Haute Magie brings us another dose of eerie, phantasmagoric electronics with this split cassette featuring newcomers David Carter (who apparently died not long after this material was recorded) and The Witch Family. Released on pro-printed cassettes with full color packaging in a limited edition of one hundred twenty-five copies, this split contrasts Carter's mysterious low-fi soundscapes and industrial ambience with The Witch Family's re-workings of the same material, transforming them into a murky midnight slasher soundtrack on the b-side...

Carter's side showcases seven tracks of dreamlike sound that range from bleak expanses of murky factory whirr and incandescent metallic drones, simple ominous noise-loops spinning into infinity, to thumping, massive bass-heavy electronica with blown-out, distorted drum machine rhythms and harsh percussive sounds that sorta take this into Scorn/Techno Animal territory. These drum machine driven beatscapes start off spare and minimal, a study in mechanical rhythm and texture, but after a while Carter begins to unleash his growling evil synths, laying down these simple but very ominous sounding hooks over the skittering, pounding beats. Some of the later tracks move into more techno/house-like sounds, but the layered horror-movie atmospherics and ghostly piano loops that are draped over the squelchy electronics and murky breakbeats connect this to some of the more dancefloor-oriented "witch house" stuff. In fact, there's one track that combines corrupted, submerged techno-like pulsations with whirling metallic drift in a way that reminds me of a cross between the pitch-black minimal electronica found on Nordvargr's Resignation discs and the creepy slasher-soundtracks of Gatekeeper.

Using Carter's tracks as the source material, The Witch Family re-shapes the sounds into something new, an ominous creeping electronic ambience seething with mechanical rhythms buried under heaps of wirr and buzz, creeping bass lines lurking in the background, turning into a strange sort of low-fi graveyard electronica infused with the obsessive black drones of Maurizio Bianchi's early works, or dropping off into a hypnotic beat-scape of jazzy, Scorn-esque dystopia smeared with gorgeous dark saxophone, a perpetual twilight realm inhabited by industrial breakbeats, soundtrack-y strings, and Tangerine Dream's lush score for Risky Business.

Something to check out if you're into the Fright imprint and affiliated artists like Antoni Maiovvi and Gatekeeper...