Hospital Productions Us Vinyl & CDs

Review: Hospital Productions is a non-stop operation and following this year's long-players from Alessandro Cortini, Ninos Du Brasil and Ron Morelli, Vatican Shadow's latest swoop is this ambient album produced with Function. The seven-track LP was recorded between Berlin and New York, and it's described as best suited for after-hours home listening, but whether you really want to listen to this after a big night is up to you. Indeed "A Year Has Passed" and "A Year Has Gone By" are downbeat and melancholic, whereas other tracks lean more towards industrial ambient, similar to fellow Hospital artist Lussuria's work. "The Nemesis Flower" is a darker highlight while "Red Opium" and "Bejewelled Body" is where the house and techno beats lie.

Review: The mighty Hospital Records is reissuing Green Graves, a classic album from Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement from back in 2016. It's an album that, as the title suggests, soundtracks a trip through the jungle with steamy pads and humid atmospheres, distant animal sounds and deep tribal rhythms. It's full of ambient and experimental mystery and intrigue, with suspenseful pads over barely-there skeletal drums that snake through the undergrowth on cuts like 'Red Protection Against Black Magic'. 'Nocturnal Anatomy' is darker and more dubby, hitting at the arrival of humans and their machines who come to destroy the forest.

Review: Controversial but nonetheless technically accomplished producer Vatican Shadow is divisive for more reasons than his now-well-discussed choice of collaborative partners. There's always something pretty menacing and unsettling about his output, steeped in uneasy atmospheres, taking us into the twisted side of leftfield electronic music, then sticking titles like Ghosts of Chechnya on his albums.
Nevertheless, there's light in all that pitch black, aurally at least. Listening to tracks like 'Peace Rage', and, despite the name, it's impossible not to pick up on the surprisingly hopeful harmonies, set within an IDM framework. Elsewhere, dubby techno is flirted with (if that's an appropriate word for these sounds) on 'Encryption Nets', while 'Snipers As A Breed Tend To Be Suspicious' accentuates tense atmosphere in a way that most studio pros can only hope for.

Review:  Dominick Fernow's Vatican Shadow project returns with something like his 16th single release. The dark ambient and industrial master shows his skills again here with 'Jordanian Descent (Sharia Law)' kicking off. It its a 20+minute opus that takes up one whole side of vinyl and has shuffling, ever evolving mechanical rhythms and droning sounds, automated machines and dust and grime all making for an intriguing listen. On the flipside the same tune comes as a Guantanamo Military Commisions version and it is more intense but also more stripped back. It's darkly alluring and wholly brilliant.