Mike VanPortfleet and Tara Vanflower
Mike VanPortfleet “The King of the Tundra” 3”cd. The Folklore of the Moon volume XI.I, , Full Wolf Moon. www.somedarkholler.com
Lycia’s Mike VanPortfleet provides us with a drone for the January moon, which is a departure from his work with (from what I’ve heard of them, anyway). It starts out quietly, and as it progresses, more glacial tones are layered on top, making one think of, as the titles suggests, tundra. That said, as drones go this is pretty pedestrian. It has little of the awe inspiring massiveness of works like Nurse With Wound’s “Salt Marie Celeste” or black despair of the better Lustmord material (I’m thinking “The Place Where the Black Stars Hang”) or the mysterious beauty created by the likes of Andrew Chalk and Mirror. It is competent, and it makes good background music though.
www.myspace.com/mikevanportfleet
Tara Vanflower “Beneath the Moon” 3”cd. The Folklore of the Moon volume XI, , Full Wolf Moon. www.somedarkholler.com
Tara Vanflower, also of Lycia fame, leaves us with a little 3” cd full of echo-laden, delayed vocals, guttural, bestial noises, occasional electronic beats, and unidentifiable subterranean noises. The lyrics I could decipher put this solidly in goth territory, but then again that’s kind of what I expected. Tara’s vocals are quite nice, and this is much more varied than Mike VanPortfleet’s cd, but there is nothing here that made it really stand out for me. Good but not great. I am looking forward to picking up her collaboration, Black Happy Day, with Timothy Renner though. The songs up on their Myspace page are quite beautiful.
www.myspace.com/taravanflowermusic
www.myspace.com/11341317 (Black Happy Day)
