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I’m starting to realize that this whole “noise” thing is a little like the blues: it’s as much about a personality behind the work as the work itself. There’s your average bar-band bluesman with a slide guitar, and then there’s Howlin’ Wolf. Likewise, there’s your average basement-produced wall-o’-noise CD-R, and then there’s Merzbow. Or the Hanatarash. Or a good half of the Los Angeles Free Music Society, where the humor was right there in your face, not buried six levels down in a soil-bed of sullen irony.
This split c62 tape offers up two sides of thick, unforgiving, horror and torture fuelled Harsh Noise Wall matter from West Virginia, USA based Foul and Friedrichshafen, Germany based Cannibal Ritual.
Italy’s Act noir describe themselves as “electro-rock” at “the junction point between Depeche Mode, Perfect Circle, Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails”. This immediately rang alarm bells portending to an aspiration to conform within the boundaries of established mainstream acts. Fears that this arguably snobbish trepidation was borne out of an unreasonable anti-commercial belligerence were rapidly set aside as ‘Shape a New Start’ began the blandest of journeys, expertly sticking to the absolute centre of the middle of the road, generating no interest but plenty of revulsion on the way.
‘Retrospective’ brings together nine (mainly) early & extremely rare releases by the highly respected and influential harsh Noise and HNW innovator Canadian based project The Rita(aka Sam McKinlay). This release offers up nine original (mainly) tape based releases on a single region free data dvd in Wave and MP format. And along with the DVD comes twelve 5.5×8.5 cards printed in black and white which feature original tape art work and details of original releases information. Both DVD in paper shelve and cards are packaged in a heavy duty plastic bag.
'In Eternal Coldness of the Night’ is the first full length album by cold, barren and lo-fi Ukraine based black metal project Shadows Ground. The albums production and song craft summons up the feeling and vibe of Darkthrone's Transilvanian Hunger, yet this still has it’s own cold and often clamouring identity about it with some quite dark and melancholic harmonic riff traits here and there among the dark and cold gitar tone.
Venta Protesix is a Italian based project who specialize in playful and teeth gritting electro shredding noise with a hints of overloading and abused gameboy electronica. ‘Complexed’ is the projects first full length release and first proper CD after they put out a CDR back in 2008.
Yannis Kyriakides is a Cyprus born composer and sound artists who now resides in the uk. He composer/arrangers works that often mix electronic and acoustic elements in a creative and rewarding manner which join together: computer composition, unusual use of sometimes outdated or quirky modern technology and hints of traditional Greek Cypriot music. All to create a sound that is both sleek, modern, atmospheric and edgy yet ever so often takes a trip backwards to the past for hints at the music of Kyriakides homeland and youth.
'Black Porridge Kaleidoscope’ offers up a selection of thick, juddering, slightly noise bound and darkly crude beat-less synth scapes that at first start out vaguely atmospheric and marginally intriguing, but soon becomes more than a little repetitive, bland and samey when spread out over a full albums length.
The flag erected by America’s R&B garage bands of the sixties, made freakier through psychedelics by the end of the decade to become such a dominant force in shaping the punk sounds of the seventies, is still aloft and flying wildly as ever thanks to the likes of France’s Gunslingers. Their second album, Manifesto Zero, is a straight-to-tape set of ecstatic psyche punk that faithfully follows a wayward path laid down by the hardiest of hedonists before them (Texas’ Butthole Surfers and the UK’s Gaye Bykers On Acid often come to mind).
The wonderfully entitled ‘Dental Butchery (Endodontics Madness)’ finds Serbian based Dead Body Collection(aka Dr Alex who’s also in the excellent Harsh Noise & HNW two piece C. T. D .) offering up two lengthy twenty five minute slices of thick and rewarding HNW matter with a distinctive clinical yet sadistic air to them; like the sonic equivalent of psychotic dentist calmly and methodically removing your teeth at random as your mouth over fills with blood, stringing gum flesh and severed nerve endings.
This self titled album is the first release from London based Unearthed( aka Robert Meldrum who’s also in corpse Candle & Ghoul). The album offers up six slices of very rewarding, ultra grim, sinister and very nasty sounding HNW matter thats reek of a love of all things horror bound and ghoulish.
‘The Monroe Doctrine’ is the third album of twelve full length albums that will be released through-out 2010 by the highly creative & respected noise/general experimental project Jazkamer. This album is taken up by one long thirty minute track, which I guess is best described as pounding and careering rock & slightly hardcore jam with some shifting noise textures…think one of the more rewarding and fun tracks off Merzbow’s 13 Japanese Birds albums, but with a bit more of a rock/ hardcore jam feel and you’ll be close.
What is power electronics without the radicalism? Nothing, really, I guess. As a musical genre, noise has developed from something nearly wholly subversive to something that encapsulates so much more – besides the subversive, radical strands that embrace extremist themes and imagery on top of the musical ultra violence, more subdued, academic and even accessibly styles have also come forth. As such, noise has become a kaleidoscopic, accomplished entity, wholly mature.
The words classic and masterpiece are too often over used by critics about albums which in time fade from ones memories into a vague mishmash of elements, and at the same time lose their potency, their element of surprise and initial freshness. But one of the few albums that does justifiable deserver to be called a classic and a genre defining moment is the dark ambient master work that is Yen Pox's first album 1995’s Blood Music- this has yet to surpassed in it’s dank, grim, organic and ‘get under your skin take’ on black atmospherics by anyone else even Yen Pox themselves.
This c40 HNW split brings together the often horror film obsessed thick wall noise tactics of West Virginia based Foul & scene new comer California based XSXCXEXBX. The tape finds Foul offering up one long ‘wall’ and XSXCXEXBX offering up four smaller ‘walls’.
‘Sniper/Knives’ is a nasty and violent two way HNW split between Chicago based Bachir Gemayel(aka Mac Chami who also in the excellent minimalistic HNW project Insurgent & the creative yet violent Power electronics middle eastern tinged project Koufar) and Serbian based Dead Body Collection(aka Dr Alex who’s also in the excellent Harsh Noise & HNW two piece C. T. D .)
‘Winter Assault’ is an extremely apt title for this c40 from Germany based HNW project Namazu Dantai (aka Sascha Mandler who’s also in the excellent, but unhinged & brain screwing noise meets shaman music/ world music project Izanami’s Labour Pains). As Mandler offers up two sides/two 'walls' of punishing storm torn & ripped HNW matter which really does make you feel like your staggering through a battering & wind tearing winter hurricane or violent storm.
This disc brings together two soundtracks from the late 60’s by Stefano Torossi- an Italian film composer who scored a fairly meagre 20 plus films between 1963 up to 1999; through he also wrote for & collaborated with 60’s pop/rock bands such as the Italian beat/pop group Chameleons.
‘Black Shabbis’ finds the usually jazz & Dub focused Jamie Saft making a devil loving & often ritual hued Jewish heavy metal record that goes from mean ‘n’ moody, up to doomed metallic’s, though to speeding yet controlled trash-outs, onto more tuneful metallic lined matter and beyond. It all makes for a very varied, enjoyable and at times quite tongue in cheek, yet intelligent & knowing metal ride that mangers nicely to blanced riff dramatics, brooding organ tones & lots of creativity.
Last Winter We Didn’t Sing presents eight takes on the winter months, most choosing the guitar to distil an ambient Americana with hints of folk and country established by labels like Chicago’s Kranky and Thrill Jockey. Here, it is stripped down to the barest essentials leaving a sombre, resonant soundtrack that could be employed to accompany sympathetic scenes of rural traditions threatened by industrialisation or harsh weather.
The title of this double-disc set is of course a nod to Benjamin Britten’s landmark work, but has about as much in common with that staple of middle-school music classes as your average RZA album does. I’m not sure I classify as “young” anymore (I hit 40 next year), but this still served as my guide to Kyle Bobby Dunn, a New York-based composer of ethereal, slow-moving but ever-changing and ultimately lovely music.
‘Touch Strings’ a two disc cd set that brings together over two hours worth of Phill Niblock’s distinctive & often sonical vast take on the drone genre. This great collection shows once more why he’s one of the most respected & celebrated practitioners' of the drone form.
In the brief poem in the booklet that accompanies Hisegawa-Shizuo’s Lift, we are introduced to an anonymous narrator who attempts to capture early sunrise in a hat – or so I interpret it - and finds himself successful – “perfect”, he mutters, before the poem unwinds into outright, abstract strangeness. As much as this surrealistic scene presents an all-out impossibility paired with downright absurdity, its surreal, imaginative grasp is certainly intriguing and strangely befitting of the musical work itself.
The ‘Brainkiller’ boxset brings together four c100 tapes worth of often thick & unchanging Harsh Noise wall matter, with the four acts involved offer up two fifty minute ‘walls’ a piece. The acts taking part here are Sarajevo based Smrznik, Croatian based Placenta Lyposuction, Italian based Fukte and last, but hardly least we have French based Vomir.