New releases last four weeks: Industrial/Noise

Review: Broken English Club is the alias of techno veteran Oliver Ho and here he explores his signature industrial wave and post-punk sound with unflinching intensity as he lands on Dekmantel's UFO Series with Songs Of Love And Decay. It is a raw, brooding album dedicated to the late Juan Mendez aka Silent Servant with tracks like 'Crawling' and 'Death Cult' echoing his tribal techno roots. 'England Heretic' meanwhile channels eerie synthwave and Giallo vibes and 'Vessel Of Skin' delves into distortion-laced post-punk that contrasts with the stark futurism of 'Pacific Island Kill.' Ho blends cinematic textures with club energy throughout so makes for a dark, emotionally charged tribute that pushes beyond typical boundaries and is sure to resonate in the club.

Review: English experimental group, Current 93, was founded in 1982 by David Tibet and set out to explore industrial music with abrasive tape loops, droning noises and distorted vocals. As Real As ScareCrows is a haunting new chapter in Tibet's arcane vision, and it was released alongside four other LPs to mark recent Channellings in London and Hastings. Ritualistic and esoteric, the album feels like a spectral transmission or "ScareCrow scaring crows away after Menstrual Night," as Tibet describes it. It's a deeply unsettling and bleakly poetic work that is unmistakably C93 in its mood and mystique. Each copy includes a signed risograph print of Tibet's painting, making it as much an art object as a musical release. A beautifully eerie offering from one of Britain's most enduring and enigmatic cult acts.

Review: As we hapless reviewers make our way through these five new experimental LPs by Current 93, we cannot help but feel increasing torment and terror at the figures portrayed on the front covers of each record: hand-painted by David Tibet himself (the artist has increasingly indulged such formal solo trend-buckings through his own Cashen's Gap imprint in recent years) they appear like sleep paralytic demons or the ghosts of cancelled English folk yore. All the records are apparently ritually connected to a recent string of live appearances between London and Hastings, and Tibet's penchant for demonologic peerage titles such as GreenSleeve Drakon and Gnostic Sketch - blurring a sense of self-referentiality and occult otherworldliness - leave us bewildered and slack-jawed.

Review: Dawn Yawns is one of five new 12" records released at the same time, documenting one or two - if not more - furtive live sets performed by Current 93 (David Tibet) between London and Hastings in early 2025. On this quintet of new transmissions, dream and daylight are heard in grisly merger, on the back of an umbral awakening from a polar slumber, where the blood moon never sets, known to C93 fans only as the "Menstrual Night". Be warned, however, these eerie recordings have a sure capacity to mark the soul in unprecedented ways.

Review: Moony Tunes is one of five new 12" LPs recently unveiled by David Tibet aka. Current 93, mad witch doctor of the post-80s industrial continuum. An ever-morphing project, Current 93 always implies motifs of apocalyptic folk, dream logic, and esoteric revelations, and this volume, subtitled Preparing To Sleep In Menstrual Night, feels like a whispered dispatch from the edge of sleep and symbol. True to C93's nature, it resists easy description, lullabying eerily through hoveringly attentive drones and spellcasting vocals. Each pressing includes a riso print of Tibet's painting Moony Toons, hand-signed in pencil, thus hand-stamping an album best received as a kind of ritual, and shaped by the occult aurae of Tibet's performances in London and Hastings earlier this year.

Review: Another of five LPs by Current 93 (David Tibet) through his own audio-esoterica label Cashen's Gap, this brilliant yellow and green hued LP nods to the universally recognised colour of earth-ground wire, and comes in the wake of a recent two part set of "channellings" (live performances) in both London and Hastings. As ever, Tibet steers the dream ship through surreal poetics and creaking soundscapes, and offers us a risograph print of his artwork, titled MayBe Skeletal RainBow, or perhaps Building The RainBow PainBow Preparing For Menstrual Night (we're not sure).

Review: Rhode Island post-metal avant-garde duo The Body have made a name for themselves due to their caustic maelstrom of harsh, brutalist experimentalism as well as their prolific output and collaborative nature, releasing collab albums with the likes of Full Of Hell, Thou, Uniform, and most recently, Dis Fig. Their latest endeavour sees the pair link up with another duo of musical extremity, Toronto, Canada's recently reformed industrial two-piece Intensive Care. Was I Good Enough? has been on the cards since the artists first began making plans as far back as 2018, trading, warping and ruining mutual sessions with layers of loops, distortion, samples and even dubs, constantly striving to find the ideal haunting balance between both of their sonically hideous, oppressive worlds. For all of our ears' sakes, they just might have succeeded.

Review: American guitarist, singer, and lead songwriter for legendary rockers The Velvet Underground, Lou Reed also had a distinguished solo career, including Metal Machine Music, which remains one of the most radical and controversial albums ever released. First issued in 1975, its wall of feedback and distortion defied all musical convention, splitting critics and fans but earning cult status for its uncompromising vision. Now celebrating its 50th anniversary, this landmark work returns for Record Store Day 2025, having once been described by celebrated critic Lester Bangs as "the greatest record ever made in the history of the human eardrum," and who are we to argue.

Review: According to the blurb we have for Doomed Utility, Alex Wang is a firm believer that if a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around, it still makes a massive noise. "Sound existed before there were human ears to hear it," we're told. Not to mention the fact we have now surrounded ourselves with machines and digital tools that immerse us in tones we don't necessarily derive pleasure from. Industrial, frenetic, electronic, post-club, deconstructed and, in moments, straddling that genius-lunatic border. Doomed Utility makes no apologies for its most intense moments, and panders not to our inherent desire to understand and make sense. These are beats, basslines, distorted walls of tormented chaos and abstract moments don't lend themselves to meaning making. Welcome to the future. It's confusing.