UGFC – Ost LP Grom & Lord Records 2021
Following 2019’s Stalinist God (reviewed here), this is the second album I have heard from UGFC, which incidentally is an acronym of Uncle Grasha’s Flying Circus. As an immediate observation, Ost is again concerned with high calibre martial framed ambient-industrial soundscapes, containing a distinct hint of satire which I can’t quite put my finger on. But to also start with a comparison, with its prevalent tone of obscure martial industrial atmospheres Ost it is very much reminiscent of early Laibach, or other notable martial industrial projects like Toroidh.
Mother (Guilt) acts as a short introduction, framed around rolling kettle drums and sampled nationalist type song, which leads into Mother Lied (Zeppelin Dance). Here it features a central unwavering drone, slow martial percussive thrum, while whispered vocals and wailing air raid siren provides a brooding warlike mood. Von Richthofen’s Flying Circus then steps up the pace a notch with faster-paced industrial loops, loose mechanised clatter, and further nationalistic song sampling, while the back half of track is far more atmospherically melancholic despite maintaining a rougher industrial edge. On Side B the lengthy Hüzün Horns features ‘post-battlefield ambience’ at its finest, with thick bass-toned sub-orchestral drones and windswept barren bomb-blasted landscapes. The final track East Is The Best edges into anthemic territory with rousing martial percussion, industrialised loops, and gruff vocals which are later replaced with lamenting chants and church bells.
Not an overly long album by any stretch (totally just over 30 minutes), Ost still maintains a strong mood and atmosphere throughout which edge towards a more ambient-industrial mood overall. But of note, Ost functions to strongly demonstrate that it is still possible to create interesting results with a broader martial industrial style, which for a number of years fell out of favour due to the genre becoming rather tired and derivative through the mid to late 2000’s.
noise receptor 