Tuesday, May 31, 2011

The websites back...

After many months the website is finally back up! Please let me know if there's anything that should fixed with it.

www.solynieverecords.com

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Monument - I review...

The Monument tape got a (i think) awesome review from Serious Fucking Business in france. One of the few things i could pick out was that he compared it to Wrnlrd and Wintherr meeting in a dream...sweeet.

"Surprenante découverte que j'ai faite via l'apocamix de l'incroyable lapin anti-gravité et que je m'empresse de partager ici. Il s'agit en fait d'une obscure release cassette (épuisée) en provenance du label Sol Y Nieve. Cinquante minutes d'un ambient black qu'on jurerait presque être une affection du dieu Paysage d'Hiver: On y retrouve l'esthétique lowfi propre à la production du suisse, son minimalisme tendance mystique et recueilli, les motifs guitares/batterie simples et itératifs (oui, le mot est à la mode je crois), soutenus ou entrecoupés de litanies grognées, de chuchotements mystérieux ou de choeurs sacrés qui m'ont immédiatement rappeler un certain Kristall & Isa, ainsi qu'au Malefaesance de l'Acephale dans une certaine mesure. J'ose la comparaison car il s'agit bien d'une oeuvre à la personnalité suffisamment marquée, toute à la fois contemplative, irréelle, religieuse et hypnotique -sur ce point la qualité dronesque de certains morceaux et ces quelques arpèges de piano y sont aussi pour quelque chose. L'orientation générale de l'album et sa relative "tempérance", si on le compare au caractère abrasif et exacerbé d'un Nacht ou d'un Winterkält fait qu'on y atteint pas les sommets vertigineux dessinés par la musique de PDH. Mais celle de Monument est suffisamment bonne, originale et inspirée pour mériter de faire un tour dans vos oreilles. Wrnlrd meets Wintherr, en rêve. Les amateurs de black/ambient y trouveront certainement leurs comptes, et même les plus réticents au genre pourraient être séduits par la magnifique piste qui clôture ce I, un de ces instants balayant en quelques notes toutes les velléités à retranscrire l'expérience musicale à travers le prisme des mots, ces minutes pleines d'espoir capables de revigorer la passion qu'on croyait refroidie pour un phénomène aussi fascinant et bouleversant que la Musique. Autant vous dire que je ne me fous pas de vos gueules."

Sunday, May 22, 2011

KDW at aQuarius Records

aQuarius Records bought ten copies of Kosmiche Death Worship from me on 5/14 while i was visiting San Francisco. On 5/21 they wrote a fantastic and (typically) wordy review. Less than 24 hours after the review was posted, the tapes sold out. Wow. Here's the review:

"Long in the works debut from this Oakland co-ed doomdronedirge duo. And we pretty much already knew we were in for something good. C'mon, they're called Teeth Engraved With The Names Of The Dead, the record's called Kosmiche Death Worship, it comes in a cool silver stamped envelope, with a silver ink printed insert, the song titles and label info are physically carved into the cassette itself, and apparently the first few copies included an actual deer tooth. How bad ass is that? Suitably bad ass for the dark sonic rituals housed within, long sprawling droned out landscapes, bleak and barren, guitars, synths and electronics, woven into churning pulsing expanses of black ambient shimmer and droning industrial drift, think Wolf Eyes, Brighter Death Now, Wicked King Wicker, MZ412, this is some serious black ambient terrorism.
Fields of static cloak smoldering low end murk, jagged shards of feedback drift atop filthy pitch black sonic swells, fractured electronics are wrapped around minimal synth thrum and smeared into hazy dirgescapes, that creep and drift and ooze, the melodies buried and tangled in each tracks muted and muddy sonic morass, but definitely present, and infusing these songs with some sort of melodic core, which definitely makes these haunting sonic rituals actually musical, instead of just textural, the various sounds coalescing here and there into ghostly almost rhythms, but just as often slipping into a sort of blurred shimmer. The final track is the most majestic of the bunch, jettisoning most of the noise, and letting the synths and electronics carry the sound, resulting in a sound both epic and majestic, like the coolest black metal intro ever, stretched out into a cinematic creepscape, the sound growing more and more dense and chaotic, before slipping into a weird pulsing almost sci-fi sounding synthdrone outro. Definitely down to hear more from these two...
LIMITED TO 50 COPIES!!!! And as mentioned above, housed in silver ink screened envelopes, with silver ink screened inserts."

Thanks to Andee for the support and words.

The Inarguable on 'Kosmiche Death Worship'

Posted on The Inarguable on 4/14/11...

"Small labels are awesome, and Chicago's Sol y Nieve definitely holds true to that statement. Looking at the picture, the DiY aesthetic holds true; hand-stamped envelopes, hand-engraved cassettes, envelope, a deer's tooth (only for the first 5 copies, though. Sorry). It is obvious that label-head Noah puts a lot of time and effort into each release (this being the third and most-recent).

Teeth Engraved With the Names of the Dead (Teeth Engraved for the rest of the review) offer a thick slab of terrifying drone/ambient with a hint of noise with this release. I sort of envision this release like an abandoned beach on a grey day: waves of guitar and feedback crash against shores of synth drones, quietly hinting at melodies amidst the ebb and flow of ambience. Hell, the ambient noise crackling even froths like sea foam. Everything, though calm, is intimidating and unsettling; "What if I were to die in my sleep tonight? Should I beat death to the punch?"

Though this style of industrial-tinged, noisy, organic drone isn't really my style, I must say that Teeth Engraved held my interest with this release. Be sure to order this, as well as releases by Monvment and 10,000 Miles of Arteries from Noah at noah@solynieverecords.com. At $5 a tape you really can't go wrong."

Thanks for the kind words, Jon.