Masami Akita & John Duncan — The Black Album
I’d hope that Masami Akita will need little or no introduction to readers of M[m], as really he’s the worlds most known noise artist- who’s released a truly huge body of work since the late 70’s. John Duncan has also been creating work since the late 1970’s- his mix of noise & experimental soundscaping utilizes short wave radio,field recordings & voice- over the years he has lived & worked in Los Angeles, Tokyo and Amsterdam. Akita & Duncan have worked together in the past, but The Black Album is the pair’s first recorded collaborative work.
The release consists of three lengthy & untitled tracks(one on side A, and two on Side B). The first track is built around a fairly dense mat of thin glitch bound noise textures- these take in malfunctioning computer like spluttering & pitch darting tones, condescended down electro cluttering & buzzing, blurred & muffled noise haze sweeps, and reduced down electro junk detail. The track is very active & seemingly increases in it’s depth & detail as it progresses. I found this track rewarding in it’s shifting detail, but I wish they’d been a bit more of a variation in the range of textures used, as tonally it all stays fairly mid-to-lower high ranged through-out.
The second track really utilizes a similar sounding tonal noise range & textural selection as the first track; but this time the mesh of textures has quite a dense electro & glitching rain shower feel to it. As with the first track the mat of sounds shift a fairly bit along the tracks length, but once again there is no great movement in it’s all over structure, and fairly constantly within the tracks guts you get this toll & locked machine/ metal-on-metal tone.
Lastly three track is more of a mix of noise texturing & factory like field recordings. It’s built around a selection of skittering, jittering & slicing electro tones, which are underfed by what sounds like field recordings of three or four folk lift trucks moving & shifting things- so you get a dense mesh of droning machines tone, banging’s, gluttering & shifting tones. The track spends most of it’s running time as dense textured map, but in it’s last few minute very effective electo chopping & hissing mid-to-higher range pitches are added to great effect.
The green vinyl comes in a black outer cover which features shotgun blast patterns, which reveals the garish pink inner sleeve.
All in all this fairly effective collaboration, though nothing earth shattering- all three tracks kept my attention through-out, but I’d say side B’s second track was the most effective due to the mix of field recordings & fairly subtle yet detail rewarding noise matter.