Mb — Mectpyo/Blut
The two discs come in a glossy black & white mini gatefold, and this takes in crude monochrome artwork from the original tapes that features what looks like old photos of Nazi's- with their eyes & mouths crossed out. The release comes in an edition of 250 copies.
Each release takes up its own CD, and each release takes in two twenty plus minute tracks. And what we have here is extremely crude, sloppy & nasty examples of mainly tape looped based noise-making. Each of the tracks here is very dense, warped & mangled- with the loops feed out in a very crude & wonky manner.
So on disc one we have the two tracks from Mectpyo, and these come in the form of "Maidanek Bakterium" & "Musique Belzec". The first track starts with a thick & muffled mesh of the following: a looped clicking percussion hit, a wondering & wavering easy listening snippet, and circling radio crackle. This remains fairly set for the first seven or so minutes, then we move into a series of stretched, aged & warp non harmonic tape machine textures- these swarm & melt around until around the 13 minute mark. At this point things dense back up again- first we get a sampled synth rise, then we're back into swirls of blunt & stacked up tape loops which create a thick maelstrom of sound.
The second track comes opens in a fairly muddled & crowded state- with possible around four or five tape loops running together- we have: a snippet of a dramatic doom rock song, backwards wonky organ weave, & a few layers hissing & scorching tape texture. At the six minute mark we shift into a mix of looped sc-fi laser textures, warbling & bubbling harmonics, and a rising & falling tone shift- all this creates a nicely woozy yet quirky feel. The rest of the track goes through another few loop shifts- going from screaming ‘n’ swirling radio feedback meets wonky harmonic blends, onto to dramatic yet melted funky cop film sound tracking with added tinny percussion.
Moving onto disc two, and we the following tracks "Mutant Brain" & "Mord Bahnhof". The first track opens with a slowly sliding up & down mass of the following: dramatic climbing yet melted harmonic loops, and swirling 'n' baying tape machine sounds. At around the 6.30 things become a little more defined with a looped & glittering melody loop, which is surrounded by swirls of wavering & baying tape sounds- all to create a nicely unwell atmosphere. This track only has one more distinctive shift, when around the 15 minute mark we move into a dense weave of backwards & forwards harmonic snippets which are meshed into a drowsy & noisy Cacophony
The second track opens with a fairly haunting yet seared mixed of slowed & melting vocal sounds, wavering harmonic old soundtrack swoops. For the first few minutes the tracks a bit more pared back & less chaotic than the other tracks here, but fairly soon we return to the dense layers of wavering & baying loops. The only departure from this happens around the 15 minute mark, when the track moves into slowly shifting mass of radio feed back. Of the four tracks here this is my least favourite, as it just seems a little too under worked, unarranged & sloppy- it just all feels too random for it’s own good.
This reissue is certainly worthy as an early snap-shot of primitive loop based noise work from this Italian noisemaker. Though it’s certainly not as clever or inventive as Merzbow’s similar loop based work from the time, but if you after crude, screaming, melting & primitive 80’s noise matter it’s worth a look.