Voltigeurs
(Turgid Animal - TA399) CD $12.00
Matthew Bower (Skullflower) and Samantha Davis (GYR, Harm) head toward black metal in its purest form. Davis's input certainly alters Bower's musical vision and it is easy to hear the sound of a true collaboration at work. Six long tracks of heavy music, nearly 65 minutes.
Voltigeurs / Dark Bargain
(Turgid Animal) split 7-inch $8.75
The alter ego of Skullflower (Matthew Bower and Samantha Davies) rips dark psychedelic noise. On the flip, Newcastle-based trio (Jamie Stewart of Wrest, Lucy Johnson of Rife and Smut, and Mike Simpson of Xazazz) offer seven minutes of thunderous rhythms and harsh, distortion-laden and feedback-drenched noise rock. Edition of 300.
Voltigeurs / Horseback
(Turgid Animal) split 10-inch $16.00
Emotionally Voided describes the Voltiguers tracks as a "hailstorm, a relentless screaming blast of freezing, scalding winds and scraped out dying melodies, a fucked-up torrent of cloudy vestige hoofing its way toward the end and catching everything in its path up in itself.... [Matthew] Bower and collaborator Samantha Davies (of Gyr/Harm) impart a wailing sort of sadness to this composition ... far distanced from the emotional hollowness of Skullflower ... making Voltigeurs a project with a much more expansive palette to draw from." Jenks Miller's Horseback, according to the same source (why not), "meld[s] ... desert-drenched emptiness with black metal's cold textures in an immensely focused way, yielding a sort of psychedelicized blackness that builds up a towering wall of unapproachability."