One Side has Kohei Gomi manipulating raw sound from pump sounds authored by GX, the heavy lungfuls of the pump in constant cycle as Kohei’s sub-bass infiltration and chirping interference stays mostly at the fringes, occasional glimmers of colour increasing somewhat over the course of the piece to become a staged set of fireworks by the end. The inflections are a little disconnected from the raw mechanised breathing of GX’s source material, almost invisible to begin with an even at their peak struggling to make an impression.
Other Side finds a bubbling repetition met with raw metallic scraping, backwards treatments and acoustic detritus by GX, a more considered interaction where the search for source material – books sounds by Pain Jerk, processed and re-recorded by GX – much more difficult, the blistering undercurrent submerged with heavy, resonant, toolshed textures.
For two title belt holders able to still inflame an ordinary situation into noise oblivion, ‘Reference Desk’ is a restrained study, befitting the library reference – but probably still making enough of a ruckus to be asked to leave the reading room. Those after a truly disruptive ruckus won’t find it, but the B side especially brings the two together in an entirely satisfactory way nonetheless.
Pain Jerk has emerged from something of a self-imposed scene exile, a stream of Bandcamp releases and the ‘Mission Invisible’ CD on Hospital giving plenty to chew on after forcing the audience to starve for some time. ‘Live-Enemy’ is one of several online releases to now find their way onto CDR, finding Pain Jerk working extensively – and successfully – with Polish experimentalist Zbigniew Karkowski, who lived and worked in Tokyo during the final years before his sad passing in 2013.
The CDR is led by a pair of live collaborations, an excerpt from a 21 October 2008 set in Poland opening with a surge of crumpled 0s and 1s which are torched by noise electronics until the entire concoction ignites, the immolated remains left to smoulder in the grieving hum of charred equipment. The track is excerpted from a longer set and feels truncated perhaps as a result, making its point quickly and without any of the force or development of the longer track which follows.
The second track is more considered, a 2012 Tokyo performance with extended agony perpetrated by both: an initial haunt of burgeoning high end fed chunks of gurgling digitalia, voice snippets and data error until the piece ruptures into canonical harsh noise from Kohei Gomi. Once that beast is off the leash there’s no getting it back on, the two seeming to take it in turns to push a dominant voice while the other adds an undercurrent of stability. Zbigniew’s garish digital brushstrokes run dry well before Kohei Gomi’s harrowing saturations. Pain Jerk is in unstoppable form during this collaboration once the restraints are off, a dense and heavy presence force which suffocates Zbigniew’s material in the ultimate, and forces it to suffer well before that.
Kohei supplements the material with a solo track, “Dedcated to ZK”, the first half teasing slow tone undulations, rubberised shapes of highly constricted synth burble and a sputtering bass presence, all masticated by Gomi’s laptop and eventually subjugated to sprays of near-white noise which only briefly open into more detailed layers: a fairly brief excursion into the fulsomely bricked noise which the collaborative tracks have already delivered in abundance. Things return fairly perfunctorily to an extension of the squelching repetitions from before, as if nothing really happened in the meantime, before ending upon the same orchestral tiptoeing which began the piece.
There’s an overt digital sterility to “Dedicated to ZK” which the other pieces on the CDR don’t rely upon, and which shapes particularly the noise component in an unfortunate way; even when the harsh components are set to ultra-stun they lack the depth and grain of the dual live attack, their brevity and the piece’s digital flatness turning the tribute more into a longing. The point to ‘Live-Enemy’ is really made by the collaborative tracks, the solo supplement a recognition which somewhat misses the object of its recollection.
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