Navicon Torture Technologies - I Fucking Hate You All and I Hope You All Fucking Die (C)

Navicon Torture Technologies is the dark ambient brainchild of Lee M. Batow, now on its way to a polite and quiet grave. I Fucking Hate You All and I Hope You All Fucking Die is a NTT masterpiece, bested possibly only by Dripping with the Power of Her Flesh. It starts out with a haunting repetitive keyboard line, and then dives straight into the refined cesspool of gritty noise backing a series of effected vocals (repeating the phrase "I want to hang myself, I want to die." and noisy swoops. The album itself is noisy, but not loud. It's truly "dark ambient" in its unique style of unobtrusive, yet compellingly haunting noisescapes.

After a couple similar gritty noise tracks, NTT eases into a very minimal, pulsing noise line, which is soon overtaken by a clean sample of a distraught-sounding girl saying over and over again "I love you, and I'm so sorry that I'm so awful to you. And I don't know, I don't know what to do or what to say. I hate this, and I hate myself…" Over the pulsing underline, a more traditional ambient cloud slowly fades in, adding to the morbid beauty, and striking one-two punch of the track. After Personal Apocalypse, there are a series of more non-noisy, psychedelic-esque sample tracks featuring tribal beats, and more traditional ambient elements, as well as a series of more in-your-face noisy tracks.

The real highlight of the album, however, is Personal Apocalypse II, featuring another sample of the same girl, with a similar backdrop. All in all, this album is one that can only be expelled from an extremely dark and disturbed psyche, and received well by a comparable one. I do not recommend it if you are depressed, alone, or breastfeeding.

Aluk Todolo - Untitled (C)

Aluk Todolo are one of my favorite discoveries of late. Hailing from the happening French BM scene, Aluk Todolo bring black metal sensibilities and dark ambient seasonings to the world of Psychedelia. Sure, they have a full length, but truth be told all you really need to hear to fall in love is their debut 7", which is nameless and just referred to as "the 7 EP." The 7 EP starts out with a quiet, pulsing rhythm, then a thick and sloppily precise bass line kicks in, building up a sort of circular tension. The first few bits are only the "You must be this tall…" sign for the upcoming rollercoaster of absolutely freak out zap your mind. The repetitive Jaws-half-step bass line is topped by some building sparse guitar. The track swings into its funk before you even know what's hit you, eventually coming to a sort of figure-eight-ish transition into complete free-form delay jams, but still maintaining the haunting feeling of circularity. The track eventually digresses into a genuine chanting temple-like ambience, topped by the oh-so-soothing voice of Aleister Crowley. Then the fun begins. Side A ends on a quiet note, only to be overtaken by the pulsing Sunburned Hand of the Man-esque Side B psychedelic rock. Side B retains the pulsing of Side A, but what was once a circular wandering turns into a foreword-driven march. The track subsides briefly in the middle, but jumps back into its demoniac acid-possession with an even increased fervor. The rhythm section builds the perfect atmosphere for the out-of-this-world sounds of the guitar as its solo burns up like a forest fire glutted on fuel. Side B is a track you almost want to dance to, were it not so bizarre that you need to stop and listen to every new instant of sound. The energy of this album is the kind that has you tense and on the edge of your seat every second, and exhausted the second its over. And the energy just keeps coming, until the track ends with a dead-stop, leaving you like a heroin addict without a fix. All in all, The 7 EP earns a 100/10 for me. 18 minutes of ecstatic auditory, emotional, and physical sensationalism.