Whitehouse — Racket
Sure this still has noise elements and could be counted as noise but to a much lesser extent than their past work. I don’t think it will come as too much of a shock to many as there last few album have been slowly moving more and more towards this, but dyed- n-the wool noise fans may find this somewhat disappointing. For my part I think it’s an excellent and rewarding development in their sound showing that have the ability to keep morphing with the best of them and at the same time creating great work
On the rhythmic front you’ll find more demented IDM elements, like lo-grade Auteche on a bad day that surfaced on Asceticists 2006 much more prevalent here. Also there’s wonderful use of African based rhythmic workouts weaving in and out of the material too. On the atmospheric side we find three of the seven tracks here been instrumental and even the tracks with vocal attack on have much more dramatic and atmospheric detail than before. They weaving in almost dissonant modern classical air (via electronics), soured and sinister world music clangs and drones, and hopeless /bleak cimamatic unfolds. I found the instrumental tracks the most rewarding and devastating here, though the vocal rant is still effective and often a little comical, I wonder if it’s time to change tack or remove the vocals altogether because they often feel like they don’t fit with the more detailed sonic atmosphere’s here. There’s only one track Dyad that works all the way through in an effective manner with vocals and that’s down to the backing been less textural and atmospherically complex.
A dark, violent and atmospheric album that shows one of noises originators performing at the height of their game- twisting their sound into new devastating forms