*OK, so the last one is from the black edition, but the insert is the same for both.

http://www.musiquemachine.com/reviews/reviews_template.php?id=2469

Various Artists – Heavy Focus [Phage Tapes/Small Doses - 2010]

This two disc compilation was put together to fund & celebrate Heavy Focus III- the noise/ extreme experimental music festival that’s going on over this coming weekend(23rd & 24th of April) in Minneapolis. The two discs offer-up mainly excusive tracks from 22 of the artists performing at fest and there’s a lot of sonic & noise bound ground covered here we go from: Harsh Noise Wall, to Junk metal noise, through to churning psychedelic power electronics, onto aggressive & jarring electro beat scapes, through to sour & blacked dark drone matter, onto seared & ear burning harsh noise making & beyond.

The two discs come in a small light brown card folder with two colour screen printed artwork, which is simply but highly effective. Disc one is entitled heavy & deals more with the extreme & more noise bound side of the fest with names like: Werewolf Jerusalem, Grain Belt, Climax Denial, Being,Wilt ect. And disc two is entitled focus and this deals again with mainly fairly extreme stuff but there’s more atmospheric & caustic ambient feel to quite a few tracks here & we have featured on this disc tracks from the likes of Envenomist, Teeth Collection, Cock ESP,Locrain ect. Each discs tracks are fairly short & concise(for Noise based music) and fall between the seven minute & one minute mark a piece, with each disc having a nice & flowing enjoyable arc to it & being consistent, rewarding & worthwhile through-out.

A few of my present favouritefrom disc one come the form of: the opening metal pummelling, rapid drum attack & playful yet violent junk improv meets vocal bay & bark of Squid Fist’s ‘Hall Mall’. The ripping & violently billowing storm tone dwelling of Being’s ‘Take off’. Grain Belt’s ‘Devil’s Whip’ with it’s brooding & stuck bass throbbing industrial openings that crack-out into highly nasty yet controlled junk metal lined noise attack. The swirling ,dank and oppressive dark synth drone hypnotics of Wilts ‘Bodies falling Away’ which keeps hinting it might sudden go all ouy noise bound, but never does & instead stays very brooding & trance inducing.

Onto disc two and my current favourites here are: The ritual gong, eerier wind blown electronics & twanging eastern strings ominous spaceiness of Juhyo’s ‘The Buired Session’. Onto the machete hacking & obscenely muffled power electronics sour chopping of Cock Esp’s ‘ Sliced Cuntz’. through to the furnace roaring & billowing thick smoked blackness of Infamy’s ‘Close The gates’ and it’s short sharp HNW attack that ends nicely with malevolent & swirling dark ambient ritual tone edginess.

Really there’s much to enjoy & investigate where ever you drop down on these two discs as the quality & the sequencing of the tracks is top notch & highly effective through-out. Certainly one of the better extreme & experimental music compilations your likely to come across this year & with this line-up the festival is going to be truly breath taking…so if your in the area of Minneapolis this weekend I say the Heavy Focus fest is a must & if your too far way & can’t make it pick up this double disc set and see what you missed out on!.

Rating: 5 out of 5

Roger Batty

http://pitchfork.com/features/columns/7790-the-out-door-2/2/

http://stereogum.com/340382/locrian-the-columnless-arcade/mp3s/

Locrian’s Territories ends with the torrentially uplifting “The Columnless Arcade.” The Chicago duo of André Foisy and Terence Hannum still create plenty of dark, crumbling, murky washes and spacious Prurient-on-Loren Mazzacane Connors noisescapes, but since their last collection Drenched Lands (and a handful of shorter 2009 releases), they’ve added a rock layer to the bleak ambiance. The assistance comes via a well-curated cast of Chicago-area metal/extreme music regulars:

On the aforementioned closer and 11-minute mid-collection epic “Procession of Ancestral Brutalism,” the guys are joined by Nachtmystium’s Black Judd on guitars (plus vocals on “Procession”), Yakuza’s Bruce Lamont on saxophone, and Velnias‘ Andrew Scherer on drums. (Elsewhere, Bloodyminded’s Mark Solotroff shreds his vocal cords and affixes dense synth drone.) Last July I booked Locrian on an intentionally weirdo bill with three different kinds of grindcore groups (Anal Cunt, Fuck The Facts, and Compremesis) and a more straightforward progressive Opeth-style crew (Gwynbleidd). At time the time, Foisy and Hannum’s electric, spacious sheets of synthesized/looped noise and dense smoke machines created a gorgeous, religious-seeming swerve from the rest of the bill. A year later they’d still be the odd-men out, but they’d also be creating blackened anthems that’d give just about anyone a run for their blast beats. You get a bit of both worlds in “The Columnless Arcade.”

Territories is out now on LP via At War with False Noise, Basses Frequences, Bloodlust!, and Small Doses. (It takes a nation.) It’ll be out on CD in August. More details on that soon. In the meantime, make room on your year-end lists.

http://www.blastitude.com/28/index2.htm

LOCRIAN Drenched Lands CD (AT WAR WITH FALSE NOISE / SMALL DOSES) For Locrian’s “first full-length studio recording of all new material,” the ingredients may remain the same (metal, noise, drone, power electronics), but they are presented in their most confident and seamless blend yet. This duo can actually play music on their instruments, and use this ability to create extended compositions. Therefore, there’s no need to hide behind drone and distortion, allowing these tactics to be used as weapons, and only when necessary. The result is a mostly quiet album that is still more brutal than a lot of today’s amps-on-11 extreme music yawnfests.

LOCRIAN Territories (AT WAR WITH FALSE NOISE / BASSES FREQUENCIES / BLOODLUST! / SMALL DOSES) Showing a continued intent to develop and reinvent themselves, Locrian augment their duo lineup with various key guests from Chicago’s metal, experimental, and experimental/metal scenes. The result is as solid and satisfying as all of Locrian’s releases have been, but given several fresh twists, which we hear right off the bat on “Inverted Ruins,” featuring Mark Solotroff of Bloodyminded doing a killer job singing bleak lyrics and Andrew Scherer of Velnias playing kit drums, I believe a first for Locrian. Other temporary members include Bruce Lamont of Yakuza on vocals and saxophone, and perhaps most notably Blake Judd of Nachtmystium on guitars and vocals. All four of these ringers appear throughout the album, in different combinations, but not on every track… though only one track (”Antediluvian Territory”) is by the original Locrian duo lineup, there is also only one track (”Procession of Ancestral Brutalism”) that features all six musicians. Not surprisingly, it explodes out of the middle of the album as the most raging and traditionally black metal sounding track on here, though I might prefer the nearly 10-minute Solotroff/Locrian trio cut “Ring Road.”

Scott McKeating interviews the boys here…

http://www.yellowgreenred.com/?p=1499

Locrian Territories LP (At War With False Noise / Basses Frequencies / BloodLust! / Small Doses)

If it takes four record labels to put out one album, so be it, so long as it’s as nicely produced as Locrian’s Territories. Continuing in the spirit of cooperation, this one features a number of guest players, including none other than BLOODYMINDED’s Mark Solotroff on vocals and synthesizer, the type of collaboration any Chicago-based freak would envy. Speaking of synths, Territories has a lot of them, practically dominating the landscape where metallic guitars once reigned. There are still some fierce black metal guitar riffs here, which make for a nice balance, but my money’s on the synth-drone mood pieces; there might be just a little too much china cymbal for my tastes on the thrashing metal tracks. Their metalwork here is better than I am recalling, it’s just that when a track is credited to Solotroff’s synth and vocals, a bass guitar and another synthesizer, how can anything top that?