1942. Napalm was developed in a secret laboratory at Harvard University in Massachusetts.  The name is a combination of the names of two of the constituents of the gelling agent: naphthenic acid and palmitic acid. The napalm fires can create an atmosphere of greater than 20% carbon monoxide and firestorms with self-perpetuating winds of up to 110 km/h (70 m/h).

1944. The first recorded strategic use of napalm incendiary bombs occurred in an attack by the USAAF on Berlin on 6 March.

1980. United Nations declared to use napalm against civilians is a war crime, but the international law does not prohibit the use of napalm or other incendiaries against military targets.

1981. Napalm Death was founded at a little village in heart of England by Nicholas Bullen (vocals, bass) and Miles Ratlidge (drums). They were around 14 then and listen to too many punk music.

1981-87. Constant line-up changes. There were 15 members during this period. The first album was recorded in two parts in 1986 and 1987 by two different line-ups, only the drummer Mick Harris is same on both side of the „officially” first grindcore album ever. Both founders left the group, Ratlidge in ’85, Bullen in ’86 together with Justin Broadrick, because they were discontented with the direction of the band. After the B-side recordings Shane Embury who was drummer in death metal bands joined as bass player.

1989. Lee Dorian (vocal) and Bill Steer (guitar) left the band due to musical differences. Dorian rather to found one of the first doom metal bands Cathedral; Steer rather to want concentrate to his own band Carcass. They were changed by Mark Greenway (vocal) from the death metal Benediction, and a Mexican born American guitarist, Jesus Ernesto Pintado Andrade from Terrorizer. Jesus stayed until 2004.

1991. Another American guitarist in the band. Mitch Harris arrived from Righteous Pigs. About this time he had a common project with Mick Harris: Defecation. After the third album Mick Harris left Napalm Death, because it became too death metal for him. He was replaced by an American drummer Danny Herrera.

1994. Napalm Death remixed a song of a British hardcore-rap crew, Gunshot.

After and beside Napalm Death

Miles Ratledge (1981-85: drums) living in Aarhus, Denmark where he runs an Ashtanga Yoga school.

Nicholas Bullen (1981-86: vocal, bass) studied English Literature and Philosophy. In 1991 he joined Mick Harris brand new project, Scorn, left it in 1995, and gained another university degree in Computer Science. He is occupied with avant-garde electronic, ambient, experimental music, sound art and 8mm film making.

Mick Harris (1985-91: drums) while was in Napalm Death also played for Doom and Extreme Noise Terror. 1991 he has formed an electronic metal-industrial dub band Scorn with Bullen, and Broadrick also appeared in the early recordings, but today he is the sole member. In the same time of founding of Scorn he joined John Zorn and Bill Laswell’s jazzcore band Painkiller. He had also dark ambient and drum and bass projects.

Justin Broadrick (1985-86: guitar) grew up in a hippie commune. He was about 8 when he heard Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music at first. After Napalm Death he was influenced by 80s hip-hop sound and acid house. His bands: Final (power electronics, dark ambient, founded in 1982),  Godflesh (industrial metal, 1988), Techno Animal (industrial hip-hop with Kevin Martin from GOD, 1991), Jesu (post-metal, 2003), Pale Sketcher (“shoegazy dream-pop that’s almost techno”, 2010) and more

Some Shane Embury’s side-projects:
– Meethook Seed (industrial metal, 1992) with Mick Harris and Obituary members.
– Brujeria (as Hongo with ND guitarist Jesus Pintado as Cristo de Pisto) with Jello Biafra, Fear Factory and Faith No More members and more.
– Venomous Concept (grind-punk, 2004) with Danny Herrera, and Buzz Osborne (Melvins). Buzz was replaced by Dan Lilker (Anthrax, Nuclear Assault, S.O.D., Brutal Truth)

Napalm Death on euro tour with Hatebreed
Budapest  Feb 25  at Barba Negra

Cole Alexander (guitar, vocal) and Joe Bradly (drums) from the garage rock star Black Lips teamed up with Curtis Harding (Cee Lo Green‘s former back-up singer/writer) and Danny Lee Blackwell (guitar, vocal in the psych garage rock Night Beats) in order to mix southern soul and garage rock.

Night Sun debut 7″ by Burger

Black Lips Euro Tour in May-June: Prague, Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris, Barcelona, Brussels, London, Athens

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Two experimental drone metal legends the Norwegian Ulver and the American SUNNO))) have made some tracks together between 2008 and 12 in Oslo.

Terrestrials LP by Southern Lord

Aussie big city folk in electro-acoustic junk pop style, spiced with ambient garbage. Maybe the instruments and the tunes are from a dump or the Moon, where is „A place wherein is wonderfully stored / Whatever on our earth below we lose. / Collected there are all things whatsoe’er, / Lost through time, chance, or our own folly, here.”* The sound is like as if it would come straight from a trashcan. Perfect.

Orlando Furious – ‘Popular’ cassette or digital EP by Cinnamon Records

*fragment from Orlando Furioso: Canto 34/LXXIII by Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533)

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Xiu Xiu is a famous experimental band. Many times on many site I red that it’s very good and very artistic, so I tried to make friends with their music, but it didn’t work. „Interesting” – thought about the previous Nina Simone cover album, but I will never listen to it again. Thanks, but there’re the originals. I have listened to their new album many times. Electronic noise, melancholic melodies, goth style lamentation, screams and cries. That’s all and not more. Too good and too artistic for me.

Angel Guts: Red Classroom LP by Polyvinyl (US) and Bella Union (UK)

EXPERIMENTAL NOISE ROCK DANCE

JAN 30 BUDAPEST GÖDÖR

SZÁZASAÉGŐ          POZVAKOWSKI

LYUHÁSZ LYÁCINT BT feat ZADAM CONTEMPORARY DANCE COMPANY

FACEBOOK EVENT

The Italian „just another Afro-Grind band” Mombu feat. Dario Fo in Paradiribiriparadiribombidamdambum

Dario Fo (born 1926) is an Italian actor-playwright, comedian, singer, theatre director, stage designer, songwriter and recipient of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Literature.

The latest Mombu album is the Niger. „Niger’ has many meanings, first black in Latin, our mother tongue. It’s not only the color but also the moods and all that is associated with the black. Then it’s the name of a river and an African country. We like all. Mombu ties together all of these similarities. Africa represents for us what we have lost some time, a connection with the land and nature.” There is a Senegalese musician, poet and griot, Mbar Ndiaye, who sings and plays on percussion on the album. In West-Africa the grins are „repository” of the oral tradition.

„The idea was clear, mix afro, jazz, hardcore , metal and noise.”

Tomorrow Mombu plays in Budapest at RNR666 Party at Müszi
with OvO (I – minimal extreme metal) & Paranoiz (H – noise)

In Vodou, Mombu is a loa who stutters and causes heavy rains.

 Not noise, not metal, not doom, not punk, not rock and roll, there’s a little bit of all these

During the 13 years long story of OvO, the Italian duo made records and shared the stage with, among the others, KK Null, Thurston Moore, Jim O’Rourke, Zeni Geva, Lightning Bolt, Trencher, USA Is A Monster, White Mice, Zu, Murder Junkies, Jarboe, Carla Bozulich…

Their latest album

„primitivism and technology are definitely two key-words for Abisso”

Tomorrow in Budapest at RNR666 Party at Müszi
+ Mombu (I – afro jazz metal) + Paranoiz (H – noise)

A Tree In A Field is a Swiss independent record label.
Among their latest 4 releases perhaps this is the most special one

doomenfels – epilog

Very difficult to define Dominic Oppliger’s throbbing, ringing, rattling, jangling and clacking music. Doom or dark folk, but in this case the folk means that the music and the records were made by cheap equipment in a cellar. Well, consequently it’s underground doom folk. With medieval feeling for me, but maybe it’s only my fantasy (or my soul?) born feeling. Yes, fantasy and soul, this music requires those from you. Sometimes I also imagine a very little mystic Indian mood there. This music has a special sacral character, as if it would be a private religious music. The cover shows the doomenfelsian Paradise for you, where a satisfied, smiling hippo is lying on a tree’s branches, where the only sign of the humans is a towel, but maybe it’s stolen by a monkey with a big nose.

This EP reminds me the last line of Deadeye Dick by Vonnegut:

„You want to know something?
We are still in the Dark Ages.
The Dark Ages — they haven’t ended yet.”

More Trees In A Field

22: Küss Mich Party > XENO & OAKLANDER (USA)

The minimal synth duo on way back from Moscow lands in Budapest on Jan 22 at Toldi Klub. There’re no more Euro dates!

+ BULK (H – at the request of Sean McBride from X&O) + GHOST & SCHOLARS (H)

 Facebook event

23: ÚJ LÁTÁSMÓD FÚZIÓ

matinée on Jan 23 at Bem Mozi. Special guest: Csermanek Csabi . Start strictly at 20:30!

Facebook event

24: 98th RNR666 Party

OvO – minimal extreme metal from Italy

OvO in Budapest at RNR666 Party in 2007

+ MOMBU (I) – tribal jazz metal + PARANOIZ (H) – noise
on Jan 24 at Müszi.

Facebook event

OvO + Mombu play in Szeged at Jazz Kocsma on Jan 23!

OvO + Mombu Euro Dates

Yes, Tara Jane O’Neil is an experimental musician. A multi-instrumentalist with post-hardcore and indie rock background. She was in the Rodan, The Sonora Pine (with Samara Lubelski, she is known from Thurston Moore’s Chelsea Light Moving), and played with Mount Erie, Sebadoh or Jackie-O Motherfucker. An airy melody with a little ambient feeling

from her album ‘Where Shine New Lights’ by Kranky

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„The Traps were contemporaries of Coachwhips, out of Providence RI circa 2003-2004. Very very heavy. Very very simple.” – John Dwyer (Thee Oh Sees, Coachwhips)

Boom Pow Awesome Wow – out on Castle Face Records on January 28th

The Ruins was founded as a trio in 1985, but the guitarist never arrived, so started as a prog-rock drum and bass duo. During the years there were 4 bassists, the last one quit in 2004, since then the drummer, Tatsuya Yoshida is working as Ruins Alone. By the way he is also playing in the noise metal Zeni Geva, in the free jazz grind PainKiller with John Zorn and Bill Laswell, and in the prog-psych-space rock Acid Mothers Temple beside his many collaborations. One of these is the Sax Ruins with the saxophone player, flautist (and sculptor) Ryoko Ono, who participates in jazz, rock, funk, rhythm & blues and hiphop bands beside her own progressive-impro-rock band, ryorchestra.

Blimmguass LP by Skin Graft Records

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Nice indie pop music by Hospitality

Trouble LP on Merge (USA) and Fire Records (UK). I wonder whether will be there such a hit as the Friends of Friends?

A Tree In A Field is a Swiss independent record label.
In the following days you can read about their latest 4 releases.

MIR – plays alien folk, aka UFOLK music 

In the human sphere it is like a time and space noise wave
played on un/conventional rock instruments
and lots of additional electronic and analogue equipment.
The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project hadn’t so many widgets than they have,
so the sound wasn’t the real McCoy there.

The MIR was launched in 2005 under influence of the German Kosmiche Musik. The astronauts are very colourful individuals. The drummer, Daniel Buess was in the pioneer jazzcore band 16-17, is founding member of the Ensemble of Phoenix, which is specialized to contemporary music, and there are various bands and collaborations.
Papiro, the masters of strings, originally is a classical trained violinist, who plays every instrument that he can get, and had/has many projects in different styles. For example there was a mystical experience in 2003 which led him to perform music based on playing only one chord at high volume for an extended period.
MZ operates on organ, synthesizers and other electronics. He originally played guitars with different underground bands until he discovered that he was more interested in soundeffects rather than virtuosity, and developed new techniques for guitar, and started to play around with synthesizers and their modifications. When I first saw the MIR, I stared his little room size keyboard structure, and named it ‘Oh my God, what is it?’
On their Shock Your Moneymaker album two percussionists joined them. “The duo’s tabla-like playing adds a furious, repetitive element to the band’s music, an effect that becomes even more striking when Papiro brings the Indian Shehnai flute into the mix.” It’s like a Martian jungle.

The album’s producer is Alex Buess from 16-17, GOD, Phantom City, Cortex (duo with Daniel Buess) etc.