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New tape out! Haunted Trails' fantastic "Ranger" C14 is shipping now.

+ interview w/ HT at Situation Skitstörd (in Swedish)

Altar of Flies CS is sold out from here, but check the distros below for remaining copies. The tape will also see a CD re-issue by the artist.

Distribution

Abgurd (RU),[...]dotsmark (JP), Freak Animal (FI), Järtecknet (SE), Lust Vessel (JP), Obscurex (FI), Release the Bats (SWE), Posh Isolation (DK), Self Abuse (USA) and Untergeschoss (FI).

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Sprach 05: Haunted Trails »Ranger« C14
La poésie de la nuit et des tombeaux #2



Haunted Trails is the artistic alias of Dan Hedlund; postal worker and Pyramido sludge guitarist from Gothenburg. Dan's solo work has previously appeared on the Utmarken compilation tape "Ett annat Göteborg" and on a great split with Blue Queen (from Bong). Just in time, roughly a year later, the craving elite appreciative of Dan's talents is served with a cassette tape sequel on Sprachlos. While a mere 14 minutes long, this mini epic collects four "heavy" tracks attesting to the increasingly accomplished music of Haunted Trails. Quality over quantity any day.

In a time when narrow minds and listening habits demand music fitted exactly to the confines of certain subterranean music genres it's certainly refreshing to hear Haunted Trails fall between the cracks. The rough ideas are easy enough to sketch: it's (drum machine aided) guitar music, it's (sort of) minimal rock music, it's not especially noisy (well, most of the time), and at one or two points it gets pretty damn sentimental. But what then? Somewhere you might hear traces of early Skullflower, but it's transformed into something profoundly less muscular and slightly more twisted. Yet the messy second track on the A side actually does sound like a take on Bower in his bluesy wall-of-guitar mode. Then there's the ballad. If you’ve got any relation to the Swedish west coast you'd probably say that it sounds like a forgotten Björn Ohlsson demo, and I could agree to that. Perfect Pripps blå music. And the concluding cover of Lee Perry's "Bird in Hand"? Well, imagine a more psychedelic sounding Danzig getting high on purple drank while trying to do a heartfelt prom tune… Most likely inferno in the form of Jeff Only's swollen vocal cords awaits you below.

A friend said that "Ranger" sounded like Lust for Youth for grownups. An apt description if the entire Cold Cave collection of Hannese's were to be replaced with beaten up Träd, Gräs och Stenar albums. But let's be honest. This has nothing to do with so called wave music – it's "wave" in the sense of Mount Everest Trio's "Waves from Albert Ayler". Take a deep breath and forget that you’ve ever heard of glossy synth reissues and lousy tapes characterised by semi-harsh-ambient textures and PE-leaning vocals that's rather death industrial in their execution. Most importantly though: forget that you actually hate contemporary lo-fi one-man progressive rock.


Two full-length tracks can be streamed at Sound Cloud


$8 ppd. world wide through paypal (40 kr i Sverige)

Sprach 04: Altar of Flies »Let New Life Rise in the Face of Death« C42
La poésie de la nuit et des tombeaux #1



The fourth tape release on Sprachlos Verlag not only introduces a new piece of work by the unrivaled Swedish master of ghoulish analogue electronics, but also presents the first part in a Sprachlos sub series investigating the shadowy aesthetics of the grave and the night. Beneath the rugged elms and the yew-tree’s shade in a desolate Mjölby churchyard, Mattias Gustafsson salutes the lost souls of Svartån, taking you on a chilling night ride to the sound of a beat up tape echo...

Fans of the two recent seven inches on Mattias’ own Hästen & Korset label ought to take note as Let New Life Rise delves further in the same direction but benefits from the longer playing time in developing the sound and the compositional structure. Although the trademark oscillator, synth and feedback work of Altar of Flies still echoes in the tracks, the tape references classic avantgarde composition as much as it embraces the seedy grit of industrial and noise music. Taking Mattias' tape loop work to new heights it presents a haunting blend of environmental and found sounds that seriously throws out a challenge to the established canon of Swedish concrète. Let new Life Rise is as far away from a »basement jam« you’ll come while still listening to music recorded in a basement!

Mentality-wise, file this next to your death wishing-loner folk-country tape collection, your Graham Lambkin and IFCO records, or alternatively sandwich it between your Vladimir Ussachevsky radio bootlegs. Add two shovels of (un-) holy soil and you’re home.

First edition of 100 copies, full colour offset printed covers.

Foxy Digitalis review

Sound sample (Side A)
Sound sample (Side B)

Sold out. Try the distros above


Sprach 02: Amph »Rapport om blinda« C24



Second edition

The southern Swedish underground hits you again!
With substantial pride we present Sprachlos Verlag #2, this time introducing Malmö duo Amph (Peter Henning + Andreas Malm) and their record collected meltdown of tape loop minimalist composition, oriental psych and industrial-minded devotion.

The two side-length pieces on Rapport om blinda sees the duo working an array of tape decks and cassette loops to create a rich tapestry of slow-moving sound, continuously marked with a caliginous, ritualistic edge. This is an ethnomusicological excavation through candle wax, West Bengal ragas and loose strips of magnetic tape; conceived and channeled along the tripartite recording axis of Västanforsgatan, Betaniaplan and Vårgatan.

Review by Andrew McIntosh at Solar Anus

Stream the whole tape at Soundcloud


$9 ppd. world wide through paypal (50 kr i Sverige)

Sprach 03: Landvarelser »Strålning B«



Landvarelser is yet another alter ego of the enigmatic Stockholmer and family man (un)known from Time Deleters, Sphynxs, Johan Rohbau and more. As the keen listener might have noticed, elements of noise music (and more importantly: the mentality of it) has always been present in his work, although its blunt forcefulness has often been restrained within the warped melodious framework characteristic to his peculiar sound. Until now that is.

For his Verlag release he was asked to let go of any constraints and unashamedly give room to the C.C.C.C. and Incapacitants worship implicit in his discography. Landvarelser thus delivers a sublime mess of a junk-infused psychedelic miasma, retaining the weird edge from the Time Deleters sound while forcefully transforming it into a feedbacking maelstrom of pulverizing capacities.

Review by Andrew McIntosh at Solar Anus

Sound sample


$9 ppd. world wide through paypal (50 kr i Sverige)