Tongue Knax — Thee Grand Fidelity

Tongue Knax is a relatively new and mysterious noise project hailing from Japan, supposedly headed by a guy called Lily Vice.  With a number of releases that can be counted on a single hand and a clear obsession with early Mauthausen Orchestra-like sounds, this is a very unusual act and a very welcome breath of fresh air, so to speak.

"Thee Grand Fidelity" is Tongue Knax's latest tape, released by Matteo Castro (Lettera 22, Kam Hassah) 's Second Sleep label. The tape also comes in a limited "Fanatical Xeroxed" version, personally handled by Mr. Lily Vice specifically to make it fit with his very personal and extremely strict vision of how a noise tape should look like.

First side, called "Spellbound", takes Mr. Vice's obsession to the field of sound. This  fifteen minutes piece is a cascade of nasty high pitch feedback, early Broken Flag and Mauthausen Orchestra worship, filthy crunch and hiss and disquieting, rumbling lows. It's clear that there has been a very strong compositional effort, because while it's obvious that "Spellbound" is a mix of various recording sessions, all the layers flow together really well and the track is very coherent and powerful. There are some spots here and there where the feeling of absolute sound obliteration gets weaker either on the right or left channel, but everything regains strength and punch in the matter of seconds.

 

The story is the same on side B, where "Hygiene" seems to come from the same recording sessions of "Spellbound". The crunchy and crackling mass of mangled contact microphone and distorted synth noise serves as a carpet for constant piercing microphone feedback. The assault never ceases and the sounds are absolutely spot-on. This stuff is closer to the minimalist savagery of early Whitehouse than to modern harsh noise. Lily Vice definitely knows what he likes and devotes his sounds totally to being as nasty and old school as possible.

 

The clarity of sound and general quality of the tape gives this away as a modern product, but otherwise this material could easily fit on Broken Flag or Come Org.'s catalogs!. Lily Vice's obsession with raw 80s European power electronics and noise reminds me of  my fellow Italian Encephalophonic's pornographic fixation with lightning-fast Japanese 90s harsh noise. It just fits that these two countries worship each other in this area of sound.  Needless to say, I loved this tape.  I guess you can't really go wrong with this kind of stuff;  more Tongue Knax please!