C.C.C.C — Early Works(cd boxset)
Unfortunately it’s a little bit of a hit and miss affair- the problem is a chunk of tracks revolve around more improvised & theatrical sound play, which really need visuals to support and make sense of them,Clearly they did put on a impressive and disturbing show as the inside cover pictures of a semi- naked women dripping wax on herself suggest. On their own just as audio there just a little lifeless and sadly dull in places. The worse offender in this category is the first track on disk one Live at Gospel#1 from December 1990 – it’s basically just over 25 minutes of unrewarding and rudimentary feed back buzz, haphazard guitar noise and later female wails and noise- it just all sounds very amateurish, pointless & tiresome with out the visuals.
But all is not lost there are some good to great moments on offer that shine on their own audio merits, take the second 26 minute track live at the Gospel #2 recorded some months after the first, it ushers in unerving guitar feedback folds that drop into a great nasty sounding rhythmic old school industrial work-out with banging pipes, steel ect, the guitar underneath making sinister feedback patterns. Or much of the last two disks that shows their material becoming more noisy, dense and layered. Mixing in more layers guitar, Synth, electronics, bass and female wailing/ voices to give a very rewarding audio sound soup, where all manner of rewarding elements appear from swirling gloomy electro waves, to metallic grimness, to black psychedelic clouds of sound .
The set is topped off with a 12 page interview booklet with collective member Fumio Kosakai which makes interesting reading. On the whole it’s a nicely put together set, it’s just a pity there couldn’t have been visuals too. Of interest to long term fans of the project or early 90’s noise/ improvised work-outs fans or noise historians.