CORY STRAND "BUYER'S MARKET" CDR (AOW 349)

Released in conjunction with Big Hole's "Proxy" set, this album features my own rework of some Peter Sotos material, his deeply disturbing spoken word/sound collage album "Buyer's Market."  I completed this piece quite awhile ago but felt working with Sotos material might be just a bit too obvious, as his themes and interests are so closely intertwined with a certain aesthetic strain of HNW work.  But after hearing The Ebony Tower and Gender Sabotage's gargantuan split release based on Sotos' Selfish, Little: The Annotated Leslie Ann Downey, i felt that this material could indeed be handled deftly, an audio echo of Sotos' terrifying vision of violence and cultural culpability.
My piece is a 73 minute ANW style composition, deeply bassy and rich in distorted textures.  I find it very unsettling and somewhat creepy to listen to, perhaps owing to the disturbing nature of the original recording, but perhaps also owing to the overall black hole style sonic approach i took to the material.
Packaged in a DVD case in a limited edition of 5 hand-numbered copies.  $10 ppd. in the United States, $26 rest of world.

ORDER HERE: www.altarofwasterecords.storenvy.com

CORY STRAND "CARRIE AMBIENT" CDR (AOW 354)

One more rework of Donaggio's Carrie score, this time done in a deep slow-motion ambient style.  This is probably my favorite of the three reworks I've done for Carrie, an immersive and vaguely melodic long-form piece of endlessly unfurling ambient textures, oceanic, minimalist, and extremely dense.
Packaged in a DVD case in a limited edition of 5 hand-numbered copies.  $10 ppd. in the United States, $26 rest of world.

ORDER HERE: www.altarofwasterecords.storenvy.com

CORY STRAND "CARRIE REVISITED" CDR (AOW 353)

Another rework of Pino Donaggio's Carrie score, this time done in a scathing, electric, intensely psychedelic harsh noise style.  Carrie is most definitely a Brian De Palma film in that it features some incredible violence, and I felt it suitable to honor that aesthetic with a piece more indebted to that aspect of the film.  This rework should please fans of my older soundtrack reworks-this is very much in the vein of those earlier releases, with lots of destroyed melodies and torrents of distortion erupting forth from everywhere.
Packaged in a DVD case in a limited edition of 5 hand-numbered copies.  $10 ppd. in the United States, $26 rest of world.

ORDER HERE: www.altarofwasterecords.storenvy.com

CORY STRAND "CARRIE: A REINTERPRETATION" 3CDR (AOW 348)

Gorgeous, lush three disc rework of Pino Donaggio's score for Brian De Palma's 1976 horror film Carrie.  Carrie belongs to the school of better Stephen King film adaptations, alongside Kubrick's The Shining, Cronenberg's The Dead Zone, and Carpenter's Christine, and Donaggio's score is equally expert, a barrage of deep orchestral anxiety that perfectly reflects the growing inner turmoil, anger, and desperation of the film's protagonist.
My rework is deeply melodic, shot through with all manner of ghostly melodies and echoes, very much in the Tim Hecker vein of atmospheric sound.  I find it quite beautiful, a fine counterpoint to the violence and humiliation that characterize the film.
Packaged in a DVD case and released in a limited edition of 5 hand-numbered copies.  $20 ppd. in the United States, $36 rest of world.

ORDER HERE: www.altarofwasterecords.storenvy.com

SHE WALKS CROOKED "A DRIFT UPON THE NIGHT" 6CDR SET (AOW 338)

A massive and incredibly caustic set of epic-length HNW pieces from She Walks Crooked, here working in a more aggressive and depressing mode than I've heard from the project.  Those looking for severity and unrelenting WALL horror will not be disappointed by the work here, as Scott has created an uncompromisingly brutal suite of intense and gargantuan noise slabs that will completely obliterate the mind of any listener.  Composed under considerable personal duress, these six walls reflect a difficult moment in their creator's life, an outburst of depression and anger that stands as one of the most caustic sets of HNW i've heard.  Very honored to be releasing this through AOW; for me, this is very much one of the new modern benchmark releases of HNW.  "Winter's Abandon/Nothing Will Ever Change," the final disc of the set, is one of those instant classic walls for me, up there with Clive Henry's "Absolute End" in terms of pure black-hole devastation.
Packaged as six separate albums housed in DVD cases, each with their own imagery/artwork (this is really one of the loveliest AOW sets to date, as well.)  Released in a limited edition of 10 hand-numbered copies.  $40 ppd. in the United States, $53 rest of world.

ORDER HERE: www.altarofwasterecords.storenvy.com

CORY STRAND "CAROL: A REINTERPRETATION" 14CDR SET (AOW 346)

My rework of Carter Burwell's score to Todd Haynes' period story of fleeting moments, agonizing yearning, and the intense power of true, electric connection, Carol.  As always with Burwell's work, there is a beautiful sense of restraint and longing present in the music, tethered to a glassinine and fragile beauty.  My rework of the score is presented as a set of 12 EP length compositions (each between 9 and 60 minutes) that take Burwell's haunting textures and melodies and transform them into stagnant, troubling, deep oceans of unctuous drone.
The soundtrack rework proper is 12 discs, packaged in an oversize DVD case, with an additional 2 CD set of "Coda" pieces packaged in a fold-over cover and housed in a clear plastic bag.
Released in a limited edition of 5 hand-numbered copies.  $60 ppd. in the United States, $73 rest of world.

ORDER HERE: www.altarofwasterecords.storenvy.com

CORY STRAND "FALLING DOWN: A REINTERPRETATION" 10CDR + DVD-R SET (AOW 343)

Lengthy rework of the soundtrack to one of my very favorite films, Joel Schumacher's Falling Down.  I saw this back in 1993 when it originally was released and it's been a fave ever since; having just written a paper on it for school, I feel its lost none of its incendiary or melancholic power.  As poignant an examination of the enervating, withering effects of capitalist modernity as can be offered, Falling Down serves as a bitter warning against unfettered social and economic "progress," and as a perfect diagnosis of the crippling malaise that permeates the very nature of being in the world.  As Freud wrote in Civilization and its Discontents, "reality is untenable,"; regressing into neurotic behaviors offers one of the only salves against life's unending difficulty.
The soundtrack to Falling Down is a masterful exercise in tense and ominous drones by James Newton Howard; in working with his score I have sought to preserve that tension and elongate it.  The rework is 10 discs of the score in drone mode, with an HNW "totality" recording of the film's audio track to finish it off.
Packaged in 11 separate DVD cases, utilizing imagery from and ephemera associated with the film.  Released in a limited edition of 5 hand-numbered copies.  $100 ppd. in the United States, $113 rest of world.

ORDER HERE: www.altarofwasterecords.storenvy.com