Churner — Methoddity

I’m starting to realize that this whole “noise” thing is a little like the blues: it’s as much about a personality behind the work as the work itself. There’s your average bar-band bluesman with a slide guitar, and then there’s Howlin’ Wolf. Likewise, there’s your average basement-produced wall-o’-noise CD-R, and then there’s Merzbow. Or the Hanatarash. Or a good half of the Los Angeles Free Music Society, where the humor was right there in your face, not buried six levels down in a soil-bed of sullen irony.

Thoughts like this occupied me while I sat patiently through the three very, very loud tracks on Churner’s Methoddity CD-R. They’re made of all the pieces you’d expect them to be made of: feedback, clangorous shrillness, rumbling, hissing, stop-and-start attacks, incoherent spoken segments, and 60-cycle hum. What’s missing is any sense of an outlook, an attitude, anything beyond the usual endurance testing that has become the sine qua non for most of this kind of product.

I should be as honest as I can. There is an audience for this material, and they will probably read my description of it and go pick up a copy. They will regret neither the shipping and handling nor the time it took to rip the disc to their computer. Me, the only fun I had was the smile I cracked when that voice at the beginning of the disc groaned “You have been warned!”, all Hammer Horror-style. It was a little tiny smile, and its lifespan was best measured with a stopwatch.