The early-'80s/'90s recordings of British noise/industrial-leaning rock band
Skullflower laid serious groundwork for the experimental scenes that would follow. Along with U.K. contemporaries
Coil and
Ramleh, as well as acts in different countries working in the same noisy realms (
Dead C in New Zealand and Japan's
High Rise),
Skullflower's psyched-out blasts of noisy chaos were made with the same guitar, bass, and drums instrumentation of far tamer and more traditional bands. The
Kino series collects the group's earliest, often impossibly hard to find material, with
Kino II offering a remastered look at the group's first ultra-heavy and sludge-predicting album
Form Destroyer, originally released in 1989. Along with the original album, listeners are treated to four additional tracks from the same era, two of which were previously unreleased. ~ Fred Thomas