Featured Artefacts
Combining four EPs from the lockdown era into a double cassette double album, the students were knee deep (or deeper) in forest folk. Beautiful singing meets haunting dirge on a small boat hugging the bygone shores of Summerilse. Eerie. Eloquent. All may not be what it seems. Bang the witch drum now. Those who took delight in either “West Kennet Ascension” from their “Cave Hill” trilogy or Alison O’Donnell’s “Hark The Voice…” solo album will find welcome faces and recurring themes here. If indeed those Pagan masks are discarded before the burning finale.
https://united-bible-studies.bandcamp.com/album/roses-in-the-voltage-iv-a-roadside-emanation
Primarily recorded in an old house close to Strömstad, Sweden, that eerie ambience pervades the creaking backdrop to this solo album. Written as a lyrical stream of consciousness, it explores humanity’s relationship to nature, darkness and the absence of light by tapping into folk, drone and psychedelia. It’s an intriguing and somewhat haunting experience quite unlike what you might expect from our Danish protagonist. Kristian Anderson, who has proffered hypnotic doom drift and explosive spacey sounds via his tenure in GAIA, LUCID GRAVE and MÅNESKJOLD. Simply leave behind any preconceptions you might be carrying as you step across the threshold…
An out there interpretation…
http://lamuerteteniaunblog.blogspot.com/2023/06/naturale-meditation-over-mrket.html?m=1
Has it really been seven barren years since the “Idle Stones” LP was revealed? Really? Granted, there were a couple of stirring singles in the intervening spell such as that special split appearance with The Wandering Midget on the Pariah Child imprint. Still, a long time has passed. But the wait was not in vain, no, because this third full-length album, “Endless Garden” witnesses our Finnish trio in full bloom. The sound both organic and punchy. These songs brimming with life. Collectively, they feel like a breezy spring day with proggy folk hues shimmering in the sunlight and a gentle fragrance of melancholy lingering in the air. Distilled in old oak barrels, they have fermented long beyond humble doomed beginnings yet retained that unmistakably personal character we cherish. This is a culmination of their craft, and for me, truly irresistible at that. Drink deep the heady ambience. It will intoxicate again and again.
Vinyl Version:
https://www.nasoni-records.com/catalogue/garden-of-worm-release-endless-garden.html?formatinfo=31
Digital:
https://nasoni-records.bandcamp.com/album/endless-garden
Interview & First Video:
Second Video:
https://www.thesleepingshaman.com/streams/garden-of-worm-hearts-waste/
Album Review:
https://avenoctum.com/2022/07/18/garden-of-worm-endless-garden-pariah-child/
This is the eerie and cinematic fourth full-length album by our esteemed Italian artist. Whilst previous offerings focused on Polish and Eastern German themes, this explores an alternative milieu inspired by Hungarian visionary, Béla Tarr. Expect disconcerting dark ambient synths, krautrock stylings as well as sampled sounds, rhythms and narrations woven into a distinctly engaging body of work.
What was initially intended to be a 7” single has blossomed into a blooming brand new lockdown album from our favourite Texan psych punk space rockers! Expect another mind-melting voyage, loud and in your face, like only they know how. Six songs. Almost an hour in length. Play it over and over and over again….
Special price when all three albums are purchased together…
https://united-bible-studies.bandcamp.com/
Tony Tears returns as a revamped quintet on their eighth full-length album. Expect a daring opus vaguely akin to “Demons Crawl…” albeit elevated to a significantly higher plane. Superior compositions, personal performances and production values accentuate their collective vision. This is an exploration of Cult, Magic and Reincarnation. The epitome of Italian Dark Sound in 2021!
By far the biggest gathering for the trilogy, the quartet became a septet with Diana Collier, Sophie Cooper, and Graeme Lockett joining David Colohan, Alison O’Donnell, Dominic Cooper, Matt Leivers. This stirring album was recorded in multiple locations, including Waylands Smithy and West Kennet Long Barrow. It is pitched somewhere between the rousing folk songs of “The Ale’s What Cures Ye” and the longer meditative suites of “Cave Hill Ascension” or “Divining Movements” this journey echoes its predecessors whilst still exploring new ground within.
For the second part of the “Cave Hill” trilogy, saxophonist, Matt Leivers joins our trio of travellers, David Colohan, Alison O’Donnell and Dominic Cooper for an expansive inner journey. Without words, they speak to the elemental forces all around us. Feel the pull of the earth, moon and stars. Meditate, commune, absorb and release. Two discs. Four phases. Timeless.
It’s hard to believe that fifteen years have passed since The River released their iconic fourth demo. Back in 2005, they also made the long pilgrimage to The Chapel at Doom Shall Rise and aired these same songs from “Different Ways To Be Haunted” with heartfelt conviction. Shortly after having met them at that performance in Germany, I interviewed the band for Pariah Child #2. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship with these inventive musicians.
Looking back now, they probably played a more potent and intimate set on the Belfast leg of their UK tour with Warning and Against Nature. Similarly, some perhaps prefer the revamped versions that graced “Drawing Down The Sun” or the retelling of “Opaque” from their third demo on the second album. Whatever way you look at it though, the songs have weathered well and as much as I still deeply cherish both records it’s particularly “Different Ways…” that moves me most. That was the genesis for compiling this demo collection. Now both “Oneric Dirges In Mono” and “Different Ways…” have enjoyed a beefy remastering. Recorded the year between them, the first and unreleased take of “Alone With My Thoughts” has been included as a bonus. Do also bear in mind that “White Library” appears nowhere else in their discography and if that were still not enough, the spirit of the collective demo artwork has been fused for the special occasion. This is The River as they were. We hope you enjoy the trip down memory lane…
