Review: Sevish – Rhythm And Xen

Sevish has been known in the microtonal music circles for some time now, mostly due to his 2010 effort “Golden Hour”. 2015 marks the return of the man, with Rhythm And Xen, a xenharmonic effort leaning heavily on drum & bass and electronic music, as well as breakbeat and ambient music. For the uninitiated, xenharmonic is “music that does not sound like 12-tone equal temperament”, according to Ivor Darreg, who coined the term.

Therefore, the music in there might be quite hard to grasp for somebody who’s only heard 12-tone equal temperament (12-TET) all their life, taking up practically … Read more

Review: Spectral Lore – Voyager

Spectral Lore is best known for their contemplative, mournful progressive black metal, like in their latest LP III, which we loved! However, they’ve unveiled a facet of themselves that I did not know: ambient/electronic music. Those two music genres seem pretty antipodal, but, in the case of Spectral Lore, they serve the same purpose: create an atmosphere; immerse the listener into their world. The only difference is the approach.

What they usually did with guitars, bass, drums, and vocals, they now do only with synthesizers, and the result is marvellous. It’s no surprise, because they were already incredibly talented … Read more

Review: ZIA – Drum’N’Space

[Click here to stream the album]

ZIA is, for the most part, a one-woman microtonal pop band, with Elaine Walker behind the wheel. Releasing albums since 1998 under the monicker ZIA, and experimenting since the very beginning with xenharmonic tunings, Drum’N’Space is the first all-microtonal album. On top of it all, this album is said to be only part of an epic space rock opera that is in the works! If that doesn’t scratch your weird music itch…

Drum’N’Space is written in multiple tunings. The first song is in 17 notes per octave (or EDO, for equal divisions of the … Read more

Review: Becca Stevens Band – Perfect Animal

Becca Stevens‘ crowdfunding campaing was probably the most infuriating one I’ve ever participated in. Their new album, Perfect Animal was set on being released in fall of 2014, and was crowd-funded to cover the expenses of recording, mixing and mastering (which was already made at that point), and to fund the promotion, album art, and printing vinyl and CD. I am really fine with this kind of crowdfunding: the album’s [almost] ready for delivery, and even if the goal was not met, it would still get released, not like other shitty campaigns.

And then we were left in … Read more

Review: Pryapisme – Futurologie EP

If you didn’t already know our blatant bias towards French experimental metal band Pryapisme, now is the time to witness it. The reason is that the band’s newest work, Futurologie EP, has just come out, and, as you would expect from a totally biased reviewer, it’s fucking incredibly awesome! Now let’s dig a little deeper to see why, and try to convert you into our Church of Pryapismology.

First of all the band has made it clear from the very beginning that they would be including a lot of humour into their instrumental mayhem. With an imagery based … Read more