Andrew Coltrane — Urge to Kill

Andrew Coltrane is a tremendously prolific noise artist.  "Urge to Kill", a roughly 30 minute CDr with 2 untitled tracks, is one of many 2011 releases.  Andrew immediately establishes a gritty, unforgiving tone with the smudged, almost photocopied looking black and red cover art, in which hints of what looks like graffiti are visible.  Like many of the my favorite noise and drone releases, it sounds much better at high volumes, and seems designed to be played on huge speakers or amps.

The 2 minute intro to the first track is perhaps misleading.  The first sound is a deep bassy buzz, and pained, confused wailing yells (in Spanish?) begin to surge through.  It feels like an atmospheric power electronics live set.  Just as the vocals begin to build intensity, the sound cuts out.  The vocals do not return.

Andrew 'starts over', fading in a shroud of unhurried ambient white noise, brooding and irreverent in its ugliness, but not aggressive or urgent.  The undulating swirl of resonances is full on the bottom and top end, but lacking in mids; a wash of trebley feedback scree with a consistent deep tone serving as anchor.  It sounds like it's coming from a guitar amp down the street...  distorted to the core, this is pure feedback without trace of other sound sources.  There are sputtering and crackling interferences, but the deep drone is never really broken again for the rest of the 18 minutes of side A.  As time goes on, there is more movement in the flow of sound, and increasing doses of high frequency feedback squalls.  It appears to amass energy.

The shorter side B (11 minutes) is fuller in sound, and much closer to traditional harsh noise.  The sound space is still huge and reverberant by noise standards; it's more of an enveloping womb than an 'attack on the mind' (a phrase I have seen used to describe various Merzbow recordings).  There are fewer tones and drone elements than in the previous track.  The piece reaches a thunderous density around the 5 minute mark, churning and powerful like rapids in a massive river.  The power of this track compliments the subtlety of the first perfectly.

Ultimately this is a very satisfying piece of noise-making, a multifaceted sound one could meditate over for quite some time, its meaning shifting in the mind.  It is unthinking, tranced out in that lethargic, drugged way the classic 90's Earth albums were (though this sound is not obviously guitar based enough to really connect it to 'doom metal').  I'd recommend this release to any fan of beatific noisey jams.