Boredom Knife — Epidermis Sessions I

Here’s a pro release from Rural Isolation Project featuring two tracks, amounting to just over half an hour, from Boredom Knife. The digipak is decorated with abstract images suggesting rust and deterioration, and features the barest of information - as in, next to nothing. Epidermis Sessions I straddles several noise genres, mashing them up to create something that’s pleasingly old-fashioned to my ears.

The first track, ‘Toothmarks,’ is just over 17 minutes, and begins with some solid stereo noise which is joined by nice reverbed feedback until a heavily mangled sax breaks in. From thereon, Boredom Knife present a dense wall of fast moving noise, feedback, drone, and processed vocals echoing away - with some distorted saxophone here and there. In this way, Boredom Knife blend harsh noise with a relentless HNW-ish feel, nods to Power Electronics with the vocals, droning sections (here effectively pursued through vocal looping and layering), and other elements like the sax and some drum machine rhythms. You could summarise it as PE at its most abstracted. However, the atmosphere is not overly dark, and at times even feels playful.

‘Avulsions’ is up next, just shy of 16 minutes, and batters from the start, with fast paced percussive harsh noise, vocal moans, and high pitched noise squalls that flit in and out; underneath all of this there’s a hovering, undulating bass drone. There’s a lot going on, and often it pulls in different directions; at the end of the track there’s a sustained section of shouting, and this combined with the rest of the piece makes me think of older projects like, for example, Hanatarash, where it was noise as destruction and aggression, but not necessarily self-consciously dark, or a studied darkness. Instead it’s more noise as liberatory catharsis, and I feel there’s echoes of that in Boredom Knife here.  

Epidermis Sessions I didn’t blow me away, but it did take my ancient ears back to a time when noise was less codified and segregated, though this same aspect makes it harder to recommend it to specific audiences. That said, I think harsh noise fans will find something here, as well as folks into more absurdist Chocolate Monk-ish stuff who wish to venture into harsher terrains.