The New Blockaders ‘Succès De Scandale’ C-38 (Advaita)

The New Blockaders’ contribution to the formative years of noise music is undeniable, however in recent years Richard Rupenus and company have lurched into a turbulent and less than satisfying new operation, uneven recordings and a number of unsatisfying releases casting shadow on the project’s legacy and creating a second stream of modern material which is far more difficult to pick through (if one can even locate and afford some of the more limited and extroverted items) and which constitute a more uneven presentation of the previous sonic and theoretical achievements of The New Blockaders through the project’s first two decades.

A seminal piece of The New Blockaders’ early works are recordings made at Modern Tower, captured and disseminated across official and unofficial releases in increasingly confusing edits, excerpts, reissues and revisitings. That horse is flogged again for ‘Succès Du Scandale’ which is described as incorporating excerpts from a previously unreleased 1984 performance at Modern Tower. Confusingly (and with The New Blockaders it could not really be any other way) the cassette’s Discogs entry attributes the affected piece to Richard and Philip Rupenus alone, excluding mention of recent The New Blockaders members – and suggesting the piece’s usage of the 1984 recordings is more extensive than a brief sampling.

That suggestion is borne out in the material, “Succès De Scandale I” an orgy of destruction with its unstoppable central cavalcade of tearing and screeching junk metal laced in a light tape distortion, and boosted by hardier kicks, thuds and smashes on either side of the stereo spectrum which fly out from the fringes of the piece. The central smash-up is glorious in itself but so insistent as to be desensitising, the harder garbage can kicks needed to give “Succès De Scandale I” its staccato impact – also summonsing a low-end growl to lurk in the vacant space of the piece. While denser than The New Blockaders’ early work – speaking to the track’s modern input – there is also the same celebration of anti-music, a joy of nothing found in the refuse of industry which links right back to ‘Changez Les Blockeurs’ even if the work itself isn’t to the same level of achievement.

The modern recast is in side B’s “Succès De Scandale II”, the scrap metal storm of “Succès De Scandale I” confined within a casing of hissing near-white noise, the previous threshing reduced to a sense of movement under the dominating thick layer of noise treatment, with almost continuous layers of contact microphoned detritus also scorched in withering distortion and welded against the piece’s torso. Fewer sonic fragments are let loose from this second dervish; outside some stuttering electronics murmur there’s little no lower frequency responsiveness, only small particles of feedback and occasional electronics residue escape from the densely packed centrifuge.

The small spaces between the elements of “Succès De Scandale I” are removed for “Succès De Scandale II”, condensing those destructive forces into a suffocating press of intentionally lifeless sound, the acoustic movement of the early material smothered into a more dispassionate expression of the project’s nothingness than the sonically powerful smash and crash of Messrs Rupenus’ 1980s junkpile.

Clearly Richard Rupenus isn’t up for debating what his legacy should be, and it’s for none of us to say. ‘Succès De Scandale’ has closer ties than many recent works, obviously in its borrowed sound componentry but also in being packaged with a t-shirt bearing The New Blockaders’ manifesto on its back. I can’t say I’ll be wearing that any time soon, but I don’t know if my fashion choice is a doubly negative anti, or par for the expectation.

Incapacitants’ Toshiji Mikawa adds some liner notes further emphasising the historical relevance of ‘Succès De Scandale I’, and given his acknowledged inspiration from early The New Blockaders recordings his assessment of the recordings – particularly “Succès De Scandale I” –  adds some credibility to ‘Succès De Scandale’ as an historical bridge. The cassette isn’t heyday Rupenus classicism, but it is a more resonant and rejective take on The New Blockaders than I’ve extracted from other recent releases.

Moral Order ‘冠状病毒’ and Mark Solotroff ‘You May Be Holding Me Back’

 

I have long maintained a want to have, and therefore review, a ‘physical’ music collection. The industrial underground will, no doubt, emerge from the current COVID-19 pandemic as resolute and bloodyminded as it ever was; but as the world retreats indoors, the smallest reassessment one can do is to move online for new music.

Both these releases snapshot the current pandemic, Spain in the grip of a surge in COVID-19 cases and the USA lurching into shutdown in reaction to a domestic crisis which may or may not – I’m not here to navigate that debate – already be committed to mirror the worst of what Europe is seeing. Moral Order’s track is destined for a 19 copy “friend’s edition” cassette, but is effectively unleashed as an online release for those outside that immediate circle. Mark’s tracks were intended for another long-form cassette (which may or may not happen post-pandemic), but likewise for now presents in online reality. Both releases are available on Bandcamp, and I purchased both on Friday’s day of fee waiver (I also don’t propose to navigate the controversies of that), with a view to making some small contribution to those in the musical community who are having their lives up-ended by society’s current upheaval and the march of COVID-19.

Title track "冠状病毒" is the invasion of infection, a striving synth drone the centre of the track but carrying a viral load of troubling components in its course. An early vocal manifestation is just the beginning, snippets of rotted voice and other small particles quickly bolstering the track as the central synth bubbles, higher registers festering and provoking swollen fissures of antagonised overtones. The track builds to add a mixture of sickly upper register drone and resonant high tones, the former vibrating in contained infestation as "冠状病毒" is overcome and ultimately wracked with contagion.

A reflection of humanity’s current plight, "冠状病毒" is short in length and quickly overcome despite initial symptoms being mild. The track may not be the reminder the world needs right now, but the tracking of contamination is superbly captured within Moral Order’s Spanish confines.

Notwithstanding its pessimistic title "A Distant Problem Coming From China" carries some sense of optimism, the recording seemingly coming at the closing end of Fernando's isolating lockdown after the rapaciousness of disease sent everyone indoors to manifest "冠状病毒". Flickers of disease still haunt the track - but its isolation manifests in a central rhythmic pulse and later repetitive melodic fragment, the two propelled by some subtle low-end groove to give some momentum to the world's plight even as shrill synthesizer calls and delayed spoken word interject as continued warnings. If "冠状病毒" acknowledges the onset of disease "A Distant Problem Coming From China" may be the passage through it, a hesitant progress to elements of normalcy even if swarmed by reminders.

If Moral Order is the sound of disease, Mark Solotroff’s work is redolent of isolation. ‘You May Be Holding Me Back’ treats field recordings with careful synthesizer infiltration, the sounds of the city kept at bay through “A Literal Territory Occupied Literally” by a thick treatment of billowing synth fog, an insistent dying wind chime, and a slow delay which accents moments of occasional field recording clarity. The claustrophobia is gradual in onset but intense: slivers of Mark’s field recordings emerge as increasingly worrisome moments while the bilious synth coagulates unperturbed, smothering the broader city’s interactions in its cloud.

The isolating effect in “All In The Straw Together” is even more intense, the walls having closed in and starting to crawl with visual infestation. The field recordings are barely discernible and the thrum of the city has disappeared, replaced with a multi-layered haze of vibrating high end hallucinating and cyclic mid-toned insomnia. “All In The Straw Together” doesn’t pretend isolation is loneliness; rather, isolation manifests as apparitional disturbance wrapped around a depressed core, flickering in and out of reality as images of the chaos outside manifest as self-isolated mania.

The race to return to normalcy will come, but impacts of the current pandemic won’t be forgotten. Within that are the artistic impressions, both negative – so many working in the arts are struggling for income at the moment – and positive – already we have two embedded artists offering up, almost instantaneously on completion, reflective creativity. Both releases can be streamed for those needing sound as an escape from their own difficulties; they can also be purchased and downloaded by those with more at their disposal.

https://moralorder.bandcamp.com/track/-

https://marksolotroff.bandcamp.com/album/you-may-be-holding-back

Linekraft 'Subhuman Principle' 12" (Tesco Organisation)

Early Linekraft took a very literal approach to industrial music, mechanised operations dominating Masahiko Okubo’s transition from the rhythmic noise of formative trio Mothra to his own project. Over time that rigidity has drained from Linekraft, the ‘Engineering Analysis Of Inner Death’ LP on Hospital a modern masterpiece of heavy junk abuse and dark industrial which coalesced the shift from the constructed to the deconstructed.

Perhaps recognising that ‘Engineering Analysis Of Inner Death’ was pushing Linekraft toward K2-like junk noise territory, ‘Subhuman Principle’ is more muted, the explosive noise of an LP for Hospital channelled into a rough power electronics shape which shows undoubted awareness and fondness for Tesco’s roster – in particular through a heavier synthesizer presence than previous work, and a militaristic hue to the sounds and compositional implements being utilised.

Side Irrigation takes up arms from the opening chaos of “Archaic”, “No Loss In Weeding Out” settling into a worrisome air-raid siren, with garbled fast-paced speech picked up like the tendrils of isolated radio transmissions – adding urgency to the scenario before explosions of junk metal, heavy synth fumes, and searing vocals crash around the track. The sampled speech disclose militia training drills as the sky darkens and conflict looms on all sides, “Hunger” continuing the guerrilla approach with further siren strafing, sampled voice transmissions and flashes of artillery fire. That hesitancy escalates into utter battlefield confusion on “We Will Burn The Old Grass”, echoing trigger snaps of electronics and steelcap thud building against spoken vocals, while arcs of artillery fire span across the sky: not the obvious evocation of an all-out noise assault, but a carefully plotted replication of heat, recoil, and disorientation.

Side Factory steps away from conflagration, dominated by “Non Human Animal” which wanders through the post-apocalyptic remnants of industry, sirens dying as an ominous synth drone underpins heavy junk metal kicked into long delay, with fires of sulphuric distortion still flickering until met by heavier junk/distortion abuse which covers the track in blinding soot and clingy fallout.

The flash backs don’t take long to return. “Death Is The Surrender” seems to audibly rewind the earlier sirens of Side Irrigation, rife with shellshocked vocals dripping in chemical filtration, reverse impact detonation and fragments of sampled instructions. The only overt rhythmic component to the LP is in penultimate track “Stand Alone” but the effect is terrifying, its returning march of war surrounded by hostile vocals, continued synth strafing and insistent PTSD pulsing; “Modern” then closes with a chilling minimalist refrain and final uproar of vocals and cruel junk metal kicking.

The alignment of Linekraft with Tesco’s familiar phraseology permeates ‘Subhuman Principle’, but without shifting the project off-axis. There’s still plenty of bruisingly resonant junk metal which crashes through the LP – only now it’s the discards of armaments and shell casings, rather than oil drums and wrenches. The result is a re-weighing of Linekraft to meet the pointed hostility of ‘Subhuman Principle’’s subject matter which – given how powerful and redolent the material is – I find entirely sincere.

https://tescogermany.bandcamp.com/album/subhuman-principle

Kneeling Knave ‘Skin Presence’ C-30 (Chondritic Sound)

In addition to curating the active Altered States Tapes label, Melbournian Cooper Bowman fuels the creative components of his label with his lo-fi techno work as Roman Nails, and brooding industrial project Kneeling Knave.

‘Skin Presence’ is Kneeling Knave’s first release since 2017, further distancing the project from the monotonal synthesizer-shaped rhythmic industrial at its origins – but not forgetting them. While tracks such as the title track and “Stamina” still work that familiar blinking pulse, much of ‘Skin Presence’ builds with a more sophisticated use of rhythm. “Clinician’s Perspective” encourages an almost Calypso-like drum machine beat to meet its otherwise minimal synth pulse, and “Guerrilla Logic” pieces together its rhythm from fragments of piano, synth thud, junk clatter and an irregular gated noise. Both would be deeply flawed in the wrong hands, but each walks the tightrope to keep to ‘Skin Presence’’s centrally dour mannerism.

Outside those deeper rhythmic constructs “A Failing System” layers a simple metronome click with carefully laid tones which flicker in and out of synchronisation, and “Derange Or Damage” builds haunting tonal fluctuations with a siren-like insistency giving only the lightest metre to the piece. The willing development of both tonal and rhythmic constructs is the path to closer “House” which takes the cassette’s development to its farthest, the finale verging on electronica with its blissed-out swells of soft tones and coordinated percussive patterns.

While ‘Skin Presence’ uses Cooper’s gruff vocals to anchor the work to the power electronics/industrial idiom, a technique which weights even those tracks most sparsely impacted, “House” deserts that feature to add a few more paces between it and Kneeling Knave’s thudding beginnings. Like all of ‘Skin Presence’ “House” is measured in its pace and cautious – even reluctant – in its presence, the genre dissipation still leaving plenty of identifiers which keep “House” tied to Kneeled Knave’s sterner moments.

The gap between releases may not have yielded an abundance of new material, but what’s here is an increased confidence in straying beyond the borders of the early industrial influences which feed Kneeling Knave. As a glimmer at the end of an otherwise sombre experience, “House” gives only a small swipe of colour to an otherwise intentionally dreary experience. That final uplift to ‘Skin Presence’ hints at possibilities to broaden Kneeling Knave’s experimental musical reach, but whether that would work on a wider scale while keeping the project genre-grounded, is for another time.

https://chondriticsound.bandcamp.com/album/skin-presence