Ala Muerte

---RockARolla
"Chock full of such song titles as ‘Loki’, ‘Grim’, ‘Demeter’, ‘All is Gone’ and ‘She’, and released on the consistently excellent Public Guilt label, SANTA ELENA is a funereally oppressive vocal-heavy collection of devotional songs of loss and despair, minimally (but masterfully) orchestrated by Bianca herself on viola, double bass, guitars, recorders and a peculiar 10-string cuatro from Puerto Rico. Indeed, this is one of the few records I’ve heard in years that at times approaches the desperation and doldrums conjured up by Nico herself. Throughout this album, Bianca is accompanied by ethereal and visceral female harmonies and noises that counterpoint and buffet her performances, as though some sidereal wind were blowing through her soul."---Julian Cope
"This album is the sonic equivalent of that surreal zone between waking and sleeping -- hazy and dreamlike, beautiful yet ominous, a meditative sound that subtly hints at the possibility of nightmares on the horizon. Ala Muerte is essentially Bianca Bibiloni -- while she's occasionally joined onstage by others (including Darsombra's Brian Daniloski, who'll be accompanying her on a forthcoming tour), on record she does all the work, singing and playing everything from guitar and double bass to viola and drums. She favors a minimal, uncluttered folk style augmented by dark, psychedelic sounds in the background courtesy of vaguely dissonant noise and field recordings; the result sounds like a sixties folk singer playing in a field as cities burn behind her. Her beautiful yet amorphous singing owes a lot to the ethereal styles of Bilinda Butcher and Liz Frasier, and her playing -- especially where the acoustic guitar is concerned -- references not only pure sixties folk but the hypnotically repetitive style of mid-period Swans (a point reinforced by her use of uneasy background textures, similar in fashion and effect to the use of textures and field recordings on the haunting Swans classic SOUNDTRACKS FOR THE BLIND). The juxtaposition of folk and neo-classical stylings next to gauzy sheets of sound and choral vocals initially make it sound like a collision between the worlds of folk and shoegazer music, but the addition of those cryptic background textures and a constant tone of uneasiness have more in common with avant-garde territory. Don't be fooled by that tag, though; this is highly melodic, harmonic music, albeit swaddled in a cocoon of smoke and darkness that creates an unsettling balance between the rapturous and the terrifying. You can enjoy this purely on the basis of Bianca's breathy vocals and stellar psych-folk playing, but the sinister ambience in the background means that there's more to this shot of neo-folk than you might realize on first listen."---DeadAngel

“Nymphaea” has been a staple of the darsombra set for 2+ years. Always a crowd favorite, the track was only released on the “untitled” 55 artist, 3CD compilation that PG co-curated in 2007. Now, darsombra has decided to retire the song from the live set. In lieu of a memorial, Public Guilt asked 12 remixers to have a crack at reinterpreting the track. What better way to lay something to rest than to rip it apart and let other people put it back together? From children's toys-based pop songs to blissed-out ambience, throbbing electronica to vocal interpretations sung in Latin, the resulting tracks on Nymphaea are an eclectic and varied bunch.This limited release for PG is a one time pressing of 250 copies and features artwork by Chase Middaugh.
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"Immensely beautiful post-rock crushscapes make up this awesome 3" disc that Public Guilt just put out. For the record, this unassuming looking little disc is one of the best damn things that the Guilt has released to date, and I'll be shocked if this doesn't incur at least a minimal buzz from fans of ultra-blissful, metallic shoegazery. It's a collaboration between Destructo Swarmbots guitarist/vocalist Bianca Ala Muerte and London-based vocal conjuror Max Bondi, and they blend together ethereal vocals with delicate guitar melodies and softly shimmering drones into something that resembles the mellower moments of the Swarmbots fused with slabs of metallic dreampop. The guitar sounds are heavily processed, stretched out into drifting smears of melody and glitchy feedback that sound like it's being shaped by an e-bow. The vocals sound almost wordless, breathy male and female voices lilting over sometimes folky guitar strum, a fragile swirl of beautiful circular arpeggios and angelic throats swimming in ephemeral electronic FX, and when they build into the crashing walls of massive distorted riffage and overdriven noise on tracks like "Still" and "Hiding In A Tiny Space", it's some of the heaviest, most exquisitely beautiful music I've ever heard, like a glitchy Windy And Carl crossed with the crushing dronemetal of The Angelic Process. Highly, highly recommended, and you're going to have to move fast, as this has been released in a super limited edition of only 100 copies in a silkscreened 3-color, 3 panel trifold sleeve with rubber stamped images pressed onto the paper by Bianca herself!" --Crucial Blast ------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------------"The sound here is similar to the DS records, but where those records took guitars and stretched them into spaced out drones and whirring soundscapes, the music on Saturday, is much more obviously guitar music. Swarmbot Bianca Ala Muerte, is joined by Max Bondi, a UK experimental soundmaker, and the two, create a glistening, sublime world of subtly processed steel string buzz, breathless drift, and occasional bursts of fuzzy softpsych buzz. The opening track is a lovely little tangle of playful guitar melodies, woven tightly amidst drifting wordless vocals, dreamy and hypnotic, the second track takes the same guitars and runs them through the computer, transforming them into stuttering soft edged swells, culminating in a crushing slow motion metallic dirge coda, throbbing crumbling heaviness, pulled into bleary eyed sheets of distorted bliss. The rest of the disc tends more toward the lovely and soft focus, with only super brief bits of downtuned crush. Instead, bits of glitched electronics, distant whistling, whirring chordal swirls, choral like voices, are all laid over the framework of delicate spidery guitars, and drifting melodic blur."--Aquarius Records