Vomir & Yoshihiro Kikuchi — Collaboration

This cassette, on Gerauschmanufaktur is unusually colourful - for a Vomir release. The nicely printed and designed inlay, is a mix of sombre black and white, and translucent, almost trippy, bright colours. There’s a richness and saturation to these hues, that suggests both intensity and indulgence. Vomir is a name that I’ll assume you know, while Kikuchi is a drummer; together, they both simply do their thing - with no compromise to the other. This results in two tracks, across two sides of tape; both untitled.

Side A starts as it means to go on. In the simplest terms, Vomir provides some wall noise and Kikuchi drums hell for leather, though with metronomic ruthlessness, alongside it. So the listener is presented with a rhythmically stuttering wall, with snare, hi-hat and an odd percussive punctuation poking out. This punctuation is a drum hit (almost definitely the snare) being delayed and phased. And thats it. Its an odd listen. The drums, mostly buried, provide the rhythmic ‘modulation’ of the wall; indeed, at its worst, the track perhaps sounds like a distorted, over-saturated drum-machine. (The dying seconds reveal the unsmothered drums briefly.) The second side is more of the same - though here the drums dominate. Its tempting to just hear this piece as a saturated recording of drums, but the hand of Vomir can be detected in the crusty wall that lurks under the insistent beats. Here, there are no discernible or showy effects on the drum-kit, instead we have the regular punctuation of a crash cymbal - creating different reverberations and sounds depending on how its hit. Its an infinitely more colourful track than the first piece and creates the illusion that there’s more going on - but really its just as ‘static’ and concentrated. (As an aside, it also conjures up nostalgic memories of grindcore demos and rehearsal recordings.)

This is an odd listen. As HNW, it doesn’t really work, yet its methodology stays reasonably close to the stasis that Vomir espouses: neither walls, nor drums, really change or develop. It is, as described above, a wall of noise and drums alongside each other: on paper, its really not that enticing. Yet, curiously, it is engaging. For one thing, I think the brain, presented with such an ‘odd’ coupling, is intrigued to see if and how this coupling works; which encourages a close listen. For another thing, the tape is - deliberately or nay - a tangential homage to the notion that set Merzbow off on his ventures: the idea of extending a blastbeat for a long duration. Lastly, and I mean this in the best way, the project is a novelty; not a throwaway piece of rubbish, but a defiantly unusual recording that just does its thing somewhat quietly.