Neurot Recordings Deep Cut #3: Final - 3

With the DEEP CUTS series, Neurot Recordings revisits the depths of our catalog, heralding the obscure, occasionally unsung and indisputably influential artists that we have had the honor of releasing. Our hope is to bring attention to the influential works that we have helped bring into the world. We believe these releases make up the core of who we are as a label.

DEEP CUTS #3

FINAL - 3

NR042

RELEASED: 2006

Justin Broadrick is one of those rare humans out there in the world that seems to be driven by the exploration of sound, with a similarly-evolving trajectory in art and music that we have. When we first met, we had both been around long enough to carve our own unique marks in the sonic landscape. Neurosis was, in part, inspired by Godflesh and the way they changed the sound of heavy music forever. As much as we found the need to deconstruct our rock band format and distill sound into its pure essence, Justin - alongside Diarmuid Dalton - seemed to be doing the same with his project, FINAL. In the first years of Neurot when we actually made the decision to release music other than our own, thus curating our own brotherhood of sound, Justin was one of the first people we wanted to work with.

In 2006, we finally got that chance, releasing Broadrick and Dalton’s FINAL: 3. It is a contemplative journey of hidden melody in a dreamlike haze: sonic cloud-like shapes, dissolving and reforming with an uplifting bliss. We’re proud to have had a hand in seeing it come to life. — Steve Von Till

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ON SALE NOW, AT THIS LOCATION.

Presenting Neurot Recordings Deep Cut #2: Skullflower's Strange Keys to Untune God's Firmament

With the DEEP CUTS series, Neurot Recordings revisits the depths of our catalog, heralding the obscure, occasionally unsung and indisputably influential artists that we have had the honor of releasing. Our hope is to bring attention to the influential works that we have helped bring into the world. We believe these releases make up the core of who we are as a label.

DEEP CUTS #2

SKULLFLOWER - STRANGE KEYS TO UNTUNE GOD'S FIRMAMENT

NR067

RELEASED: 2009

SKULLFLOWER is transcendental sonic bliss. The band blew my fucking mind with IIIrd Gatekeeper in the early '90s. I was exploring drone music, psych guitars, freakish industrial music - but SKULLFLOWER did it in a way that felt so perfect, using rock instruments to create environmental waves of heavy dark trance music. Soon after, they unleashed Obsidian Shaking Codex - again, it was PERFECT! Exactly what I needed and craved. I longed to disappear into its mind expanding nature. "Diamond Bullet" followed by "Smoke Jaguar" ... go find it and check it out. Fast forward 16 years or so and we had the great fortune to get in contact with Matthew Bower and the honor to be able to release Strange Keys to Untune God's Firmament. This incarnation of SKULLFLOWER was exploring even darker sonic territory. It is best said on the words from our website:

Strange Keys to Untune God's Firmament evokes Wagnerian sonic bombast, a Nietzschean worldview, and a warlike cry of rebellion against the false, encased in a whirlwind both psychotropic and psychoacoustic. Each listen brings new themes to the forefront. Not easy listening by anyone's standards, this is not for the faint of heart, but instead for those willing to submit and immerse themselves in the deep thick waters of self transformation. - Steve Von Till

PURCHASE SKULLFLOWER'S 

STRANGE KEYS TO UNTUNE GOD'S FIRMAMENT, 

ON SALE NOW, AT THIS LOCATION.

Introducing Neurot Recordings Deep Cuts & Deep Cut #1: Zeni Geva's 10,000 Light Years

This new series of communications from Neurot Recordings will revisit the depth of our catalog. We're calling it DEEP CUTS, and our hope is to bring attention to these amazing artists and their sounds. We will focus not only on the obscure and unsung, but also the historically significant and influential works that we have had the honor of releasing. 

DEEP CUTS #1

ZENI GEVA - 10,000 LIGHT YEARS

NR011

RELEASED: 2001

ZENI GEVA is one of the most punishing and relentlessly devastating bands to ever burst your skull open, crushing blow after blow with only slight moments of reprieve in a psychedelic vortex.

Formed in Tokyo in 1987 and led by renowned experimental noise artist KK Null, this explosive and innovative rock unit was spawned out of the unique Japanese extreme noise scene. The sounds emanating from across the Pacific were harsh, challenging, and alien to most music heads in the west.

We were first introduced to their music by Mason Jones of Charnel Music, an early champion of independent noise from Japan. He arranged for us to play with ZENI GEVA at the Kennel Club in San Francisco in 1992. After seeing them live and listening to their early records, we were completely blown away. Drawing comparisons to certain artists or movements in heavy music seems rather pointless, as they completely stand on their own unique mountain, but I will give it a shot just to be able to put up some signposts: somehow they combined the crushing, slow burn anger of Swans, the aggression of hardcore, the noise rock guitars of the Midwest and also make you think of the progressive nature of King Crimson, or things more cosmic, but all from a unique and original perspective.

We released 10,000 Light Years back in May 2001, the band's seventh album. Recorded by Steve Albini at Chicago's Electrical Audio, the album features Null - long-known for making his own instruments - creating a frenzy of static and distortion from own electrical creation, the "nulltron." -Steve Von Till

PURCHASE ZENI GEVA'S 10,000 LIGHT YEARS, ON SALE NOW, AT THIS LOCATION.