Perchta - D'Muata - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

With Perchta's second full-length entitled InchD'MuataInch, which translates from her Alpine Austrian dialect to English as InchThe MotherInch, mastermind and vocalist Frau Percht and her band have created a feminist manifesto within a folklore influenced black metal context. Femininity in all it's facets is a rather niche topic in this genre although it is an inseparable part of everything human and the natural world around us. Taking their name from an alleged pagan goddess, Perchta were conceived in Austria in 2017 with an aim to preserve and rejuvenate regional traditions. Three years later, Perchta released their debut album InchUfangInch, which established the band's reputation as a highly individualistic and unique act. All lyrics of the entire album are intoned in the Tyrolean vernacular. The words are shrouded in a tempest of tremolo guitars and ritualistic folk with bone-piercing extreme vocals on top. Now the black witch of the Tyrolean mountains and her pack return with a magical new album.

Taking it's name from a pagan goddess revered among the people in the Upper German and Austrian Alps, Perchta from Tyrol, Austria, were founded in 2015 and channel the deity's essence to keep alive regional traditions that have been trivialized over time to fit modern conveniences. Known to walk among men from Christmas to Epiphany and thus symbolizing a time of transition, Perchta has many faces and guises, at once radiant beauty and wrinkled, old hag, both unforgiving punisher and nourishing guardian, haunting destroyer as well as rewarding creator. InchUfang,Inch the project's first album, is just as multi-faceted, with the four key songs representing the elements of earth, wind, fire and water, entirely intoned in local vernacular. In it's epic scope, InchUfangInch sounds like a tempest of tremolo guitars and ritualistic folk with a voice on top to pierce marrow and bone. Remarkably, Perchta is also a functional live formation, sporting extravagant light and stage properties made from driftwood between which the front woman will sermonize, face-painted in historical black garb with embroidered belt and cast-iron broom InchUfangInch is available as Digipak CD, LP and 2CD artbook (48 pages, 18x18cm) with all lyrics, additional texts about the Perchta lore, poetry and photo material as well as two bonus tracks.

On October 4th Erased Tapes present Handfuls of Night ' the highly anticipated follow-up to Penguin Cafe's much applauded 2017 album The Imperfect Sea 'inspired by the Antarctic, Arthur Jeffes' journey following in Scott's footsteps and our penguin friends that reside there. Using gut-stringed violins, viola, cello, bass, percussion, upright and grand pianos, synthesiser, harmonium and more, Arthur Jeffes and his cohorts have crafted a vivid series of panoramic sonic landscapes, that are as rich in cerebral poignancy as they are in emotional depth. Bookended by the atmospheric ambient piano pieces 'Winter Sun' and 'Midnight Sun', the album traverses glacial minimalism with ease, combining their signature contemporary classical panoramas, such as the melancholic yet upbeat lead track 'At the Top of the Hill, They Stood...' and the colossal cinematic piece 'Chapter', with the crystalline folktronica on 'Pythagorus on the Line Again a re-visiting and continuation of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra's 1993 Union Cafe song on the principles of harmonics. Handfuls of Night began life after Greenpeace commissioned Jeffes to write four pieces of music corresponding to four breeds of penguins, to help raise awareness for the endangered Antarctic seas. A fundraising evening at Earth in Hackney followed, where Penguin Cafe premiered the four songs named after their feathered counterparts to a sold out audience; the rousing contemporary folk inflected 'Chinstrap', the mournful and minimalistic 'Adelie', stoic and rhythmic 'The Life of an Emperor' and the wistful, string-laden 'Gentoo Origin'.