Knurl — Cryocarbazin

Cryocarbazine is a long-form slice of dense and moody harsh noise from Canadian project Knurl. The just over an hour-long track is created by a bowed stainless-steel source, and it’s an intensity-yet-entrancing trip in baying, billowing, and droning noise-making. The release appears as either a CD or digital download on Austin, Texas-based Rural Isolation Project- and as far as I can gather the label still have copies.

The CD is presented in a black four-panel digipak- this feature on its front a close-up picture of some kind of metal gradient adjustment. With minimal white and red text against the plain black background. A simple affair really- but it works for what we have here.
 
Behind Knurl is Toronto based Alan Bloor, and in his day job, he works as a welder. He’s been active with the project since 1994, clocking in five pages of releases on discogs- with the project generally having a good name within the noise scene for consistent and rewarding noise. I know I’ve heard Knurl material in the past but can’t recall when- but I must say I found this track most effective as long-form noise attacks go.

 
The single/ self-titled track here slides in at the one hour and seven minutes mark. It’s built around a thick and unrelenting blend of distant/ droning low-end, buzzing and grinding mids, and more swirl/ baying highs. The whole thing remains very full and dense through-out, though it’s never goes ‘wall’ like as the tonally layers sort of swoop, shift and bay over each other. So one moment you’ll be in grating mid-tone like sparking showers of sound, the next in searing and forking forest of highs ‘n’ mids, or drifting into more brooding and grimly atmospheric lower tone droning. If I was to compare this to anything I’d say a tour round some isolated factory out in the middle of nowhere, at points your engulfed and impressed by the seemingly constant rolling power of the machines, at others you want to cover your ears- though find the swirl grind somehow appealing, though at others you get hints of some creepy and darkly pungent vibes- either in the factories shadows or just at the corn of your eye. Though the tonal layers do shift and blend- the patterns/ tone of the whole thing does remain firm/set, though in much more of a droning noise than wall noise manner.
 

So in finish up this review- I say if you enjoy the denser and more droning side of harsh noise- I’d say you’ll certainly find Cryocarbazine of interest. Head over to the label direct to pick up a copy of this release here