Knurl — Thiocarbamide
Thiocarbamide is an unrelenting album of pure noise. When it comes to noise I usually find I have a very strong bias to Japanese noise. The releases starting in the 1990s of bands like Macronympha and Taint from the USA just didn’t seem to really understand what a good noise record should sound like. Since then a newer generation of bands inside America and Europe have come along and taken noise to a new level and with the help of things like the No Fun Fest have managed to come up with something that stands up to the Japanese noise scene and has almost dragged it into the mainstream. Knurl is almost like the link between those two scenes. On the one hand from a Western country but on the other hand producing an album here that sounds like it could so easily fit into the Merzbow discography.
Thiocarbamide has four tracks and is 51 minutes long. There really is no let up, no light and no shade. From the moment it starts to the moment it finishes it pins you to the wall and assaults your ears. But it does it in a most spectacular way. The liner notes tell me it’s recorded with no over dubs and using violin and metal. The violin is a wonderful choice for a noise record. It has the potential to really screech and wail and it does that without mercy here. The most appropriate comparison you could make with this record is to the early works of the Hanatarash or the late analogue works of Merzbow.
The first three tracks are all quite similar in design and sound. But I’m assuming this was all recorded in one go so you’d expect that. Track four (the longest piece) has more variety in it. It almost sounds like it’s based around an old analogue synth sound and starts off fairly easily on the ear and then builds up and up for the first 5 or 6 minutes until your back into full on noise mode.
As noise albums go this one is pretty faultless. I don’t know how widespread the distribution is on this but it really is well worth tracking down.