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.

This hefty double cassette release is Fire Island AK at it's darkest, with two tapes of sprawling drone abstraction and grimy industrial mixed in with the weird psychedelic guitar moves that appear all over this guys releases, and some brief moments of Abruptum/Emit-style blacknoise weirdness. On the Fire Island AK website, this tape set gets compared to Sunn, but that's not really accurate...while Murmur & Belial can get pretty heavy at times, the music has more in common with underground industrial music with the screeching metal and muddy, sinister drones that infest all four sides of this release. There's definitely a black streak that runs through these tapes, though. The material comes from both studio improvisations and live performances, and is once again primarily based around all of the different noises that Fire Island AK is able to scrape out of an electric guitar, but Boettner also uses fx pedals, tapes, and other materials to fabricate these weird, creepy dronescapes.

The "Murmer" cassette starts off dark and minimal with a simple distorted melody played on some sort of electronic device, then erupts into abrasive guitar noise, amp rumble, monstrous blackened vocals and that blown-out melody continuing to repeat over and over in the background. The sound is murky, low-fi, but plenty heavy as droning guitar feedback and distorted amp roar slowly pours forth, a kind of blackened industrial psych made up of bleak Sunn-esque sludgedrone and heat-blasted melodies. As the first track "Philotanus In The Desert" it starts to sound like a trippy, free-folk version of blacknoise weirdo Emit, but then "Forest Riot" takes over with a furious low-fi drum/noise improv, blurts of squelchy electronics and fx dripping over loose, fast paced drumming, with croaking blackened vocals showing up towards the end of the track. The second side has three shorter tracks ("Brain Burn", "Asshole Full Of Vomit", "St-Soot St.) that range from sparser rhythmic noise experiments, to heavier doom-laden ambience and massive distorted cello-like dirge, and damaged Wolf Eyes-style machine creep and fractured synth riffs.

The "Belial" tape opens with a noxious blast of squealing noise, like someone screaming through a distorted sax, then drifts into a tense, chugging industrial deadzone that shifts between disturbing voice samples and psychedelic guitar jangle, more damaged Wolf Eyes-style industrial pound, streaks of evil feedback drone, messed up piles of thunderous tape noise, rumbling percussive throb, smears of dreamy guitar ambience, with a real heavy 90's RRRecords noise vibe permeating all of this stuff.

Limited to 100 copies. The tapes are packaged in a double-cassette jewel box with black and white artwork and multiple inserts.