Ivan Tibos.

Collaborations are a trademark, or better: one of the trademarks, when talking about Cryo Chamber. Being one of the most impressive and open-minded labels within the worldwide (Cinematic) Ambient genre, Cryo Chamber released tens of albums that actually are a partnership of two, or more, Ambient artists from all over the globe. I am not talking about splits, but about mutual efforts, in which different musicians join forces in order to create something new, a symbiosis of their individual craftsmanship, canalised into a unique result.

A ‘goliard’ gets often compared to a person who is, or used to be, religious, but who sort of started protesting against the narrow-minded limitations of the church. During the High Middle Ages, goliards were well-educated people, often strongly related to clerical studies, that tried to fight against the hypocrisy of the Roman / Catholic tradition via sarcastic or ironic poetry and chant. It was some kind of anti-clerical protest that penetrated the West-European society almost one thousand years ago.

Thank you for paying attention.

Greek multi-instrumentalist Dimitros ‘Dimon’s Night’ Sakkas did form Inhibitions about twelve years ago, initially assisted by the guttural throat of Coprojunkie (both of them are / were in Humanity Zero too, by the way).

Anti-pacifists will recognize the name ‘rds-220’ as an extremely powerful Russian nuclear bomb from that time when West and East weren’t best friends yet. Nowadays, that did change, haha. No, I am not going to turn this story into a political one, but an ‘rds-220’ was used as propaganda material from the former Soviet government against the western enemy – the Iron Curtain story, you know…

Depressive Black Ambient Records is a young label from Poland, for which I recently reviewed their first release, created by Removed From This Life. Because the label finds no reason to inhale and exhale, just focusing on chemicals and anesthesia, you can guess that any joy of life does not make sense. Or does it? Indeed it does not, though I have to admit that all releases I have heard (and I’ve been listening to all six of them, in the meantime – and damn yeah, all of them will surely be reviewed) do bring joy in my life.

I had not heard about this act, Drabataturk, but apparently it is a new project from the Russian Federation. This review deals with their first album, untitled, which gets released via the fine German (Black) Metal label Pesttanz Klangschmiede. Besides the digital version (via the label’s Bandcamp-page), there are 300 hand-numbered digi-sleeve copies, released with a very remarkable twelve-page booklet.

Not that long ago, I got in touch with a young lady from Belarus, Olga Kann. I didn’t immediately recognize her name, but still I had to know some of her works, for she is quite ‘famous’ as visual artist (besides painter / drawing artist, she’s also photographer and sculptor, by the way, with a very open-minded artistic vision, drawing influences from different angles).

All roads lead to decay…

The story of Georg Trakl isn’t a jolly one. His youth was disastrous, and so was his professional life, though being forced. Georg was an expressionist artist (and scientist) from Austria (born in a time that European borders did differ from the current ones, for Hungary and Austria were like one sole country), with a youth that was not exactly that easy for a kid. Anyway, I guess you can find some biographical education on the net.

I do know Tino Thiele from his activities in Wulfgar and Metamorph especially, although this guy has / had some other (smaller) (solo) projects too. And not that long ago I was happily surprised (indeed, I got attacked by the emotion ‘happiness’ somehow, but it didn’t kill me), and positively amazed (also ‘positivism’ tried to break me, but I stood up, raised my fist, and survived once more), when I heard that he joined forces with Aleksey Korolyov in this latter’s superior project Abigorum.

Even though this band was formed about a decade ago, they did not release anything decently yet – okay, with exception of a couple of independently released EP’s. IATO actually as formed by some (former) Punk Metal / Hardcore musicians (the band grew from the remnants of defunct Ejaculazione HC), and they did record two mini-albums during the first half of last decade (2012 and 2014, to give you the correct information). Then things turned into ear-deafening silence, but the band did not dissolve.