Scott Miller / Lee Camfield / Merzbow — No Closure
No Closure delivers 2 tracks in little over 40 minutes. Track 1, simply titled I, takes the listener through a winding corridor of guitar drone and noise fusion. The piece starts out with some psychedelic guitar drone, that for some reason reminds me of Iron Butterfly. Merzbow works in some spritely, noise scumbling in the background. While the noise parts are certainly present, the guitar droning takes the lead in track’s first opening salvos. Some additional stringed instrumentation and synthy bits also interplay in the background. At about 6:50 in, things seem to flip flop a bit and the noise becomes more present. Straightforward, yet muddy sounding guitar drone furthers mixes it up with popping, squelchy noise bits. Some beats ping-ponging back and forth enters the fray before blissing out to some warm, ambient guitar drone.
Track 2, titled II, brings in the percussion and pushes it front and center. The track opens with clanging percussive beats and briskly moving synth work. Heavy guitar colliding with the percussion creates a slow moving funeral march vibe. At 7 ½ minutes in things fade out and following a brief respite, some blown out percussion rears it’s ugly head again. Chunky, dark drone parts, thunderous percussion, and noisy sputtering take up the tracks mid section. It’s all very majestic sounding. At 16:20 in things fade out again before the track’s final conclusion. Once again thunderous percussion booms away only to recede into ambient, atmospheric drone.
I always tend to gravitate towards Merz’s collaborative works and No Closure is another great entry in this long tradition. It’s a shame that this gathering of collective output is apparently to be the first and only album to be released...or so I’ve read. Regardless, a great audio documentation of these 3 minds at the top of their game. Highly recommended!