Shredded Nerve ‘Longing To Be Free’ C-36 (Dead Gods)

‘Longing To Be Free’ marks something of a return to the careful repetitions I recall from Justin’s early work, yet progressed to be immersed in his shift to electronic sounds and exploring a suite of influences I’ve not heard emerge from Shredded Nerve yet. The layers of solemn synth melodies, supporting monotonal meditations, and carefully honed haunt are an intuitive but distant progression from last year’s ‘It Was Meant To Be’, evoking ‘70s synthesizer creations a la Tangerine Dream, with a strong nod to horror synth minimalism and a hint of the darkly pensive experimentation of Deathprod.

Melodic sensibilities come and go, opener “Between A Lie And The Truth” almost hummable in its slow tunefulness and experimental sensibilities found instead in the insistent texture created by a gentle tap drip being effected to bring the sound to a shimmering murmur. B side opener “Before And After (Time And Shadow)” also allows a melodic synth lead to guide the piece, with its simple repetition underpinned by hoarse lower register drone and reflective sympathetic harmonics which scatter like light hitting a prism. “You Never Existed” however strips back to portray lightweight sounds carried in the air like Klaus Schulze conjurations, synth plumes floating serenely as a low-end pulse and singes of solar wind fill out the Kosmische picture, for a track which is somehow both the potential link to Justin’s earlier recordings and the genesis for this breakout exploration.

After “Before And After (Time And Shadow)”  the remainder of the B side takes greater filmic inspiration, the title track adding iconic staccato chiming tones and a scatter of foley footfalls for a strong ‘80s horror film scene of nearing dread, which materialises when its lower drone eventually rubs raw to expose some nastier edges in a rare acknowledgment of Shredded Nerve’s earlier discography. That’s followed by closer “You Were Different”, which elongates the final scene of morning survival: an almost triumphant melodicism circling over warmer rays of layered tonal drone which flicker and disperse into more open chordal layers. The slow fade-out allows another quick reminder of Justin’s pedigree, as tape drop-out flutters impugn the embrace of the piece – but it’s a small show of avantgarde know how to end a cassette dedicated far more to the congenial end of electronic music.

In perhaps the same way that Emeralds came from the late ‘00s experimental underground but emphasised the genre’s Berlin School roots, ‘Longing To Be Free’ steps away from Shredded Nerve’s modern leanings to explore electronic music in a way that is just as genuine as ‘Final Vision’ or ‘Bleeding From The Head’. With very few moments of raw sound or noise impetus ‘Longing To Be Free’ is unlikely to be reflective of a long-term commitment if Shredded Nerve’s history is anything to go by, but as a sidestep this cassette is lovingly executed, utterly immersive, and a perfect late night replacement for when I want something beyond classics like ‘Cyborg’ or ‘Zeit’.

Lasse Marhaug ‘Four Seasons Only Winter’ CD (Sentimental)

The Norwegian winter found cruel reflection in Lasse Marhaug’s ‘White Inferno’ (a 1996 cassette released on Mother Savage Noise Production, latter reissued on CD by Narcolepsia/Old Captain) and again in 2007’s ‘The Great Silence’ CD (on Second Layer). ‘Four Seasons Only Winter’ finds a different focus in the deep snow, beautiful in its painting of Lasse’s remote surrounds but exuding the isolation of a long winter and social distancing unprovoked by a global pandemic.

Single drifting mid-range tones fall slowly through the first season undisturbed, the background a silent white and the trajectory barely moving even as the listener’s focus is drawn in, soft waves of ambience vaguely shaping the contours of the landscape and frequently getting lost in the monochromatic blurring of frosted land and snow-filled sky, and the shallow gradient between night and day.

As the CD moves on the basic canvas is the same, but by the second season the isolation intensifies and reality is compromised, blurred psychoses moving from peripheral vision to the centre, flashes of hallucinatory colour heightened by a low-end presence creeping in – surely the onset of hypothermia. It’s an active and almost vibrant piece contextually – but scary for being so, its vibrancy playing out as delusion rather than genuine hope or seasonal shift.

The final two seasons confirm that wintry despondency, the third hovering a cloud of frozen breath in the air as a cold low hum idles ominously, space closing in on the listener over the lengthy sunless concentration, only to be subsumed by the even longer and wonderfully immense fourth season, its polyphonic drone wrapping the piece in various shares of white while reflecting the rays of the sun finally crawled from the horizon. An inherently musical quality embraces the track in much the same way as Birchville Cat Motel did at Campbell’s best, a crescendo of ever-unfolding tone continuing to emerge from the track as inflections come and go, emphases and tones shift, and the tundra fades into the distance without disturbance.

‘Four Seasons Only Winter’ is one of three simultaneous releases by Sentimental, but the only one in an enduring edition – 200 copies, compared to editions of 20 and 40 respectively for the ‘My Body As A Cavern’ 2x12” and ‘No Authentic Sound Left’ reel tape. It’s also the most restrained and most thematically resolute of the three, unwavering in attention to its carefully realised  ambience, and small details – notably the meticulous low-end of the second and third seasons, and subtle tonal transpositions through the final season. This is faultless frozen ambient from a man who clearly knows.

Uton & Yoshihiro Kikuchi ‘Invisible Reflections’ CD (Vibora)

The Vibora label is something of a shifting collective, a chance for underground labels to pool resources and collaborate (financially, if not necessarily artistically) to realise quality CD pressings, the label’s 2019 resurrection realised from two underground collaborations – first a double CD of recordings by Umpio and irr.app.(ext.), and now this meeting of Finnish time/space manipulator Uton with the always intriguing Yoshihiro Kikuchi, who has a penchant for curious collaborative ventures.

‘Invisible Reflections’ is perhaps Yoshihiro’s most immediate collaboration yet, computer creations and melodica colliding with digital electronics from Uton which on opener “The Black Horse Of Mutated Ideas” fractures into a morass of competing analogue and digital particles, its twitching digitalia and resonant acoustic drone effervescing like being shaken in a test tube. The outcome bears too much early ‘00s digital baggage, provoking the same complaints which shook Merzbow’s early steps into laptop creation: a shallowness and predictability in shape, and a gap between risibility and potency which – at least for this luddite – made such work so difficult a proposition. “Spectral Source” and “Multidimensional Relation” strike the same difficulty even if starting from more minimalist places, the former encountering slippery digital intangibility and the latter troublesomely thin melodica manipulation, both seeming to hit technical or technique limits.

But where ‘Invisible Reflections’ achieves is in its stretches of post-Jarl drone, the extended pieces “A Signal For Reflection”, “The Cosmic Unknown” and “Infinite Possibilities” all unclear with where one artist stops and the other begins. These polar excursions  find drone materials bouncing off the tundra to be frozen together, strong glares emitting from the icy shimmer and movement slowed to aqueous stammer as electronics, melodica and digital processing are reduced to a sympathetic shiver.

While these tracks all take from the same frozen heart, each travels the veins differently. “The Cosmic Uknown” encounters drips of lysergic acid which start to cycle through the flow at its fingertips, and “A Signal For Reflection” seeping into the ground as a semi-melodic fluidity starts to puddle at the underside of the piece as it melts. “Infinite Possibilities” too starts to separate, but only because competing astral forces start to tear at it: the lulling low-end is surprisingly propulsive, sending the track skimming to the edge of the solar system as it looks back longingly as the slowly fading presence of terrestrial movement, the ghost of Eric Wood grinning from the co-pilot chair – and the brief, ominous swell of sound which occurs as the final seconds of the piece breach the heliosphere are almost terrifying.

The usefulness and limitations of this pair’s chosen instrumentation are what ultimately shape ‘Invisible Reflections’, the lengthy subzero investigations disrupted by difficult shorter pieces which scratch the scabs of computer noise limitations in a way the many whose work has progressed over the last decade do not. The slow marches across the tundra are more visceral, meaningful and memorable, their collaboration more genuine and integrative than the mangle of sound which the other tracks tend to crumple into.

https://uton.bandcamp.com/album/invisible-reflections