Somewhere in between the homemade industrial gristle of Wolf Eyes, damaged basement black metal ambience and the mysterious blackened textures of Prurient's recent output, you'll find the strange midnight noise rituals of Fire Island, AK, a project from South Carolina noise artist Thomas Boetnner. I just recently discovered his stuff after he got in touch with us to see if we'd be interested in carrying his music, which is released in tiny handmade runs on his own label, sometimes in editions of less than twenty copies. Once I started checking his stuff out, I found it to be pretty fascinating; using a variety of instruments, electronics and found objects, Boettner creates extremely eerie and abstract soundscapes of blackened old-school industrial, minimal drone and some grisly ambient skronk that reminds me of a murkier, evil sounding version of the Japanese improv-jazz-noise group Dislocation. It's really cool stuff that occasionally stumbles into passages of filthy black ambient brilliance. We picked up a bunch of the Fire Island, AK releases as well as a tape that Boettner released under his own name; all of this stuff is pretty rad, fans of disquieting graveyard drift and occult basement industro-buzz should check this guy out.

Perchta is a single thirty-nine minute long track centered around slippery atonal guitar skronk and blasts of coruscating noise that is generated by a pair of amplified electric guitars, prayer bowl, and an amplifier electric motor along with a handful of random objects. Very different from the hallucinogenic blacknoise on other Fire Island AK releases, "Perchta" starts off with a few minutes of improvised slide guitar and the bell-like clamor of dissonant chords, reminiscent of Haino/Jandek, then the guitars suddenly become heavily distorted and the playing moves into more freaked-out, wailing free-pysch territory. Wild formless shredding intermingles with ear-scraping textures as the strings of the guitar are clawed and tortured, creating a serious din of far-out noise. This continues to weave it's way through what sound like several different distinct movements, from scathing industrial-guitar noise blowout that approaches a Solmania-like level of howling chaos and more minimal stretches of strange barking sounds, blackened drones and sputtering cable buzz, to continued forays into Jandekian twang and mutant blues, washes of e-bow generated ambience, and thick sheets of metallic feedback drift. This is one noisy, mangled out-guitar freakout, along the lines of Ascension, Keiji Haino, etc. Comes in a hand-numbered, handmade black wallet sleeve with pasted-on artwork and an insert, and released in an absurdly tiny edition of just twelve copies.