Side A is taken by Al Qaeda, a relatively new but no less prolific group based around San Francisco’s Scott Miller and friends. Here we are treated to a collage of liquid movements over a steadily cruising rumble as an American male voice languidly narrates a tale rendered incomprehensible through the sort of distortion applied to those wishing to keep their identities secret on crime documentaries. The patterns of speech just about keep their phonemes above the gracefully slow increase in layers before drowning by the middle point under a manic, boiling river of noise that has been getting threateningly nearer all the time. Throughout, the blend of textures is guided by sporadic beacons of bell tones whose undulating trails weave with the ominous atmospherics to create a dream-like journey. Later, similarly uneven percussion is played on what sounds like metal bowls containing water as the slow and even procession subtly strengthens its presence only to fade out fairly quickly, a disappointingly uneventful end to an otherwise dramatic excursion from reality. Ideal listening environment: an abandoned village on the cusp of a storm.

Stan Reed, member of Seattle’s Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, gets Side B for his Dried Up Corpse side project where he presents what is ostensibly a wall of static noise. However, within it is loaded with irrepressible activities much of which suggest the elements: a gale-force wind blasts over quaking earth falling uncontrollably around rising flames inexplicably undiminished by torrential rain. Or it could be merely one hundred contact mics dragged along by a speeding motorcycle. However it is produced, the impression is of high quantities combining to bring about the qualities of unconstrained natural powers. Before the end you find that time is undetectable and thoughts of earthly elements have moved on to imaginings of black holes and super novas such is its suggested scale and intensity. Ideal listening environment: riding in a 20 G centrifuge used for training aviators.