work on Inner Demons, “Eternal Hymns of Entropic Darkness,” was well done, so I was interested to see what INFELIX would do with a full-length disc.

This is pretty dark stuff, but not in a cheap “add a bunch of horror samples” sort of way. The label describes the album thus: “Constructed using analog limitations, capturing improvised rawness. Thematically influenced by mental depression, existential anxiety, Cioran, and Schopenhauer. Broken mechanical beats, death ambience, distorted vocal howls, and signature INFELIX bleakness. A soundtrack to the Holocene extinction.” And dystopian is an excellent word to describe this. This is the sound of mechanical decay, of machinery that has lived on past its usefulness but continues on nonetheless despite missing a cog here and a belt there. This is not the sound of anger or sadness, but rather resignation.

Some of the standout tracks for me are "The Stagnant Nausea ov Existence,” which brings together heavy beats and unintelligible screaming vocals. Crushing would be the easiest description. "E_R_D" has some spoken word mixed in about "civilization as we know it is about to disappear from off the face of the earth" with a plodding beat and gritty synth work. And finally, "Sepulchral Occupation" features a thudding beat with lots of electronic noises. This is the scene when the robots make their move and try to take over.

Overall, this is an interesting album and would appeal to those who like it heavy, but do not want it to descend into harsh noise wall. If you like it gritty, INFELIX has you covered. This is limited to 42 copies and weighs in at around 54 minutes.

The word infelix means unhappy, unfortunate, or unlucky. This was my first time hearing the word and my introduction to this Seattle-based artist. INFELIX is the work of one J.M. Stevens, who also records under the name Lapsed. He describes the music as “Death Ambient, Blackened Death Industrial, Doom Drone.” Sounds like the band name is fitting, so let’s take a step into the darkness.

We kick it off with “Hymn I: GBK,” which is a slow moving synth composition with an arpeggiated beat and distorted vocals. “Hymn II: The Divine Abyss of Sleep” brings in a heartbeat-like beat over noisy synth washes. Everything eventually dissolves into noise and the overall feeling here is pressure and a sense of relentlessness. “Hymn III: Doomed to Devour” is a grinding, repetitive composition with distorted screaming buried in the mix.

On the next disc we start off with “Hymn IV: Hoarding Decay.” Now we're getting noisy. This is a kind of static composition reminiscent of waves crashing on a beach with heavily distorted vocals. ”Hymn V: The Anguished Light” keeps the noisiness going with screaming vocals and screeching feedback squalls. Everything moves slowly, as if covered under a thick layer of mud. “Hymn VI: Eternal Suffering” closes it off with more crunchy beats and heavy noise with some synth lines emerging from the sludge as it progresses. The slowly progressing synth line is almost hypnotic, as it repeats the theme over and over within the maelstrom.

There is a lot going on in these compositions, and there is a nice mix of noise and synth which keeps it interesting. If you like it heavy and dark, this will be right up your alley. This album is limited to 42 copies and weighs in at around 39 minutes.

In the past I’ve reviewed work that found Philip Gayle collaborating with others such as "BERP," which was a collaboration with Ben Lind, Ernesto Diaz-Infante, and Barbara Rose Lange, but I believe this is the first thing I’ve reviewed from Gayle solo. The label states that "Philip Gayle’s 'reject. defect.' is his 10th solo album and last release before becoming an American expatriate and relocating to Japan. On these 11-tracks Gayle, again expands on his own personal free improv orbit of acoustic guitars, mandolins, waterphone and who-the-hell-knows what else. A massive wallop of sound." Sounds like a good time, so let's get into it.

There’s an old joke about free jazz music that states that the way to do it is to simply throw all of your instruments down the stairs and record that. Philip Gayle has, in this disc, assembled a whole host of people to join into the cacophony and from the very start, we have a whole lot of chaos. This can be expected when the notes say that Philip Gayle plays guitars, mandolins, water phone, and other things. But it’s not all complete chaos on "Gowanus Spittoon, Part 1," "Gowanus Spittoon, Part 2," and "Third Doctor Miracle Box" we have stories of sorts with Shelly Hirsch. "Gowanus Spittoon, Part 1" is kind of like strange poetry, where on Part 2 we have a tale that revolves around the connection between belts and borscht. "Third Doctor Miracle Box" gives us a story about Brylcreem and the swimmer Esther Williams. It’s difficult to find a thread throughout because it’s all stream of consciousness, which works well with the music itself. But this is not all completely in your face cacaphony. The last three tracks are actually kind of peaceful. At almost 12 minutes, "Gotham Spleen" is the longest disc on the track and has a kind of spacey ambience to it that is almost mournful. "Müßiggang" has a minimal feel to it and at the conclusion we keep this feeling going with the brief track "Le Mal Aimé."

This is not going to be everybody’s cup of tea, and I’m certain that Gayle understands this. On the other hand, there are times where you just want to hear a whole lot of racket and this disc would certainly scratch that itch. Gayle brings in a whole lot of other guests including Lauren Connors on guitar, Michael Evans on percussion, Emilie-Anne Gendron on violin, Stephanie Griffin on viola, Charles Waters on bass clarinet, and the aforementioned Shelley Hirsch on voice. Overall, this was a fun ride and would certainly appeal to fans of improvisational music. This album weighs in at around 70 minutes.

I was unfamiliar with Allen Ravenstine when this series of four discs showed up in my mailbox, but he was a member of Pere Ubu and is also a commercial pilot. These discs together form the collection "The Tyranny of Fiction." The first of these is called "Electron Music." One would expect based on the cover art that this would be kind of a throwback to the 60s and the height of the nuclear race and you would be correct. Ravenstine has assembled a host of other people to help him with this with synthesizers, theremin, Ondes Martenot (an electronic instrument from the 1920s), prepared guitar, and mellotron.

The disc gets off to a kind of shaky start as it's kind of standard synth-based ambience with a simple melody, but then we move into "Firefly," which starts off with some synthesized strings but then turns into an interesting mix of metal, chimes, and analog synth weirdness. There is a lot of crackling and hiss, which I suspect is intended to evoke the idea of a Geiger Counter. "Going Upriver" is a spacey ambient track with lots and lots of synths and more sawtooth wave than you can shake a stick at. "110 in the Underpass" keeps the spaciness going with a nice mixture of synth washes and analog blips and crackles. The disc gets more experimental as it goes along until we reach "5@28," which is the longest track on the disk at almost 10 minutes and seems to be broken up into two movements. This is what a mad scientist's lab sounds like when he's left for the day and still left his machines running. We have theremin and feedback washes and plenty of analog bleeps and blips that would be right at home in the background of a 1950 sci-fi movie. It maintains the kind of clattering noisy ambience that gives it a retro space-age music feel until halfway through, when it takes a more whimsical turn with the theremin. This is by far the strongest track on the disc. Overall, this is an interesting beginning to the "Tyranny of Fiction" collection and leaves me interested to see what disc number two has in store. This disc weighs in at around 25 minutes.

Allen Ravenstine is best known for his work in the band Pere Ubu. He is also, like Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson, a commercial pilot. This is disc two in the "Tyranny of Fiction" series. The liner note say "90 miles to the Spanish harbor. Good night for it. You motor passed the point palms rustling the breeze shifting pulling the scent of shore out to you. Motoring off toward the thin line of the horizon toward the end of the world." This gives you a sense of the feel that Ravenstine is going for.

We open up with "Shore Leave," which is a calm piano number with water field recordings. It's pretty, but there isn't much to it other than the piano composition. "In Search of Memory" comes next with a lot of different percussion; we have bells, marimba, cabasa, and rainstick. It's peaceful and interesting, and perhaps I’m biased because I’m a percussionist, but this was to me the most enjoyable track on the disc. "Pink Dusk at the Point" and "Ninety Miles to the Spanish Harbor" are more piano compositions. They're nice, but nothing that really pushes the envelope. "Fleche D'Or (Golden Arrow)" concludes the disc with an announcer at a train station in some foreign language with field recordings of trains and the sounds of children playing that gives you a cinematic feel to it giving you the feeling of actually being somewhere. He sneaks in themes from "Ninety Miles to the Spanish Harbor" and "Shore Leave" into the piece, which gives a sense of continuity.

Overall, this is a pleasant listen and you get a sense of being somewhere. The feeling overall is sentimental and the piano playing has a sense of emotion to it that keeps it interesting. But for Chain D.L.K., this is kind of a mixed bag, as it's not quite as experimental as the first in this series ("Electron Music"). Still, one could think of this series as Ravenstine's calling card that gives a sense of his depth of musical ability. This disc weighs in at around 25 minutes.