Territories LPs

Just got some copies of the Locrian "Territories" LPs in stock. These are sold out from just about everywhere.

Locrian at Bandcamp

You can find the new Locrian bandcamp site here.

We are in the process of putting all of the studio albums on this site, which means if you purchase any of the physical studio albums from this site, you will be able to receive a download of the album immediately, which is kind of cool. Also, it means that you have more options for downloading the albums. That is, you can download high resolution files of the albums. You can also stream the albums that are on there in their entirety.

More Best of 2010 Lists

from Jenks Miller (Horseback)

from Will Lindsay (Indian, Wolves in the Throne Room)

P.S. The Horseback album (The Invisible Mountain) would have been our 2010 list, but we already put it on our 2009 list since Utech released it first.

Vital Weekly on Locrian "Territories"

Link here.

LOCRIAN - TERRITORIES (CD by Bloodlust!)
Somewhere else we look into a solo CD of Andre Foisy but here is a CD by his band Locrian, a duo of himself and T. Hannum. They played guitars and electronics. Seeing this release on Bloodlust! its hardly a surprise that it contains noise. A slow menacing sound of pounding drums, piercing electronics (derived from guitar playing? I am not sure here) and more loud guitars. That is the opening track 'Inverted Ruins', which includes Mark Solotroff, head honcho of Bloodlust, on vocals but Locrian has more to offer than just that. Each track seems to be recorded with the help of other people, so that's why things are probably more varied, beyond the boundaries of pure noise. 'Between Barrows', the second piece on the CD, is a much more subdued piece of music, carefully improvised. Although Locrian don't return to the careful style in this album again, its not said that every piece is one of loud noise only. The closing statement, 'The Columnless Arcade' is a finely driven motor like rock song, bursting out half way through, full of energy. 'Ring Road' sees the burning of a guitar (metaphorically speaking of course), like a giant dark beast bursting out, while 'Antediluvian Territory' is an almost ambient like guitar tune. The epic 'Procession Of Ancestral Brutalism' is then the noise centre of this album. Locrian delivered a great album with this CD. Here too we are dealing with the notion of noise that is varied, like we have discussed more recently: not that endless walls of feedback and distortion, but a varied bunch of pieces, some of which happen to be very loud and some not. But Locrian does all of that outside the world of pure electronics and that is a great achievement. An excellent CD! (FdW)
Address: http://www.bloodlust.blogspot.com

VW also reviews the new André Foisy 3" CDR as well as the new releases from Small Doses. Nice!


André Foisy - THEORY OF PROGRESS (3"CDR on Small Doses)
Andre Foisy is one half of Locrian, a more noise oriented band, but here the true ambient music comes out. Foisy plays guitar and adds a bit of electronics. The music is very mellow and relaxed. Foisy uses e-bow or other bows to play his guitar, adds a substantial dose of reverb to create a great textured sound, but keeps the effects within a fair, controlled state. Over the course of the piece things are build up, but not extensively and never in a hurry. A delicate and refined release. (FdW)
Address: http://www.small-doses.com

Locrian "Territories" CD at Aquarius Records Now

Order here.

NOW ON CD!!

With every single release these guys get better and better, their sound, a constantly evolving, ultra dense blend of abstract black metal and deep ambient dronemusic, the early records were more about energy and vibe than execution, still eminently listenable, heavy and atmospheric, black and brutal, but their skills as composers and arranges have definitely made leaps and bounds, arriving finally at Territories, the latest sprawling epic from this Chicago duo, here, aided and abetted by a whole bunch of guests, including Blake Judd from Nachtmystium, Andrew Scherer, drummer for black metallers Velnias, and Mark Solotroff, power electronics maestro, and man behind Bloody Minded and the BloodLust! label.

And the guests make their presence felt right away, on opener inverted ruins, a smoldering doomic plod, more power electronics than black metal, with Solotroff ranting over a sea of swirling buzz and skree, glitched out electronics, and some simple stripped down drumming. Over the course of the track, it begins to coalesce into a more ominous creep, shedding noise as it goes, before finally slipping into a deep shimmering drone, which introduces the next track, a lush, slow building cinematic dronescape, constantly shifting layers, drifting through clouds of cymbal shimmer and blackened buzzing strings. It's not until nearly the end of side one that black metal rears its ugly head, a flurry of manic riffing, and they're off, a pounding midtempo blast of raw feral blackness, insane shrieked vocals, chaotic drums, muted riffs, all blurred into a blackened haze, lo-fi and muddy, but also epic and intense.

The flipside opens with another bout of power electronics, dueling synths unfurl undulating layers of wheeze and warble and buzz, laced with shimmering overtones and fragmented melodies, a churning black sonic sea, that eventually fades out leaving, a smoldering stretch of shadowy guitar, of blissed out ambience, a short stretch of crystalline chiming guitars laid over a warm whir, shoegazey and blissed out, which finally leads into the closing track, the weirdest of the bunch, with organ and saxophone, acoustic guitars, and pretty much all the gusts present and accounted for, a bleak buzzing driftscape, sort of post industrial, keening melodies over fractured buzz, and deep rumbles, creaks and skree and groaning low end, finally explode into full on melodic black metal, martial drumming, epic riffing, more tortured vokills, cool tangled woozy minor key melodies, a swirling druggy ambience, weirdly catchy and otherworldly, but still heavy and psychedelic, maybe our favorite track, and the perfect way to wind down this serpentine blackened outsider drone metal journey...

Locrian Video from 6/17/10 Show at Empty Bottle

Here’s a video of Locrian performing on June 17th at the Empty Bottle w/ Cold Cave and Hair Police.







If you’re in Chicago, then you can now pick up the Cd of “Territories” from any Reckless Records.

Metal - Temple on "Territories" and Locrian "Land of Failure" 2x Loop CS

We're fairly certain that we'll have LOD 008 - Locrian "Land of Failure" 2x Loop CS out later this week. Keep your eyes peeled since this will be a very limited edition of 13 copies.

link here.

LOCRIAN is a band that, while only having been around for about five years at the time of this review, has a large number of releases under their belt. These releases range from 7”, cassette tapes, splits, CD-r’s and LP’s. Their sound is a mix of drone, Black Metal, ambient. One could classify parts as “avant-garde” and “experimental.” The last album of theirs that I reviewed, “Rain of Ashes,” wasn’t my cup of tea. However, there is a noticeable change towards actual songwriting on “Territories.”

The opening song, “Inverted Ruins,” is a very simple song, with a series of long, drawn out notes which is actually successful in creating an atmosphere. I enjoy listening to this song (as well as the similar “Ring Road”) when I’m stressed out and it helps me relax. On the other end of the spectrum, you have “Procession of Ancestral Brutalism,” which is rather brutal, in a black metal sense. There’s plenty of tremolo riffing along with some barely-above-demo quality sound that fans of the genre seem to enjoy so much.

However, I would classify the majority of the material on here “post black metal,” and for what it is, it’s actually very good. It’s not going to bludgeon you with riffs or in-your-face attitude, but when I’m in the right mood for this type of music, “Territories” will usually find its way into my music player. As individual songs shuffled with other music on an Ipod, “Territories” is less successful. However, it is not meant to be listened to in that manner, which is probably why, as far as I know, this is only being released on vinyl (although I received my copy on CD-r). When put in a music player and listened from start to finish, one will be able to appreciate the full value of this release.

Locrian "Territories" on iTunes

"Territories" is now on iTunes. iTunes does have a high quality download of the album so it should sound better than the mp3 of the album that are floating around out there.

If you like this album, then please get the vinyl. The vinyl version is the way that we'd like this album to be experienced. The download does not do justice to the phenomenal job that Chicago Mastering did on cutting the vinyl. The vinyl for this record has a really dynamic cut and we're really happy with their work on this release.

Basses Frequences and At War With False Noise still have copies of the LP.

We'll be playing new material from an album that we recorded this winter, The Crystal World, at our show on Thursday at the Empty Bottle with Cold Cave and Hair Police. Show starts at 10:00pm and as far as we know, there are still tickets.

Compulsion on "Territories"

link here.
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Locrian's previous album Drenched Lands was an impressive combination of guitar and keyboard improvisations carrying elements of drone, noise and pitch-black industrial ambience together with a slight nod towards black metal. With Territories the core duo Andre Foisy and Terence Hannum further develop their blackened atmospherics aided by an expanded line-up, featuring fellow Chicago based musicians including Mark Solotroff (Bloodyminded and proprietor of BloodLust! label), Blake Judd (Nachtmystium), Bruce Lamont (Yakuza) and Andrew Scherer (Velnias).

Right from the off you're surrounded by the controlled feedback squeals and electronic pulses of 'Inverted Ruins'. It carries over the Locrian sound of Drenched Lands but the presence of the collaborators is obvious; in the distant holler of Solotroff and the simple rock styled drum pounding from Andrew Scherer. The doom pace is filled with stuttering synthesiser howls and industrial ambience ebbing out on pulselike throbs. The static buzz drone of 'Between Barrows', punctuated by short bursts of crashing cymbal rolls, is accompanied by some restrained sax blurt and further on it picks up some sustained tense organ drone.

Drenched Lands featured some stark and skeletal guitar work and that makes a welcome reappearance on 'Antediluvian Territory', the only track restricted to the core duo of Andre Foisy and Terence Hannum. Here spiralling shards of guitar are played off against ominous organ drone. It is wonderful stuff and way too brief. It's an approach I hope they pursue on future releases.

And while there's elements of noise throughout Territories there's a definite power electronics feel to the opening minutes of 'Ring Road' with Solotroff's haranguing holler over wavering shrill feedback and monstrous low-end roar. It doesn't stay too long in power electronics mode as it gradually leads into dense churning electronics, with some guitar improvisation and crackling textures.

One of the pivotal tracks of Territories, 'Procession of Ancestral Brutalism' starts quietly with feint feedback squeals and industrial ambience before upping the stakes with scorching black metal riffing, powerhouse drumming and screamed black hole aggro vocals spat out by Solotroff, Judd, Lamont and Hannum. 'Procession of Ancestral Brutalism' is inspired and dynamic like black metal filtered through the noise-rock of Zeni Geva or something. It may be black metal but with Locrian it is direct and resolutely shorn of the ideology or cliché.

I guess much will be written about the black metal influenced tracks on Territories but the focus of Locrian remains very much on improvisation. If it's black metal you're seeking then I'm afraid you're gonna have to wade through a lot of black atmospherics to get there. Just listen to the shared guitar improvisations that comprise the opening minutes of 'The Columnless Arcade' before it cuts to the surging metal riffing, martial snare drum rolls and distant tortured screamed vocals. As ever it doesn't wallow too long in one place as Locrian cast their net wide trawling through wigged out terrain casting off elements of black metal with post-rock tunings into dense psychedelic murk.

Given the amount of collaborators here Locrian never lose their identity; their sound is never engulfed by the collaborators. Territories is very much a Locrian record. All the hallmarks of their sound, as evidenced on their previous Drenched Lands release, can be found here. This time though with the aid of the collaborators they've been able to further explore areas only tentatively pursued before. Anyone interested in drone/doom sonics and noise/power electronics would be foolish to miss this as Territories is something of an avant metal drone fest. It's also a blast. As prolific as they are Locrian are running on a very low shit quotient and I'm already looking forward to wherever they go next. Great stuff. Released via the labels At War With False Noise, Basses Frequences, Bloodlust! And Small Doses on vinyl in an edition of 500 copies in and now on CD. For more information go to www.atwarwithfalsenoise.com or www.bassesfrequences.org or bloodlust.blogspot.com or www.small-doses.com

Cerebral Metalhead on "Territories"

Link here.

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Ronnie James Dio is dead. I never really knew him aside from his role as a talking head in VH1 documentaries and his popularization of the metal horns. Yet the more I read, the more samples of his work with Rainbow, Dio and Black Sabbath that I hear, the more real his death becomes. While I wouldn't say that my life feels any different, I do feel more connected to the metal world because of the collective outpouring of mourning. And so I mourn, as well.

The new Locrian album Territories is ideal for this mood. The emotions it inspires are fathoms deep and unnameable. It is everything that Dio's music was not -- fuzzy, oblique, meditative, often static. There will be no holy diving to the synth and bass throb of "Ring Road." Terence Hannum, Mark Solotroff (Bloodyminded), Blake Judd (Nachtmystium) and Bruce Lamont (Yakuza), each of whom contribute emaciated howls to "Procession of Ancestral Brutalism," could learn a few things about enunciation from Dio. This music feels dry and empty, even at its most energetic. Territories is the purgatory that Dio must wait in while his afterlife is determined. Heaven? Hell? Heaven and Hell?

Locrian's last album Drenched Lands soundtracked Chicago's urban dystopia with improvised windscapes and scratchy feedback. Half of Territories thaws out the desolation by setting its improvised electronics against warmly-recorded, Ulver-like black metal storms from Judd, Hannum, Locrian's Andre Foisy and drummer Andrew Scherer (Velnias). "Procession of Ancestral Brutalism," is really inspired black metal, and I hope to hear this expanded band record a whole record like it someday. But the two disparate styles feel frictive, especially when the latter erupts out of nowhere a few minutes in to "The Columnless Arcade." It's too Dio-like, its regal drum patterns and repeated harmonies clenching triumph from the jaws of horror. I am gratified that such bold improvisers as Locrian are taking steps away from their discomfort zone, even more gratified that they're putting Bruce Lamont's saxophone to good use (his layered braying on "Between Barrows" threatens to steal the album). I don't want to be woken from my drone-drenched reverie by blastbeats though. Too much emphasis on rhythm. Give me more organ, more queasiness. Let me mourn for Dio in improvised peace and quiet feedback.

-Etan Rosenblum

Audiodrome on "Territories"

Link here.
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I Locrian tornano con Territories, frutto di una serie di collaborazioni con pezzi della scena "pesante" di Chicago, la città dove i due vivono.

Blake Judd dei Nachtmystium porta in dote un po’ di riffing black metal, Bruce Lamont degli Yakuza regala il proprio sax, Mark Solotroff dell’etichetta Bloodlust!, esponente della scena noise americana, qui è un interprete vocale marcissimo e sofferente, infine alla batteria compare Andrew Scherer dei Velnias, altro gruppo black metal di cui già tempo fa i due Locrian caldeggiavano l’ascolto. Lamont, non dev’essere un caso, già era apparso in Assassins dei Nachtmystium e forse in qualche modo Terrence e André avranno voluto vedere cosa succedeva se partecipavano anche loro al gioco delle contaminazioni. I Locrian non copiano Skullflower o i Sunn o))), per quanto ci troviamo a quelle latitudini musicali, ma come Anderson e O’Malley qui mettono una scenografia, preparano un po' di costumi, le luci e l’idea generale, poi lasciano spazio ad attori di prestigio. Per dare un’idea di Territories bisogna pensare a uno sfondo di cemento, ferro e plastica, ottenuto con drone e rumorismi chitarristici più suoni di synth scassati. Su questo sfondo può apparire Solotroff, che non assomiglia né ad Attila né a Dubin, fermo restando che in “Inverted Ruins” - come loro - più che cantare "performa", recita. Può essere poi la volta del commento desolato del sax di Lamont o delle sfuriate della ditta nera Judd/Scherer. Gli attori si dividono anche la scena e in alcuni casi addirittura spiazzano tutti in positivo (eccezionale il dissonantissimo Lamont di “The Columnless Arcade”): non c’è mai la sensazione di avere a che fare con una sorta di underground all star game dove si vede la prodezza del campione ma non la squadra. Il gioco è in mano ai Locrian, il che significa rappresentazione di periferie squallide, acque inquinate e degrado, più la testimonianza gridata di chi incontrano nel loro girovagarci.

Come Drenched Lands, ma diverso e più ricco di situazioni, quindi proprio consigliato.

-Fabrizio Garau

Locrian "Territories" Review from The Sleeping Shaman

Link here.


In order to fully accommodate the full scope of their vision, the core duo of Locrian – Andre Foisy and Terence Hannum – have enlisted an ensemble of players from the various outer reaches of musical extremity and four, count 'em, FOUR separate labels so that the vastness of 'Territories' can be fully unleashed upon the unsuspecting world at large. As excellent as their last full-length, 'Drenched Lands', was, 'Territories' is, well, a whole 'nother territory. The sound world created herein is truly expansive, spanning Locrian's usual pitch-black droning minimalism, through to black metal on an epic scale, taking in meditative post-space-rock guitar and icy synthscapes along the way, and often ALL of the afore-mentioned at once.

The four collaborators that Foisy and Hannum have recruited for 'Territories' are Mark Solotroff of Bloodyminded, on vocals and synths, Blake Judd of Nachtmystium, on guitar and vocals, Bruce Lamont of Yakuza, on vocals and sax, and Andrew Scherer of the unknown-to-me Velnias, on drums. These four help to flesh out the sound of Locrian, allowing them to function almost as a 'band', in real-time. The additional members and instruments allow for a greater, more well integrated, palette of tonal variety, and a more obvious use of dynamics.

Opening track 'Inverted Ruins' has the spine of a pulsing, ebbing skeletal synth throb and funereally paced drums, overlaid with layers of minimal yet piercing feedback and choppy, skittering insectile electronics. Beneath this Solotroff spills slow-burning throaty bile about the collapse of civilisation, whilst adding further sonic weight to the juddering processed synth tones that cloak him. The track ends, collapsing under its own weight into nothing but a heavily delayed synthesizer squelch, stuttering into empty space. 'Between Barrows' is a dead-black organ drone exploration, with the saxophone of Bruce Lamont hoving into earshot between dense fog-banks of shimmering cymbals and echoing ambience, like a ship lost at sea and sounding its mournful horn into blank space in hopes of a reply. Two minutes into the third track 'Procession of Ancestral Brutalism' is where everything changes, as the full-on black metal guitar assault of Nachtmystium's Blake Judd explodes out of the black hole of sound that preceded it. An icy blast of trebly BM riffing, ala Wolves In The Throne Room, and full-tilt blasting drums blare out of the speakers, whilst the anguished screaming vocals of Solotroff, Hannum, Judd AND Lamont let rip from what sounds like an echo chamber several miles below the earth. This in turn then opens out into a space of throbbing, surging bass notes, and whirling guitar, the drums punching and splashing in emphasis. Sounding at once arctic, organic and totally venomous, the track is unlike anything Locrian have done before. Fourth track 'Ring Road' is another dark, throbbing exploration of the lower depths, along lines of the opening track, but DENSER and, dare I say it, DARKER. The squalls of electronic skree and the blocks of analogue synth in even more abundance. Next track 'Antediluvian Territory' is what COULD be construed as a 'meditative' guitar piece, with plangent, delayed guitar lines and chiming harmonics ringing out in a way reminiscent of Robert Fripp....that is if it wasn't for the indefinable air of impending dread being conjured up by the accompanying collossal bass drone and the snake-like hissing ambience. Meditate to THIS and say hello to nightmares and cold sweat.

'The Columnless Arcade', the final track on 'Territories' is where everything that has gone before comes together in one kaleidoscopic auditory hallucination. Echoing, delayed and heavily processed syhths and electronics whirr and endlessly collapse into a vortex, from which emerges that icy black metal blast once again, whilst enormous bass notes judder and depth charge below the serpentine mass of sound. Solotroff howls as the guitars entwine in a post-psychedelic black metal tangle, chiming and swooping at each other through acidic delay like Helios Creed by way of Enslaved, and it has that same feel to it as the serpentine guitars of Beefheart's 'Kandy Korn'. At once fragile and epic. The track is cosmic in the truest sense, and a fitting ending to such an all-enveloping piece of work.

The scale of 'Territories' is vast indeed, and such a project on such a scale could have easily failed and fallen into the trap of throwing TOO much into the mix, but it has succeeded effortlessly. 'Territories' is a triumph of sound, and deserves to be heard by EVERYONE of an adventurous musical leaning. Especially those of us who do not usually care for black metal.

* Label: At War With False Noise / Basses Frequencies / Bloodlust! / Small Doses
* Website: lndofdecay.blogspot.com

Locrian "Territories" Decibel Review

Locrian "Territories" At The Quietus

Link here.

Although 'Locrian' can refer to either a member of the ancient central Greek tribe, the Locrians, or a musical scale used primarily by jazz and death metal musicians, this has nothing to do with Chicago's 'post-industrial noise' duo Locrian. To be perfectly frank, on first listen Territories is a pretty bloody arduous listen, but here perseverance is the key. What at first comes across as unstructured, poorly executed racket recorded in an oil drum by a monkey with learning difficulties, eventually it reveals itself to be an intense 50 minute drone odyssey; the multitude of seemingly random clicks, glitches and oddities making for a deceptively textured and engrossing album.

Locrian "Territories" Review from The Sound Projector

Link here.

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Last year I was very pleased to discover the music of Locrian, a Chicago duo who seemed to be doing something exciting with their excessive amplified guitar and electronic sludge-drone, overlaid with Black Metal elements and wallowing in supernatural paranoiac slime. For Territories (AT WAR WITH FALSE NOISE ATWAR073 / BASSES FREQUENCES BF23/ BLOODLUST! B!147 / SMALL DOSES DOSE85), the duo of Foisy and Hannum have supplemented their power with players recruited from Nachtmystium, Yakuza, Velnias and Bloodyminded – all gloom and hate merchants to a man. The addition of vocals, synth, drums, sax and an extra guitar has certainly made the Locrian overall sound a lot thicker and, in places, more textured and detailed. I feel however that some of the relentless and obsessional qualities that they exhibited so convincingly as a two-man act have been slightly compromised by the need to co-operate with these other bloodthirsty musicians. ‘Procession of Ancestral Brutalism’ is one example of the new band dynamic, but in spite of its killer title it’s not much more than identikit Black Metal. However it would be churlish to deny that overall, this is an album of horrifying power, particularly on the slow and broody cuts like ‘Ring Road’ which over ten agonising minutes of painful squalor and heavy monotony soon convinces you of the presence of imminent disaster. Vinyl copy of this item known to exist, unless sold out by now.

Small Doses: Sold out of "Territories" LP

Small Doses is now sold out of the Locrian "Territories" LP too.

If you would like to get one of the remaining LPs, then you will need to order it from one of the European labels: Basses Frequences, or At War With False Noise. These will be gone from all of the labels soon so act fast if you're interested.

"Territories" LPs and "Drenched Lands" LPs are Sold Out From Us

Please don't order "Drenched Lands" LPs or "Territories" LPs from us anymore because we are sold out.

Thanks to everyone who ordered for your support.

If you would like a copy of this album then please contact At War With False Noise, or Basses Frequences.

Bloodlust! is sold out as well. Small Doses may be sold out already as well.

Pitchfork - "The Out Door" Interviews Locrian

Link here.

Territories, the new album by experimental Chicago duo Locrian, is a kaleidoscope of grays and black, where suffocating sustains and piercing feedback swirl deliberately with crippled blastbeats and mangled shouts. For several years, the music of André Foisy and Terence Hannum-- who first played together in the quartet Unlucky Atlas, with their wives-- consisted largely of dark, mesmeric drones, made menacing by Hannum's lacerated roar and noise textures. This time, they recruited a tell-tale list of collaborators-- Nachtmystium's Blake Judd, Yakuza's Bruce Lamont, Bloodyminded's Mark Solotroff, and Velnias' Andrew Scherer-- from the worlds of electronics and metal to, in effect, darken their darkness.

And so, Territories plays like a study in both instability and intensity: The album's centerpiece, for instance, is called "Procession of Ancestral Brutalism." An 11-minute, feedback-and-static-damaged black metal marathon, it teeters constantly on the brink of auto-destruction, a system bound for sudden failure. That's appropriate for an album that builds so heavily on themes of accidental ruination, where humans force themselves into scenarios that render doomsday outcomes.

Foisy and Hannum both work at Columbia College in Chicago, where they teach at night and assist with student development and long-term university planning by day. Despite the malevolence of their music and, to an extent, the despondency of their world views, they spoke candidly and humorously about their musical development, Locrian's creative process, and the premonition that we've got some troubling days ahead.

MP3:> Locrian: "Ring Road"

MP3:> Locrian: "Procession of Ancestral Brutalism"

Pitchfork: Where did you come to Chicago from?

André Foisy: I lived in Buffalo, but I'm from northern New York state, near the border of Ontario and Quebec-- kind of in the middle of nowhere, the northern Adirondack Mountains. It's about an hour's drive to Montreal.

Terence Hannum: I came from Florida. I moved here pretty much as soon as I finished college.

Pitchfork: I grew up in a rural town in North Carolina, so I always wonder about how people who came from similarly somewhat isolated areas found their way into a musical world bigger than that of their classmates. Modern country, for instance, ruled my school.

TH: For me, it was my dad. Whenever I said I liked something-- he still does this to this day-- my dad would say, "Well, that was done in the 60s," and he will pull out some record-- Alice Cooper, Black Sabbath, whatever. I quickly kind of realized that most of the crap in the late 80s that was being fed to my demographic was just that-- crap.

So it was a gateway. You start listening to Black Sabbath, and you start wondering, "What's heavier? What's around now?" You might get into Metallica, and I think it was quick into punk and underground, self-made music that, in the D.C. area, was pretty easily accessible even when I was 10 or 11.

AF: I got interested in different music when I was in my early teens. The strange commonality that Terence and I share [is] we had a shared background in what used to be the hardcore scene. Growing up in northern New York, I didn't love that place-- or everything about that place. I didn't identify with a lot of the people I went to school with or were around those communities. I would try to get out of northern New York as much as possible, so I'd be going to shows in Ottawa or Montreal and seeing bands that Terence and I really bonded over-- like One Eyed God Prophecy and Ire.

TH: [Union of] Uranus...That pathway led into the 90s, where hardcore and the youth culture of that time was still kind of active-- pre-Internet-- and creative. Not everything was handed to them, and people had to generate these interesting networks. Most of those bands that André mentioned were around an area or a record label. You'd get one 7", and you can get the next one and you'd be like, "All, right this is a scene! It kind of has a sound! It's kind of dark…"

Pitchfork: That seems to relate to your discography, which is pretty diffuse-- LPs, CDs, 7"s, 3" CDs, eight-tracks, tapes. Is that a pretty conscious homage to that scene, a direct continuation of it?

TH: Maybe subconsciously. I've always listened to vinyl, and I've always collected vinyl. I don't buy CDs. I've always made tapes. I've never not made tapes. I was looking back, and every year, I've made some kind of tape. I've always made a cassette, since I was 14 or whatever, of my own music.

AF: Growing up, the ultimate thing-- if your band was cool-- was you got to release a CD. That was better than an LP even though, with an LP, the artwork looks cooler. I guess there's just never been this happy medium with me. I don't feel like there's any format that's perfect for anything.

We're finishing a CD right now, and we're playing with a percussionist, Steven Hess. He's got his drums tuned to this frequency that's really, really low, and you can't hear them on certain speakers. That frequency is going to come off perhaps better on CD, even though I like that format a lot less. It tends to have a better bass response than vinyl, even though there are certain nuances on that record that are going to sound a lot better on vinyl.

With MP3s, they're good for some things, but as far as giving the artists control, it's not very good. We're not going to be able to control who hears this new record: People are going to be listening to it on their computer speakers, and they're going to be missing a big section of it because the frequencies won't work on those speakers. Or even on Territories, some frequencies are not going to work on those computer speakers. Some of those are pretty abrasive frequencies, so maybe some people are thankful for that.

Pitchfork: Collaboration is somewhat new for Locrian. At what point did you decide that was where you wanted to head next?

AF: We've been playing together for a few years, and I think we felt comfortable as a duo. That definitely made us more open. In the noise scene, it's like everyone collaborates all the time, and there are a whole lot of collaborative splits, all this stuff. Some of them are great, and some of them are total duds. I think we were really wary of making a dud-- or overdoing it, like where you have a "CD-R leak" of some collaboration that you've done. Not to disparage that, it's just that we really wanted it to make sense and not be just because everybody else was doing it.

Pitchfork: You said "noise scene." On Territories, you play with noise and metal musicians, and I think this record will find laurels and criticisms on both sides. Where do you consider yourself?

AF: This project has always been an avenue where Terence and I explored a bunch of common interests and both of our common interests in music are so-- I think there's definitely a unity to them, but it's also all over the place. For instance, we're both into Krautrock or more experimental stuff-- early-90s death metal.

TH: A lot of our motivations when we started dealt with our frustrations at that time. There was no Kuma's Corner in Chicago [a metal-themed burger joint-- Ed.]. Any metal scene was really small and really marginal.

AF: I think we both felt there was this provinciality to the music scenes we were around-- that's still prevalent. You think about, I don't know, Earache. Earache used to be a record label that would put out some really challenging stuff, and then they kind of stopped.

TH: Not just them, specifically. When you think of someone like Earache, or Relapse, you think, "Wow, that record, when I was a teenager, was really challenging." You look back, and it still holds up as an intense record with its subject matter, its speed, its aggressiveness, or whatever. And then you kind of listen to what they're doing now, and it's like, "What are they doing?"

There was this momentum, this creativity, this kind of feeling that you're pushing boundaries. In a similar way, we looked at Chicago and the metal thing, and maybe that's why we gravitated to people like Blake and Bruce and people we felt were trying to challenge that scene. Nachtmystium's Instinct: Decay-- I still put that record on. I think it's brilliant. I think the guitar playing's really amazing, really dense. It kind of begins to transcend that black metal tag in a positive way. Likewise, Bruce, with Yakuza.

That was a reaction that we had, that it was a small enough scene and there weren't enough people really pushing things. Now I think the metal scene is a lot healthier and the same thing with the noise scene. It was much more marginalized, pre-Wolf Eyes on Sub Pop. I think kind of post-Wolf Eyes on Sub Pop, it's gotten really big. Everyone has a band and a tape label, and now this healthy process has happened where some really solid musicians are coming out and are doing really interesting things with noise and power electronics and experimental music.

AF: If you have people from the metal audience who are picking up this record, I hope they're listening to the non-black metal tracks. I hope they are kind of taken aback. We have these more direct parts on this record, but both of us are like, "We should make people wait to get to those direct parts, really kind of suffer." If anyone's picking up this record because they read that Blake from Nachtmystium's on it, they're going to have to wait through some…

TH: Some ambient stuff. I think there will still be some middle passages, I think, that can act as some kind of a buffer, a purgatory or whatever. I'm really proud of those passages.

Pitchfork: That's a concept I've always loved-- putting a litmus test up front, to see who's really into the record for the long haul. What's the downside of that, though?

TH: People are going to like what they like. There's plenty of white guys playing guitars and making pop music that you can listen to. When we play live, there's a lot of other things we have to think about and consider. A lot of times, when we play live, we start out pretty low key because we have to build up a lot of stuff normally, especially if we're playing just the two of us. We have to build up a lot of loops and brin g in other instruments.

Our key phrase to each other is "take our time." We like to take our time, especially with a live set, and we spent two years or so before we went into the studio to record something. Most of our recordings from before then were from live or radio shows. Pacing and timing were really important. Whether to draw someone in, like a story or narrative of some kind, I think that's a common thing in our releases. Maybe that would give people more patience.

Pitchfork: The song titles on Territories seem very deliberate, maybe even didactic, in relating to structures-- barrows, roads, columns-- and decay. Are song titles a convenient way for experimental acts to convey a message?

TH: They're all kind of based off of architectural descriptions and this kind of bleak world. There was this architectural movement, the New Brutalism movement, and that was a really big influence, all of their ideas. The whole first song came from this screed from the 19th century, in England, about industrialization. I thought it was really poetic when you kind of edited it down-- things hadn't changed that much. I really doubt most progress. I think that's really behind a lot of the lyrical content of the record, this doubt of this direction. Both André and I were kind of raised around hardcore music that felt that they had all the answers and kind of whacked you over the head all the time with…

Pitchfork: A message?

TH: How to fix your life and judge everybody else's lives and all that great stuff. I think we reacted to that. Maybe it made us more cautious about some kind of stance or something like that. That's what U2's for.

AF: Yeah, and all those ranting about ways to change your life and fix the world. They're like, "Hey, I'm going to go vegan, and that's going to make the world better!"

Pitchfork: You could argue it's the same, in a way, as religion. It's something that makes you think that tomorrow will be better, that there is progress.

AF: It's just that we live in a very disturbing world. The fact that we're putting out vinyl records that are extremely pollutive to the environment, that's a contradiction I think about when we release records. I think, "Oh, we're causing some pollution, but at least it's limited to an extent." We're both trying to grapple with maybe that hardcore scene we were part of that gave us the answers but disturbed us and made us more critical of things, maybe more cynical. Maybe part of our output is finding a balance in that. Maybe it's our way of trying to deal with that cynicism.

TH: I'm also totally comfortable with the fact that the human race will cease to exist at some point, probably because of its terrible decisions. I'm okay with that now. And I don't really have much hope that we're going to turn things around in some way. Our tendencies to self-correct, we've kind of marked ourselves out of any way that we're actually going to right that course. The idea that we can is really funny to me, that we have any say in how this planet functions. We can certainly affect it, but it was here before we were here, and it'll be here after we're here. It'll regenerate in some way. I know it's fatalism. I don't really have much hope for humanity, I guess. Sorry. -- Grayson Currin

Blastitude Reviews "Drenched Lands" and "Territories"

Link here.

LOCRIAN Drenched Lands CD (AT WAR WITH FALSE NOISE / SMALL DOSES) For Locrian's "first full-length studio recording of all new material," the ingredients may remain the same (metal, noise, drone, power electronics), but they are presented in their most confident and seamless blend yet. This duo can actually play music on their instruments, and use this ability to create extended compositions. Therefore, there's no need to hide behind drone and distortion, allowing these tactics to be used as weapons, and only when necessary. The result is a mostly quiet album that is still more brutal than a lot of today's amps-on-11 extreme music yawnfests.

LOCRIAN Territories (AT WAR WITH FALSE NOISE / BASSES FREQUENCIES / BLOODLUST! / SMALL DOSES) Showing a continued intent to develop and reinvent themselves, Locrian augment their duo lineup with various key guests from Chicago's metal, experimental, and experimental/metal scenes. The result is as solid and satisfying as all of Locrian's releases have been, but given several fresh twists, which we hear right off the bat on "Inverted Ruins," featuring Mark Solotroff of Bloodyminded doing a killer job singing bleak lyrics and Andrew Scherer of Velnias playing kit drums, I believe a first for Locrian. Other temporary members include Bruce Lamont of Yakuza on vocals and saxophone, and perhaps most notably Blake Judd of Nachtmystium on guitars and vocals. All four of these ringers appear throughout the album, in different combinations, but not on every track... though only one track ("Antediluvian Territory") is by the original Locrian duo lineup, there is also only one track ("Procession of Ancestral Brutalism") that features all six musicians. Not surprisingly, it explodes out of the middle of the album as the most raging and traditionally black metal sounding track on here, though I might prefer the nearly 10-minute Solotroff/Locrian trio cut "Ring Road."

Locrian "Territories" at The Fader

Locrian


Four labels from three different countries and four collaborators, including Mark Solotroff from Bloodyminded and Blake Judd from Nachtmystium, join Locrian on Territories. I wasn’t that familiar with Locrian before this but Territories is as good and engaging an introduction as any. I fall on the side of enjoying the spaced out bleak ambient tracks on this record over the more black metal infused tracks. It is not that metal tracks like “Procession of Ancestral Brutalism” aren’t good, they are – lots of pained screeches and riffing but the first two songs on Territories, “Inverted Ruins” and “Between Barrows,” create such an atmospheric and engaging tone for the whole album that I found myself turning back to those songs more. “Inverted Ruins” features Mark Solotroff from Bloodyminded on vocals and his growls complement the repetitive guitar and creaky synths of the song nicely, creating a trance inducing piece and proving that in the case of Locrian collaboration does something more than just fill up a press one sheet. Bloodlust is sold out of the record but it is available through Small Doses for US customers, get it HERE.