Belette Malade
Could use some help here, how can I stop this from repeating on and on on my stereo and in my head?
Favorite track: Under the Wormwood Star.
Der Ohlsen
"If you're looking for an occult Drone experience somewhere between Coil, Hypnopazuzu, Swans and a detuned Anna von Hausswolff with a pinch of Black Metal-ish atmosphere this isn't exactly that, but it surely comes close. An album which requires attention and a certain mood, but knows how to reward both."
SirGayBeard
I'm so glad I picked up the cassette version of this album I'll be able to run this viciously hypnotizing tape dead.
Favorite track: Under the Wormwood Star.
Raise the Dead is a collaborative album from Connecticut drone duo Tongue Depressor and Maine-born, Philadelphia-based songwriter Jakob Battick, coming October 26th on cassette and digital via the Czech label Stoned to Death.
Steeped in ritualistic necromanticisms and a spectral, sprawling sense of composition, the album is a lush and alien trip through some of the furthest reaches of songcraft and 'the song.' The 38 minute LP's two side-long pieces are mergers of the haunted vestiges of 20th century songwriting and contemporary avant-garde exploration, deeply informed and inspired by the liberating fearlessness of extreme metal. Tongue Depressor's Zach Rowden and Henry Birdsey utilize all manner of microtonal and just intonation instrumentation to frame Battick's deceptively gentle baritone and occult-fixated lyrics within a sonic landscape that shimmers at the nocturnal end of the spectrum of light as it creaks and groans under its own nightmarish weight. These songs are at once potentially disturbing and richly romantic, combining elements both familiar and phantasmic to synthesize something truly difficult to place within the current American underground.
Raise the Dead follows Tongue Depressor's recent string of LPs on labels as diverse as XKatedral, Working Man Lay Down, and Redscroll Records, and also acts as the bigger, darker, and stranger sequel to Jakob's 2021 self-released cult folk LP Rabbit's Moon.
Czech luminary Jakub Ďuraško's Stoned to Death imprint has been making an international name for itself by releasing gems from artists of all stripes and persuasions, beyond all stylistic and geographic boundaries. As a label that can call itself home simultaneously to blasphemous Czech black metal ragers, esoteric modular drone duos, and kosmiche ambient folk outsiders, Stoned to Death was an obvious and happy home for Raise the Dead's idiosyncratic spirit of grotesque adventure.
These are songs of horrific affirmation, of recombinance, of the possibility of a thousand other lifetimes just beyond the veil…
Recorded March to June 2021 in Oakland, CA + New Haven, CT
Engineered + Mixed by Henry Birdsey
Mastered by James Plotkin
Photography + Layout by Jakob Battick
supported by 14 fans who also own “Raise the Dead”
Long-form trance-y rhythmic jams, with a fun shambling edge, sounding like a cross between music from Africa's Sahel region crossed with a Tom Waits instrumental... Jascha Narveson
Danish avant-garde crew SVIN explore far-out new lands on their latest, the sound of a galaxy folding in on itself in cut time. Bandcamp New & Notable Jul 16, 2022
With all proceeds going to benefit Ukraine, the latest from Angela Winter is a beautifully haunting work that centers the human voice. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 16, 2022
The North Carolina singer and multi-instrumentalist translates the "story of lightness" into nine experimental ambient spirituals. Bandcamp New & Notable Sep 8, 2021
supported by 12 fans who also own “Raise the Dead”
Sonic Youth is one of those bands where you easily run out of superlatives to describe what they created. This could've easily come off as a cynical cash-grab by a band that had broken up 11 years prior to the release of this record, but that's not what this is. Some of my favourite Sonic Youth instrumentals. sentient meat