The Haters / Hal Hutchinson — Xylowave 2010 / Amplifaction II

This split cassette release from Der Bünker Records could be argued to represent two generations of performance-based noise: Jupitter Larsen’s The Haters have been around for over thirty years and only started making recordings as a way to signify the beginning and end of their destructive performance art, while Hal Hutchinson is a relatively new kid on the block who, over the past three years, has been making a name for himself through his method of wall-making that also uses the physical agitation of specifically selected objects.

The Haters side provides a generous 45 minute portion of their customary chaos. Relentlessly splashing static is pitted against a low-end electrical hum like opposing magnetic poles wildly repelling each other. The fight causes much skidding and screeching, but, for the most part, neither pole wins, they just keep returning to the bout with an animalistic ferocity. The result is, once more, constantly changing yet always the same. This nihilistic conclusion is loosely alluded to by the title of the piece, xylowave, a word made up by Jupitter Larsen to describe something that “occurs every time an effect has no cause, or a cause has no effect.”

Hutchinson’s side benefits from the way it contrasts strongly with The Hater’s more predictable output. ‘Amplifaction II’ is apparently made by the constant physical movement of scrap metal captured on a four track cassette recorder without recourse to the usual effect pedals or distortion. It’s a much emptier and more original curiosity to the preceding side, coming across initially like the free jazz drumming of, say, a Han Bennink solo, as the brain picks out non-existent fragments of rhythms and fills from Hutchinson’s hurled, scraped and creaking shrapnel. But over the course of 45 minutes the effect evolves into a sort of bruitist farce that describes a long, clumsy cat and mouse chase through loose debris full of trips, falls, near misses and plenty of hits.

This  tape release will be  re-issued in vinyl LP form early next year  by  the German label Aufabwegen