Rising Sun On The Morning After

"Rising Sun On The Morning After" – 2004 – N.C.C. – 3” CDr – Limited to 28

Tracks:

1. Inches From Your Sleeping Face 4:27

2. Oral Sex With A .357 10:30

3. Blood Drenched And Smiling Into The Sun 5:30

Total Length: 20:27

Beauty And Pain
Clint Listing

Ah harsh mind numbing noise with a driving force of harsh harsh industrial.

This is some tense sounds going on here. The pain factor of these sound sources.

I don't know how to explain it correctly but the crunchness of this release is

just making me so god damn pleased.

This is just the soundtrack I need in my current pissed off state.

I now need to go find more of this Mr. Marax recordings as see if they hold up

to this stellar 15 minutes of insanity.

Marax have here mastered the deconstruction of sounds and have brought me to my knees.

The artwork on this 3" is 1st rate too. N.C.C. has something special going on here.

Worm Gear
Scott Candey

This is a 3 song 3" CDR, and conveys a more volatile side of Marax. "Inches From Your Sleeping Face" uses gritty shifting high tones and fluttering statics to produce a biting tension for nearly 3 and a half minutes before the direction shifts into mid range noise swashes. "Oral Sex With a .357" comes in at 10 and a half minutes and is only slightly less subtle than its title. Built around a looping throb, heavy low distortions and shrill high end ping pong off of each other at varying pulse rates. Stop and starts eventually find their way in giving it a spastic random flow, but the sounds stay more or less consistent until the last couple minutes where it all becomes more feverish. "Blood Drenched And Smiling At The Sun" closes this out with some sharp edged harsh mid and high textures and what sounds like distant frantic screams or sampling looped deep in the background. A more piercing and abrasive side of Marax than those seen on the "For The Love of Death" series, but nice to see a project not afraid of some clear diversity in its catalog.

Kophinos

Kophinos - #8 in “For The Love Of Death” series

2004 – Crucial Blast – CDr – Limited to 25

Track:

1. Forgotten (Before My Body Was Cold)

Total Length: 47:09

The Last Dance

The Last Dance - #7 in “For The Love Of Death” series

2004 – Crucial Blast – CDr – Limited to 25

Tracks:

1. The Sun Offers No Light

2. I Too Shall Pass

3. Razor-lines Mark The Hours

4. Ruins Of What Once Was

5. Lost Within The Blackness Within

6. Yesterday Seems It Never Existed

Total Length:

Remembrance Of Failures

Remembrance Of Failures- #6 in “For The Love Of Death” series

2003 – Crucial Blast – CDr – Limited to 25

Tracks:

1. Remembrance Of Failures 5:01
2. Cleansing The Razor For Tomorrow 7:11
3. Respirdal 13:01
4. Fading Ember Of Survival 7:19


Total Length: 32:28

Worm Gear
Scott Candey
This is part 6 in the "For The Love of Death" 12 CDR series, this outing features 4 tracks, just over 32 minutes. This disc opens with the title track, a rumbling drone of a piece, with distant clanks and reverberations peppering the murk. "Cleansing The Razor For Tomorrow" combines low hums with static washes and barely audible vocals and or samples, too quiet to discern that it is anything more than a voice. A slow pulse rises in the mix adding body to the foundation while abstracted tones give the illusion of far away melody. "Respirdal" is a 13 minutes piece rich with a rolling subterranean ambience and quiet echoes, simple but engrossing. "Fading Ember of Survival" blends restrained crackling electronics with a sub-bass throb that eventually swells to panning drifts distortions and piercing highs, and offers the most abrasive portion of the release before fading out gradually to conclude "Remembrance of Failures." This is another nice installment in the series, focusing primarily on subtle dark textures that I think reveal more the more acutely you listen.

Taphephobia

Taphephobia - #5  in “For The Love Of Death” series

2003 – Crucial Blast – CDr – Limited to 25

Track:

1. Quality Of Life Has Long Since Passed (Dead But Breathing)

Total Length: 56:15

Worm Gear

Scott Candey

This is part 5 in the ongoing "For The Love of Death" CDR series working it's way towards 12 chapters. Each release comes in a DVD box, and is limited to a mere 25copies. This installment features one 56+ minutes epic called "Quality of Life Has Long Since Passed (Dead But Breathing)." This is slow moving, gradual and subtle Dark Ambient. Penetrating low end tones shift and emerge atop one another, as restrained elements of a more abrasive nature wade in the distance of the murky foundation... static drifts, reverberating mysteries and so on. There are brief hints of melody or at least melody fragments that reveal themselves sparingly. The track maintains a similar feel throughout, but stirs it's rudimentary elements well, and even over it's lengthy duration, manages to stay engaging. There is a lo-fi quality to Marax's output in general that adds to the atmosphere and feel of his work without effecting the overall sound quality etc... kinda like B-movie horror versus Hollywood horror. The cheaper film stock and less than epic audio recordings somehow give the B-movie more impact, credibility and style.

The Dead Don't Care

The Dead Don’t Care - #4 in “For The Love Of Death” series

2003 – Crucial Blast – CDr – Limited to 25

Tracks:

1. Distant But Deafening Screams

2. The Fires Burn Cold

3. The Day I Am Gone

Total Length: 16:23

Aquarius Records

This is volume FOUR in Marax's 'For The Love Of Death' series of super limited cd-r's (LIMITED TO 25) thematically focused on death and dying. Volume four is quite similar to volume three, with distant rumbles and faraway shimmers, gently panning from speaker to speaker, a hypnotic slow motion pulse, that is joined for the last ten minutes by what sounds like a train crossing signal way off in the distance. Another hyper minimal and very appealing installment in this awesome series.

Taphophile

Taphophile – #3 in “For The Love Of Death” series

2003 – Crucial Blast – CDr – Limited to 25

Tracks:

1. Strange How The Dead Bleed (pt. 1)

2. Strange How The Dead Bleed (pt. 2)

3. Suttee (pt. 1)

4. Suttee (pt. 2)

Total Length: 28:12

Aversionline
7/10Here's the third CD-R in the limited edition "For the Love of Death" series. According to the tracklist there are two lengthy tracks that have each been divided into two parts, but I don't know if it's an error or some sort of mysterious intentional device, but the first portion of each track is merely a few seconds of silence? "Strange How the Dead Bleed" opens up at over 19 minutes of dismal, quiet, subtle dark ambient. You really have to crank the volume to hear anything, and the tones consist mainly of bassy rumbles and drones with some more percussive shuffling sounds coming in after about four minutes. It's pretty repetitive, but it works well as background music. It doesn't seem to demand a great deal of concentration, but it creates an excellent atmosphere. There's a brief bout of light distortion that adds some volume just past the halfway point, but then things sink back to a near silent presence. As things flow towards the end the composition reaches an almost Godflesh-like calm of sinister disharmonic feedback. Very nice. "Suttee" is much shorter, though still rather long at nearly nine minutes. The approach is similar in its sound and repetition, but a bit thicker and cleaner in its use of suffocatingly dense bass tones. It's also a bit more consistently loud (loud meaning "louder" in this case, as compared to the first track) and perhaps more involved. There are some vibrating undercurrents, churning midrange frequencies that at times sound as though their input levels were overloaded with low-end, and some shrill treble cuts into the distance as well (again adding a little bit of unfortunate peak level distortion). As with most Marax material the tastefully lo-fi sound is in fine form. The only thing that bothers me are the aforementioned areas where the levels peak out a bit due to excessive low-end, but other than that things sound fine - I just wish the general output volume was louder. The CD-R comes packaged in a DVD case with black and white inserts that repeat imagery of a grim reaper and the Marax logo. Inside is a tracklist, contact information, and a brief set of text called "Canvas" that basically deals with self-mutilation: "The years have passed and the tears have dried, I wonder why I haven't died? A canvas my arms have become, Of cuts and burns, more will come " The presentation isn't that strong, which is a shame if Marax could step up that level of his work I know he would start to gain the recognition he deserves. Packaging faults aside, Marax is certainly coming into his own and really deserves to score a proper release (i.e. something that's professionally pressed and limited to more than 25 copies so that people can actually hear it). I hope that day will arrive soon.

Aquarius Records

This is volume THREE in Marax's 'For The Love Of Death' series of super limited cd-r's (LIMITED TO 25) thematically focused on death and dying. Where the first volume was slow burning drones ala Lustmord or Organum, and the second volume was griity and granular like a Philip Jeck record, Voulme three pulls it back a little toward a much more ambient excursion. Distant rumbles like passing traffic heard from underwater, with barely audible digital skitter and analog hiss, and occasional far-away feedback. Super minimal, but quite nice. This one would definitely appeal to fans of Bernhard Gunter and John Hudak.