
Kikuri - Pulverised Purple [Victo - 2008]Kikuri brings together two legendry, often noise bound experimental and oriental artists; Masami Akita- better know as Merzbow & Keiji Haino. Pulverised Purple is the projects first born & it mangers to meld seething noise, creative & inventive sound making and often a real emotional resonance/ atmospheric air. Starting things off is one of the highlights of the album the rather lengthily titled That which will rise from death here to night will go hand in hand with a glittering echo burdened with the sin of Joy. The track at firsts introduces low level noise manipulation with: caustic trails of sound, clouds of static and tight wiry percussive turns. As time goes on this bent hauntingly harmonic solo choir like sonic is introduced, which along with the controlled noise elements creates an deeply emotional and at times very harrowing air with its mixture of violence and sad beauty. Later on the wonderfully titled Give me back the colour you stole from my guts meddles tight jazzy rock drum freak- outs with noise stretch ‘n’ burns. With later on in the track quite a groove building up with stuck ‘n’ nasty cow bell element chugging along side the noise storms. Really the whole album is very rewarding with each track trying something a little diffrent to each other. With the only the title track over staying it’s welcome and running out of creative steam; the tracks built around harmonic and atmospherics rock guitar texturing/ soloing that has at times has almost a blacked 70’s vibe to it. On top of this are chopping/ feeding static textures and oscillation's - the tracks rewarding enough in it’s tight grim air for the first ten or so minutes; but at the half a-hour mark it’s painful over stretched. Anyway on the whole the albums a very consistent and varied collaboration between these two oriental experimental master.      Roger Batty
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