In this six track EP, hxw hxw paints landscapes depicting the tortured spectrum of a broken mind, from aggression to indifference to loneliness to anxiety, entirely created using manipulated samples from anime.
download: bandcamp | archive.org
Tag: dark ambient
180 / Phirnis/Katarrhaktes – A Cage
Presenting two previously unreleased tracks taken from the Sleepers/Apnoea sessions, in which a musical motif is torn in two directions. Phirnis intricately builds strata upon strata of introspective swathes of sound, while Katarrhaktes takes the listener to an uncomfortable landscape of pounding, industrial horror.
download: bandcamp | archive.org
177 / hxw hxw – but the echo of thunder cries out from the depths
Musique-concrete party crashers hxw hxw round off their ‘narcissus…’ era with a full-length remix album. This LP compiles all previous b-sides alongside several new tracks, including ‘lullaby of the portcullis’, an 8 minute monster comprised only of samples of video game deaths.
download: bandcamp | archive.org
173 / Phirnis/Katarrhaktes – Apnoea
In their second full-length split LP, Phirnis and Katarrhaktes collaborate to bring you the unsettling Apnoea; seven sleep-deprived tracks of industrial/ambience which slip between modes of melody, musique concrete, and extreme electronic dissonance.
Reviews: Ambient Exotica
download: bandcamp | archive.org | SoundCloud
169 / hxw hxw – narcissus stripped bare by his own eyes, even
hxw hxw is an experimental, conceptual project that takes its name from the Greek nymph Ekho, who could only being able to repeat words spoken to her, her own voice stolen away in a curse.
Created only using audio samples gleaned from entertainment media such as film, television, and video games, narcissus stripped bare by our own eyes, even questions the vanity of a consumerist lifestyle on which we are growing ever more dependant. Appropriating the mythological Narcissus as an extended metaphor for a self-referential escapist society, hxw hxw also challenges the onanistic practices of art itself and its legitimacy in the contemporary world.
download: bandcamp | archive.org | Soundcloud | HearThis
161 / hxw hxw – a body of water is a kind of mirror, i suppose
After years of silently releasing material without so much as a whisper, the mysterious hxw hxw (romanised from the Ancient Greek, meaning ‘echo echo’) brings us its first single ‘a body of water is a kind of mirror, i suppose’. These two songs have been remixed specifically for this release using elements taken from the upcoming album ‘narcissus stripped bare by his own eyes, even’.
download: bandcamp | archive.org
159 / Phirnis/Katarrhaktes – Sleepers
Regular Fwonk* artists Phirnis and Katarrhaktes have colluded to devise this split LP. Resting somewhere between noise and ambience, Sleepers recalls the uncomfortable mode of comfort between the comatose and wakeful states. Fragments of sound play back like phantom memories, washing and repeating upon themselves as waves upon the shores of the mind.
download: bandcamp | archive.org