Black Channels

If you venture out on a dark Halloween nite such as tonite in Peckham, you will die. As you bunch up your damp coat to keep the icy fingers of the winter from invading your fragile body, eyes will be watching from the shadows slashed across dilapidated buildings and spiking across the shimmering frosted death-grey pavement. These eyes belong to beings who have designs for your fate, a bloody macabre ending to your grubby little life. Unseen but subliminally felt, these beings shift through the miasma of cold rain that falls around you, teasing you with fleeting glimpses of fear, just enough to quicken your step in a feeble attempt to reach your destination. But reach it you will not, for as you turn the corner on a well trodden path back to the cradling warmth of your home, a piercing feeling of dread will stickily coil up your spine, reverberating through your ears filling your mouth with acid and sharpening your vision. That is when your killer will reveal itself, abstract at first, its wet bubbly skin gleaming satin-like in the moonlight, its shape shadowed over it in the shimmer of the rain like an insidious aura. Appendages drag through the sodden grass as a sound akin to an intake of breath through shredded lungs slurs towards you. Your scream is quickly cut dead by a heavy dullness pushing through your chest and out the other side, lifting you off of your feet as you slip away into the silent black.

Claudio Simonetti – “Demoni” (Original Demo Version, 1985)

If you venture out on a dark Halloween nite such as tonite in New York, you will die. The harsh lights of the subway will not keep you safe as your stalker is already upon you, reflected in the dusty window across from where you nervously perch. A shock of fear is stolen away as the carriage doors fly open at your stop. Lost in a moments thought of delirium you realise that the platform you have alighted on is empty save for yourself, yourself and an unutterable empty feeling that you can sense behind you, though there is no such manifestation when you spin around intrepidly. Now you walk slightly swifter, the emptiness looming above you as your mind spasms through all manner of dark voids and malevolent alcoves in a wall of confusion. Just as the horror behind you begins to drag you backwards in a giddying somersault of imagined morbidity your assailant reveals himself, stood frozen in black and chrome inches in front of you. He hands you a flyer for a new cinema opening down town and resolutely ignores your trembling questions. As you walk away an invisible smile slices across his stony features, because although you are escaping him for now, before the nite is over you will have had your sanity stripped away from you in a blur of blood, terror and screams, and unbeknownst to you, your second meeting will seal your horrific fate.

Conrad Schnitzler, the painted automaton of colossal noise terror, we don’t mean like Cradle Of Filth silly screaming and pneumatic drums in front of a burning church, we mean the kind of evil that bleeds forth from buzzsaw synths, hammering drum sequencers, the shrill screech from the rusted gates of Heaven after Nietzsche killed God, and that spark of shear demonic delight that can only come from Berlin, deep underground in a vacuum of black and white noir visions, the place that birthed such baroque avant-garde dalliances like Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel, as if someone had found a dazzling chunk of cold onyx and it had bestowed upon them the power to transport the Hell that exists on the supernatural plains of Mars to our fair Earth only to then turn it into a recording studio.

If a film were to be made of Schnitzler’s creative life it would surely be banned for fear of inducing riots in the streets, causing mothers to eat their newborn babies and strong, sound-of-mind men to commit violent spontaneous acts upon each other. But, oh, the soundtrack:

Conrad Schnitzler – Auf Dem Schwarzen Kanal (Dompteur Mooner Edit

This warped gem of undulating antimatter and inverted synth rape can be sourced from the “Rare Tracks 1979 – 1982 Re-Edited” 12″ from Dompteur Mooner.

And here you have a taster of the soundtrack for your afterlife, here you have Satan’s own codeine blues. To celebrate the tenebrous launch of Spectral Empire’s The Minotaur / Innerfearence EP, released in this day when darkness rules supreme by most excellent Thisisnotanexit, the cloaked figures behind such astonishing odyssey of synthetic darkness have put together a mixtape which throbs terrifying like the twisted twitching brethren of Optimo’s walkabout, yes, like that bloated worm that lurks in the attic, evil eyes shining phosphorescent in the night. A swarm of bats spreads from a coruscating Gothic spire in la Hague, Liars explore the hidden recesses of their subconsciousness and, in the darkest corner of this damp cellar find the voodoo revenant of Armando staring back at them with mad eyes, synthetic lines precipitate from a gash in your side spilling like a bloody constellation over the wet pavement of an Italian piazza, an old farmer gazes over the golden fields of corn as the sun sets, and beholds aghast a line of masked figures staring at him silent, this is electronic undead body music to party til the sun comes up and we are all destroyed by its purifying rays. Enjoy till then, this night is carnage.

Spectral Empire – Zombiesrobotsfreakswizardstechnosci-fi Vol. 1

This was included in a bonus CD with Dr. John Dee’s translation of the Necronomicon. You can find the tracklist at the back. Doh, you Lovecraft geeks say, that edition was published in 1586, how could it have been published with a bonus CD, CDs hadn’t even been invented. Portals, I reply, children of the night, don’t you know about portals.

Also-  go to the forever ruling Viva Italians for an awesome screwed edits mix by Mike & Johnny, it’s a Simonetti thing yeah.

And don’t forget, 13 Monsters is on tomorrow night. Fucked up in the best possible way.