Jul 192017
 

 

I had a great weekend, thanks for asking. I devoted it to visits by out-of-town family and a two-day picnic, and NCS took a distant back seat, which is why there was no weekend round-up and no SHADES OF BLACK column. We avoided going dark only though the valiant efforts of Andy Synn and DGR.

Predictably, I now have a big list of new songs and videos to share around, too many for one post. We’ll start with offerings from five bands, and I’ll have at least one and probably two more round-ups this week. Might get one more done today, but maybe not. A meteor strike could decimate my home, the chime on a dryer could alert me that it’s time to get the clothes out, I might feel like chasing a passing car, the lorises might commence war games again. The crystal ball is cloudy.

KERES

The new Keres EP (released July 12th) is an exception to the (admittedly porous) rule in our site’s title, but it’s a slam-dunk exception: Justin Helvete’s voice is a truly remarkable instrument. And everything else about these three songs is also remarkable. Continue reading »

Apr 062017
 

 

Clear your head. Don’t attempt to focus on other activities for about 7 minutes. Do some exercises to get your neck loose. When the time comes to listen, close your eyes.

These are a few words of advice from your fiends friends here at NCS about how to prepare for the song we’re premiering in this post. The track is called “A befalazott” and it comes from Homo Maleficus, the new album by the one-man Hungarian band Nagaarum. The album will be released on May 3 by GrimmDistribution (Belarus) and NGC Productions (Hungary).

Nagaarum has been a prolific creator — this is his 14th album since 2011 — but the music has changed over time, moving from mostly ambient, electronic music to the hard-to-describe intersection of styles reflected on this new song. The shorthand description Nagaarum now uses is “Hungarian eclectic dark music”, which is accurate but not precise. Continue reading »