Avian 黑胶唱片和CD

Review: Earlier this year Buchla synth expert and sometime Nine Inch Nails band member Alessandro Cortini delivered one of the most surprising and rewarding long players of 2014 in Sonno for Dominick Fernow's Hospital Productions. The Italian pulls off another surprise move with a new project called Skarn on Shifted's Avian label, swerving from the majestic textures of Sonno into droning techno experimentation. Some three tracks long, Revolver finds Cortini toying with droning tones with the title cut a superb exercise in slowly building up a wall of oppressive, brutalist wave of noise over minimal beats. With material due on Panzerkreuz too, it's clear Cortini is currently enjoying an unpredictable chapter in a long and illustrious recording career.

Review: Since its inception, Shifted's Avian imprint has gone from being a murderous, straight-laced techno imprint to what has now become a source for some of the best and most multi-faceted industrial music from the European quarters. We're not sure of Verge's true identity; it could either be one of the label's existing artists, the mysterious Shifted himself, or even an artist like Blawan riding incognito (don't quote us on that, though!) Solitary and crest-fallen, this magnetic collection of tunes feed off one another with utter ease and simplicity. They're not merely a selection of sound experiments but rather a unitary cloud of sonics which leave the listener with a powerful mental image. The feeling of dusk, the water dropping off the leaves, the cold breeze of Autumn. This is a blinding foray into the darkest corners of contemporary industrial experimentation.