Yotzeret Sheydim — The Book Of Radiance
The Book Of Radiance is a dizzily intense, but often highly creative journey into harsh noise craft, circuit bending, simmering organ tones, and seared-to chanted vocals. The release is themed around mystical Jewish texts from medieval times, and the seven-track release is certainly one hell of a varied, at times surprisingly moving noise ride.
The release appeared in November of last year on New Jerseys Mechanical Presence Records. It came in two editions- a CDR, or digital download- I’m reviewing the first of these. The CD comes presented in a manila card sleeve, which features a stuck-on monochrome cover of the release's name surrounded by a length of chains. With the whole thing been wrapped in a length of copper wire.
The Yotzeret Sheydim project has been active since 2021- and is all the work of Pittsburgh-based Alyx II- a trans-gender noise creator and jewellery maker. The project has around ten releases to its name- with a creative and often cross-sub-genre noise sound. I first became aware of Yotzeret Sheydim for its more straight wall noise work, but have been highly impressed how Alyx II has expanded/ pushed the elements in her sound, which has easily made the project one of the most creative projects working in the wider noise scene today.
The seven tracks here run between five and thirty-nine minutes, and as I’ve already mentioned there is a fair bit of sound ground & mood covered. We open with “The Sexualization Of The Godhead” this starts with a baying circuit bending take on a Yiddish melody- before diving head first into a shifting ‘n’ swirling blend of demonic barks and wails, stretching ‘n’ shredding harsh noise craft, and playful to intense circuit bending. Moving on we have “Do Violent Books Make Us Violent People?” which finds atmospheric Jewish chants, run through with a ripping ‘n’ slamming mixture of forking, smashing, and junk-dragging noise matter.
There’s “Simon Bar Yochai Contracts Pox and Begs The Lord For Nothingness Once Again” which finds water-touched bouncing electro toning, forking 'n' galloping noise matter, and manic demon vocalising. With the album playing out with the lengthy runtime of “If Dying On The Blade Is A Mitzvah, Then I'll Play Rabbi and Executioner” it starts off with a mix of run-away ‘n’ pitch altering drum machine tones, noisy circuit bend 'n' wail, and the occasional stretched vocal bay. Before shifting into an extremely unbalancing & woozy sensation-inducing mix of slowly snaking siren waves & dotting electro-morse code dwelling.
The Book Of Radiance is another very impressive and impactful release from Yotzeret Sheydim, really bringing to fiery, moving, and at times playful sonic life these mystical Jewish texts. Sadly the physical version is now out of print- but the digital is still very much available here, and let us hope down the line the CDR gets a repressing- as this is a very skilful and truly inspired take on the noise form.