Andrew Grant – ‘Scrap’ C-30 + booklet (Foul Prey)

At least since The New Blockaders’ ‘Changez Les Blockeurs’ scrap metal has been a pervasive instrument of choice in the noise/industrial idiom, a bulwark of anti-musicality which is found liberally littered through the genre. For a rare release abandoning his The Vomit Arsonist guise, Andrew Grant has compiled ‘Scrap’ from just that, a set of unnamed dark concoctions which flail, caress, abuse and distress pieces of junk metal.

Channelled through a small bank of effects – predominantly the capacity to swamp sounds in heavy reverb – and with the acoustic sounds carefully realised, ‘Scrap’ isn’t the refuse orgy of The New Blockaders or tetanus-laced infestation of Mania (although both I expect carry influence) but is more compositionally realised, each piece approaching its sound source in a different fashion.

Raw metal fumbling opens ‘Scrap’’s first piece, heavily handled in the beginning before shifting to slower grappling which makes full use of the thick reverb coating the piece for probably the simplest realisation of the concept to open. What follows is a swampy rumble of reverberated cast-offs coursing almost subterranean, its intangible reflections giving a sharper focus to the scrap metal rustling on top, before a new piece emerges to explore angular creaks and groans through a slow delay, a dynamic counterpoint to the slow simmer of the previous piece.

The second side finds further points of expression within the same techniques, its opening piece comprised triggered howls of heavily effected clatter, the reverb seeming to feed on itself to urge a hostile swarm of sound from each singular blow, high register clanging lurking in the background as the piece angrily stirs itself up before retreating into a set of slower scrapes and bumps which leech reverb and puddle it on the floor.  The following piece dips jagged cuts of metal in tape distortion for a raw sound not far from the Rupenus brothers, but evokes a dark ambient halo with thinner flickers of high-end shimmer while a low frequency rumble lurks half-submerged, moving into a final piece of gristly acoustic recordings, largely mid-frequency clamour finding points of squealing resistance as rusted objects are dragged from points of resistance.

‘Scrap’’s accompanying artwork booklet takes an almost literal approach to the title, pages of expansive white spoiled with torn scraps of collage art largely profiling the sites of decay, abandonment and danger which provide source material for ‘Scrap’’s audio recordings. It’s a welcome addition which manages to avoid the obviousness of its aesthetic in the way its torn fragments are framed on much larger pages, giving the presentation more of a gallery feel above the raw crudities of its content.

What draws me repeatedly to ‘Scrap’ is the variation to its theme, a variety of tonal and dynamic sounds lifted from the scrap metal – then shaped using Andy’s more familiar death industrial stylings. Even when bashing misshapen chunks of iron and dented oil barrels, Andy’s deft compositional hand avoids any seriously sharp edges, bloated noise, or thudding industrial commotion – leaving the cold of the steel, inhalation of its rust, and the dark shapes of its discarding.

http://foulprey.bandcamp.com/album/scrap

V/A ‘Materialism’ 2xC-20 (Skeleton Dust)

 

‘Materialism’ marks the sixth of Skeleton Dust’s ‘Contemporary Harsh Noise’ double cassette sets, a chance for the known and the unknown, the well-played and the freshly energised, to profile the vanguard of the contemporary noise scene. It’s a well curated and diverse cross-section of the current state of play, and all volumes well worth tracking down.

First on ‘Materialism’, Legless thresh several ideas through “Nature’s Cruel Amusements” to find that the project is best when laying down thick slabs of distorted roar, the piece blanketed in a rough production with low and high frequencies rounded off but still finding a breadth of sound by multi-tracking flows of full momentum distortion.

“Nature’s Cruel Amusements” trawls through a fairly scrappy first few minutes, a shallow frequency range semi-submerging warbling feedback, what may be wafts of turntable unravelling, sexed up moaning, and primitive blocks of distortion. A series of crude tape drop-outs are then used to propel the piece out of its initial explorations, a more rugged abrasiveness encasing the piece as it varies between stretches of viscous distortion cut, and stereo-split tangents which revisit the untidy beginnings of the piece but more nakedly, spurts of disjointed wrangling which lay bare Legless’  workings before retreating back into the comfort of its simplest pleasures.

Phocomelus reminds of The Haters’ recent recordings, layered but discrete textures built from dying electronics and the dust and disintegration of discarded media. The outcome is quite static, “Unopened”’s timbres set up to cycle and stagnate: a sinkhole of squirming, distressed, and unhappy components which consolidate into an intentionally untidy muddle of noise. The track is not as head-down abrasive as previous Phocomelus tracks which have strayed into The Rita territory, instead finding a grim enjoyment in the discomfort of its inputs as mired in the surprisingly confronting low-end growl which fills the spaces of the piece.

K.M. Toepfer is the lo-fi miscellany of the set, “Fictitious Growth” built from microcassette player feedback, mixed feedback and a handful of pedals, its flurries of internal feedback given a bulked-up coarseness by the steroidal qualities of the effects bank. The weedy slipperiness of the source instruments still clings to the piece even at its hardest, motors unspooling, buttons clunking and feedback chafing throughout the flailing of the piece, recalling the fidelity and blitheness of Stabat Mors and Licht-Ung: a chase of the moment splattered on tape and offered up unapologetically. It’s not the high point of the set, and lacks the vision of Wolf Creek or the comparative harshness of Legless, but in extolling the joys of noise-making Karl is as proficient as any of the others.

Wolf Creek close ‘Materialism’ with a heavy dose of fast-and-furious harshness recalling the heady days when Merzbow and Pain Jerk were competing for who could frequency saturate a length of tape the most. A barrage of searing distortion blasts most of the piece while snappish filter sweeps, low-end oscillations and barbs of feedback make vague shapes behind the screen of mid-range scald, with some brief drop-out moments of metallic clatter, weightier low-end shudder, and engine motor grind passing quickly in favour of returning to the piece’s central vortex scream. After the first three sides investigating qualities other than out-and-out ferocity, ending on Wolf Creek’s stun gun confrontation is the needed uptick with which to close.

True to the series’ form ‘Materialism’ manages to find variance in even the most confined of genre pinpoints, each performer bringing strong material to its chosen take on modern harsh noise – and the confined tracks lengths guaranteeing no chance of inattention or dilution.

https://www.skeletondustrecords.com

Wagner Ödegård ‘Spöstugan’ C-40 & ‘Ursumar’ C-34 (Altare Productions)

Anyone working backwards from Wagner Ödegård’s recent LPs on Klaxon will experience a quick mis-step into a shadowy world of dark sound experimentation which, while sonically at odds with the bonfires of raging black metal found on the recent LPs, informs and develops the core misanthropic qualities found on those recent recordings (as well as Wagner’s work in projects such as Wulkanaz and Tomhet). ‘Usumar’ and ‘Spöstugan’ seem to complete a set of four previous cassettes and two LPs (all simultaneously collected and reissued as a cassette boxset on Altare) which have explored environmental, meditative, abrasive and atmospheric inclinations of black metal through field recordings, ambient electronics, and primitive industrial constructs.

The more familiar deconstruct, ‘Ursumar’ was released in abridged form on Bandcamp in 2017 and only released fully as part of the ‘Sju Väglösa Mil’ compilation CDs in 2019, now a standalone release. The cassette holds two sides predominantly of drawn out church organ/synth melodies, an incremental development to the black metal introductions which spawned projects such as Wongraven and the first Lord Wind album before burgeoning into a surprisingly self-sufficient subgenre – dovetailing with the industrial underground most notably thanks to the amazing work of Roger Karmanik and Cold Meat Industry.

‘Ursumar’ will probably attract more than a few ‘dungeon synth’ descriptors but that’s inaccurate not least because of its context among Wagner Ödegård’s other work, the cassette in some ways the product of an almost deliberate search for structural purpose – albeit one then subjected to far more experimental whims than found in most dungeons. “Nordsolen” and “Jordmånen” are both fractured by gnawed tape errors, haunted by spoken word fragments (particularly through opener “Nordsolen”’s beginnings), and coated in a thick layer of tape hiss, experimental techniques sabotaging the otherwise simple solemnity at the heart of the pieces.

The tonal work itself is simple but without any drudgery, slow chordal shifts and circular melodies eased out of a pipe organ and then abraded by the analogue granularity which cakes the pieces. The often abrupt cuts between portions are hewn by cassette player editing and ultimately destroy the attempt at a more familiar construct. “Jordmånen” in particular seems to be opening up into a state of near sermonising, only to drop out crushingly with an almost audible cassette deck head thud.

‘Spöstugan’ was previously unreleased until the ‘Sju Väglösa Mil’ compilation CDs and again gains its first standalone release thanks to Altare. The work finds Wagner Ödegård entirely removed from melodic or instrumental inputs, instead capturing the devoid centre of the project in perfect abstract minimalism.

If the ‘Skugg-Hasse’ and ‘Nidvintern’ LPs used field recordings to seemingly reflect a natural environment, ‘Spöstugan’’s first side is the sound of a returnto urban isolation, the piece dominated by a slow-paced rumble which is  seemingly lifted from midnight traffic murmur through an open window, hazed by snippets of muffled voice, snatches of near music and other indecipherables – and twisted into post-industrial form through an unsubtle low-end boost. The second side is similarly cloaked in intangibly ambient noise, although seemingly more directly composer-created: a subtle layer of machine clamour lapses as motors discernibly lapse or die, and the piece thickens as those same mechanics cycle into more focused momentum which tends to leave some of the foggy frequency behind.

Neither piece relies entirely on its murky minimalism; the second side is quite forceful in its opening, unleashing a strafing low synth tone and piling on strands of what may be whispered vocals which have been reversed and immersed in reverb. The first side manages through its middle section to metamorphosise into a semi-regular throb and constrict further to an almost singular tonal pulse and later ringing mid-toned repetition, both clever in their disintegrative execution – the first side shifting from captured to created sound while discreetly folding in on itself, downsizing from an expansive sonority to a confined tonality, is particularly well realised.

Like Wagner Ödegård’s earlier recordings, ‘Spöstugan’ and ‘Ursumar’ find their own obscured pocket somewhere between black metal sensibilities and the experimental underground, drawing from each without properly fitting into either. These works’ ‘previously unreleased’ status is no cause for avoidance; both are crucial parts of Wagner Ödegård’s curious and enthralling discography. ‘Spöstugan’ adds to that considerably by including a 32 page A5 zine of drawings and poetry: a mixture of arcane drawings, hand-inked esotericism and torture ruminations which gives insight into the project’s impetus while adding further layers of mystery and difficulty.

http://www.altare.pt

Golden Vomit ‘Beyond All Reason’ C-60 (Celebrate Psi Phenomenon)

 

Campbell Kneale and Ilkka Vekka are each responsible for some of the most colourful experimental music I’ve enjoyed; Birchville Cat Motel’s ‘Beautiful Speck Triumph’ still stands as a fucking triumph of uplifting, epiphanic drone, and particularly early Haare material such as ‘The Temple’ is rampant with brushstrokes and shades, a pulsing and vivid psychedelia drenching the material and wringing lysergic acid diethylamide from its harsher industrial scenes.

In resurrecting an overlooked Golden Vomit recording for Campbell’s Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label, however, Ilkka explores the shadowed side of drone enjoyment: a grainy electronics haze which has snuffed out aspirations of musicality and replaced those with a defiant minimalism which reduces its sound to a vacant expression and monochrome palette.

“Part 1” is a slow but constant billowing of featureless smog, unseen chimneys pumping out thick airborne particles which line the lungs and burn the eyes. Machinery thud, muffled vehicular movement and a slowed warning siren are all hinted at from underneath the thick cloud of suffocating grey without ever overcoming it, until a wash of ghosting feedback joins the piece towards it conclusion – without giving any urgency or sharpness to the piece, and instead seeming to deepen the distance of the scene without yielding any more shape or detail.

“Part 2” has none of the churn of the first side, its particles suspended in mid-air and moving softly as pockets of soft current hit them, the oppressive surround of the first part reduced to a laconic drift on the second. The outcome is as dispassionate and music-less as fragments of an intonarumori cast into the eye of a hurricane, again relying on intangible mid-range electronics haze with an absolute minimum of ephemeral sounds – and not even the hint of progress which the first part was willing to share.

Whatever life affirmations artist or label may have acknowledged in the past, ‘Beyond All Reason’ is having none of it. Even if “Part 1” acknowledges the ugly industrial footprint of human existence, “Part 2” seems entirely removed from that presence. While artistically removed, ‘Beyond All Reason’ has more in common with the rejection of development and form found in acts like Vomir, than the slow-motion but overt gestures of Ilkka’s flagship project. The reward as listener is in losing time and reality to sound: in not requiring anything more than to succumb to a numbing nothingness.

https://celebratepsiphenomenon.bandcamp.com/album/beyond-all-reason

Terror Cell Unit 'Fear God/Hate Man' 3"CDR (Nefarious Activities) and The Cherry Point 'Buried Alive' 3"CDR (Chondritic Sound)

 

Terror Cell Unit is the duo of Mackenzie Chami (God Is War, Koufar, Bachir Gemayel, and many others) and Samuel Montero-Torres (Crawl Of Time), the project standing at the intersection of religious dogma and social breakdown to count the car crashes, releases exploring fanaticism and its impact on American modernism through strong visuals and even stronger power electronics constructs. The duo has typically worked a powerful austerity to drive its message home, but that hasn’t felt quite so direct as on ‘Fear God/Hate Man’ – the duo’s first release from 2014, now reissued on 3”CDR by Nefarious Activities after first emerging as a cassette from Crown Tapes.

The short disc’s cyclic simplicity is proximate and its caked-on dirt practically visible, both tracks driving a simple but powerful synth/distorted drum machine pulse, rumbling low-end making for a suffocating listen notwithstanding the bare bones inputs. “Matthew 27:24” drives a line which varies from heavy rhythmic march to vibrating murmur, with only the middle section showing any signs of further life as a few stray tones reach boiling point on top. After its lengthy sample prophesising the succumbing of America to the perils of anti-Christian modernisms, “I Point The Finger At You” consists of a simple melodic refrain, crisped with distortion and with a lower octave initially doubling the refrain – until assuming its own route for a sort of fucked up counterpoint which splinters the track to then truncate it.

Over both, burly vocals with a pleasing reminiscence of John Balistreri’s prime Slogun moments let loose, heaving in outrage and brutishly berating the track with syllables as blunt as knuckledusters. Mack Chami seems responsible for the outbursts, the harrowing effort familiar to those who have laid on the floor whimpering after playing a Koufar CD too loud: it’s an affronting capability which is up there with the best American power electronics bellowers, and a large part of what has made Koufar and Terror Cell Unit so prominent among the current crop of projects. While later releases have used the same elements with greater sophistry and detail, ‘Fear God/Hate Men’ doesn’t suffer for its brevity or simplicity; the disc says what it needs and moves on, leaving broader statements for later development.

The Cherry Point skipped the entire ‘10s, an amazing proclivity in the previous decade snuffed out with only a couple of delayed projects emerging through the intervening period. ‘Buried Alive’ has appeared at the tombyard gate unexpectedly, two fresh recordings realised in June 2020 and rushed to 3”CDR by Chondritic Sound.

The blood is still circulating because it’s as if nothing had happened at all, “Buried Alive I” opening in flashes of steel and geysers of the red stuff, a constant flow of circling mid-range distortion unable to drown out the cries of strangled feedback sobs and an unsettled, choppy texture which axes away just out of immediate focus. It’s a savage return to form, firmly evoking the overtly violent end of the project’s filmic inspirations and leaving little of its savagery off-screen.

“Buried Alive II” is immediately different, the layers more defined and the overall impact hollower and more unstable. Again that pent-up enthusiasm sounds in scenes of exuberant slashing, but with the responsible texture this time more isolated in its portrayal. Variances in energy leave gashes of textural space from which a crunchy lower register, glimmers of initially turmoiled high-end and plenty of overt gore spill, the piece eventually lulling into an exsanguinated stillness as the final few signs of life slowly slop from the piece’s now empty chest.

If “Buried Alive I” is the scene from the protagonist’s ears then “Buried Alive II” is from the victim’s, the initial fury tempered with an adrenalised numbness, reducing to fragments of sensation and ultimately to a vacating recognition which reduces as death closes in. Phil has found immediate traction for The Cherry Point’s long overdue return, the perfect representation of the project’s reawakening as soaked in horror movie mythos.

https://chondriticsound.bandcamp.com/album/buried-alive

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

GX Jupitter-Larsen & Pain Jerk ‘Reference Desk’ C-20 (Noiseopoly) & Pain Jerk & Zbigniew Karkowski ‘Live-Enemy’ CDR (Culture)

 

When I first heard about ‘Reference Desk’ I was sitting in an LA café for a late breakfast and a catchup. By the time the cassette landed at my post office box, the Covid-19 pandemic had heaved, isolated, and wreaked untold havoc, and expectation had been festering throughout. In what I believe is the first time the two have shared a release, ‘Reference Desk’ was released as part of GX Jupitter-Larsen’s fundraiser for his forthcoming movie of the same title. What it says about the movie I won’t even speculate – let’s make do with the cassette for now.

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.

https://painjerkwrackedandruined.bandcamp.com/album/live-enemy

Xome & Death Squad ‘Life: Quit It/Automaton’ C-64 (Neural Operations)

This is one of four split cassettes which were originally shared by Death Squad in 1996, and were reissued by Michael Nine in 2020 alongside his early Off World Kick Death Square project. This cassette’s brief re-emergence adds a few more pieces of knowledge to the formation of both Xome and Death Squad, and had been a curiosity of mine for a while given the seemingly difficult compatibility of the two projects.

Xome’s early work is distant from the exuberant effects ping pong Bob Scott would come to master and particularly across ‘Life: Quit It’. These early experimentations utilise flows of dark distortion as their primary noise construct, “Xome Supreme Truth Cult” and “トラック野郎” only buoyed by extraneous inputs of what are predominantly voice – looped yelling and various chatter – after an intentionally slow and dreary start. The final two tracks, dominated by “Melt”, are a grab-bag of audio oddities with even less of the noise Xome would come to be known for, moments of distortion peaking to give some asphalt blur to what is otherwise a montage of slowed speech, found city sound, and God-knows what, inflating into a rumble of low-end which vibrates under flickering loops, messy media manipulation and what I think may be the cries of abused children’s toys.

While like most Xome material I suspect the end results are live-to tape mandates, there is preparation to the sampled, found, and pre-arranged sound which ensures plenty of change across the half hour notwithstanding the quite straight forward course of the generated distortion which is embraced. The exuberance of later releases manifests here as a delight in the various pre-arranged inputs, which even if somewhat crude add streaks of colour to the otherwise monochrome noise.

Death Squad’s ‘Automaton’ lacks the terrorising presence which the project later developed, but is a more fully-formed realisation of the project in comparison to the site of Xome’s branch on the evolutionary tree. While only given a single title the side is broken into seven or so shorter segments, at its best in painting grainy noise textures using rumbling analogue low-end, shortwave radio hum, dying consumer electronics and lungfuls of smoggy distortion.

There’s a choking haze to this material which would only become thicker and more hurtful as Death Squad finessed its sound, but on ‘Automaton’ it’s a viscous cloud, hanging in the air densely and being unavoidably inhaled. Clumps of obscured hazards cling to its particles, as drips of gargled high end are expectorated, dying equipment throbs smoke, and loops pump the sickly air back upon itself. The concentration of sooted noise glimpses only minimal movement in the worse afflicted pieces, ‘Automaton’’s segments tending to work small movements only to have those covered in yet more grime, although the loop-based portions tent to develop a circular breathing which develops slightly more clarity – and the end of the tape weighs the  atmospheric churn down to the ground, finally hitting the dirt with a more resolute low-end tremor.

While both projects were in 1996 still shedding their formative experience, Death Squad already sounds like it should be with violence and distrust growing over time behind the poisonous clouds of ‘Automaton’ and other mid-1990s works. Xome would ultimately find a joy in harsh noise which is only hinted at in ‘Life: Quit It’ – and only realised in the sound inputs, not the noise itself. Whether adjacent to later familiarity or not, this cassette is an insight into both acts: a chance to understand each a little better, both delivering competent material without either yet at the point which would be their ultimate contribution.

Bacillus ‘Anti-Vaxxer’ C-30 (Glossolalia)

Bacillus’ 1990s tapes hold a unique place in the American noise lexicon of that time, raw in a way which Macronympha and Richard Ramirez were not. The works created – a largely unchanged process, it seems – from mangled and destroyed records and tapes, broken consumer electronics, and strangling distortion derived from pushing levels to the maximum, but off-set against that dumpster diver creationism was a studious fascination with microbes, pathogens, and danger lurking in minutiae: a (literally) unhealthy death fetish far removed from the familiar violent tropes of harsh noise.

It’s no surprise that in this year’s pandemic Bacillus should re-(re-?)emerge, another viral wave to contend with on the cusp of the world retreating into self-isolation. The cassette documents recent measles outbreaks and the anti-vaccination hysteria which fuelled them, but its timing in relation to the current pandemic – not to mention the protests currently looking to undo social distancing and related protections – makes ‘Anti-Vaxxer’ unavoidably relevant as I stay at home to avoid a virus which is wreaking havoc in many corners of the globe.

In 2020 the works are often longer and less mercurial than the early Bacillus particles, tracks such as “Misinformation Spreads, Taking Disease With It” and “Fatal Risks Of Persistant Myths” dwelling on single or small groups of pathologies and “The New Rise Of Preventable Diseases” melting into a self-perpetuating spread of unchanging viscosity which reflects Peter Keller’s recent works of stasis more than the unsettled fearmongering of his old Clotted Meat Portioning cassettes. The noise is as nasty and rough as ever, but its agility is significantly declined, strength in self-generation favoured over unexpected jumping between patients.

“Outbreaks Of Disease Once Conquered” is a highlight for reverting to Bacillus’ familiar structural instability, jarring cut-ups, and stereo spectrum severance, but the nervousness invoked on earlier works is much harder to find on ‘Anti-Vaxxer’ when it settles into a pleading grind, that lurking fear replaced instead with a more suffocating insistence – periodically broken by samples which drive home the thematic masthead and also serve to break up heavier chunks of noise as in “Complacency Leaves you Exposed” (a technique which can either distract or dissect depending on timing and use). “ImmuNoCompromise” goes further in instead constructing itself from sampled material, swerving its gasping noise around what sounds like a high school argument, its loud voices competing in urgency with the constrictive noise for an unexpectedly memorable diversion.

While of the same strain as what came before it ‘Anti-Vaxxer’’s looser construction hints at the heavier end of the type of manual noise Expose Your Eyes and Dogliveroil realised – while still firmly mired in an mid-1990s Americanoise blown-out saturation informed – but informed by noise wall stasis and with samples almost a little too clean in their execution, as the main updates to Bacillus’ previously squalid but highly-strung noise vignettes.

The update in packaging is even more noticeable, Glossolalia using plenty of laser printer paper to deliver a folded A5 cover and a swag of research materials and collage materials, as well as an ampoule of vaccine so you or someone you love isn’t the next victim. It’s an extensive and acknowledging provision of space and resources, and a worthy addition to a discography which – even with a recent upsurge in cases – is still one of the rarer Americanoise of the last 25 years.

https://bacillus.bandcamp.com/album/anti-vaxxer

Kadaver & Vomir 'Kadavomier' CDR (Inner City Uprising)

Vomir has spent over a decade creating works of immersion, a celebration of stasis with which to shut out the world and be consumed by sound. Into that ideal Romain Perrot has this time allowed Kadaver’s Michael Zolotov some space to merge his flayed noise electronics, the two realising ‘Kadavomier’ as a single extended track on Australia’s Inner City Uprising label - or split across two sides of a cassette pressing on The Hills Are Dead Records for those needing a breather and a walk across the room inside their 68 minutes of listening. In addition to realising the collaboration in its unedited form the CDR adds seedy collage art from Cursed Earth Cassettes’ Ben Schmidt which I prefer to the cassette’s somewhat hastily realised cover, making the disc the preferred version (other than for analogue format snobs, of course).

After an opening grab of movie dialogue – the importance of which is lost on me – as expected Vomir sets up a dominating central deluge, a resolute current with a hefty mid-range span and peaking surface which runs the entire length of the hour-long piece. Kadaver then forms and moves shapes under the surface and slotted into Vomir’s strong current, strewing bubbles of flange, low-end shadow, and smaller distortion deviations through the choppy Vomir singularity, eventually building to add a rotary blade insistence, contact microphone creasing and unrestrained effect pedal squall in its closing maelstrom.

As its strongest the piece almost vibrates as Kadaver’s intrusions filtrate through Vomir’s central contribution, the final quarter of the piece swelling in size as violently created noise electronics are layered as much as possible over the mainstay timbre (still never fully obscuring it), but earlier subtler infusions cloud or even obscure Romain’s smouldering texture in a more cautionary way, as if probing for weaknesses before ultimately deciding that only an all-out assault is capable of taking down the Frenchman’s construct. Those earlier forays are difficult to catch but cleverly shape the bulk of the lengthy disc, giving ‘Kadavomier’ hints of life and movement even as one of its architects wants to smother all of that with a black garbage bag.

From afar ‘Kadavomier’ seems immobile but the collaborative injection scatters plenty of finely adjusted detail through the piece, creating a track which on close listen is far more turbulent. I struggle to fully appreciate truly minimalist and unchanging harsh noise wall creations, but ‘Kadavomier’ only takes what it needs from that subgenre, testing its capacities with finer perforations before pressing a major morass through; and giving unsettled home listeners like me points within the piece to locate, extract, and chase in development – all without compromising the focus of Vomir’s missive.

https://innercityuprising.bandcamp.com/album/kadaver-vomir

Beatriz Ferreyra ‘Echos +’ 12” (Room 40)

Beatriz Ferreyra’s work has found constrained dissemination compared to many other GRM alumni, only a handful of releases emerging in over 50 years of work. ‘Echos’ follows Room40’s Lawrence English performing with Ferreyra in Portugal and Brazil, as well as bringing her to perform in Australia in 2018, and is a significant addition to the Argentinian’s body of recorded work.

The title-track of ‘Echos +’ is a montage of looped, spliced and layered a capella vocals to four Latin-American songs, the focus on audible tape manipulation rather than any greater performer input or manipulation. Ideas are looped, cadences are ruined, and fragments multiplied across the eight and a half minutes of the piece, but the focus wears a little thin. Created in 1978 “Echos” is somehow the most familiar piece of the LP, its editing and layering reflective of the roots of electroacoustic music as no doubt linked to Ferreyra’s tenure at GRM, albeit but with a personal focus linked to the vocal performances which I find somewhat limiting in impact. As an exercise in technique the piece is clever, but I find its listenability more difficult.

“L’Autre … Ou Le Chant Des Marécages” (“The “Double” Or The Swamp’s”) is again derived from vocal performances, but with a performer input far more marked than the lighter touch of “Echos”. Elongated tones are seemingly constructed from teasingly slowed vocal notes, and create an immediate menace to the piece; “L’Autre … Ou Le Chant Des Marécages” frequently returns to the familiarity of those billowing stretches as a kind of comfort creation, but it’s its need to find that comfort which makes the piece special. Repeated sharp syllabic jabs and wilder yowled, yelled and yelped fragments – verging at its peak in near-riotous climax – lift the piece out of any languorous want, fiercely colouring the piece like blood spatter on snow. The breaths, tics and murmurs which skirted the edges of “Echos” are on this second piece part of a arsenal of honed, bright lashings, vivid punctures of sound which flash across the dark stretches of the piece: the “double” which the title speaks of, and which the liner notes describe as a paradoxal personality, split between vibrant colour and the dark subject of matter of Cendrars’ ‘Moravagine’ in a complex convergence of tonality, texture and dynamic impact.

The centrepiece of ‘Echos +’ is 2007 composition “L’Autre Rive” (“The Other Shore”) which assumes the entire B side, a haunting piece utilising percussion and additional electroacoustic sound. The sound manipulation is more integrative than the first side, the percussion performance itself  – such as the timpani swells which alchemise into circularities of sound, its tom rolls which billow reverbed smoke and a comet’s tail of electronics dust, a jazz cymbal riff swallowed by delay, and gong or cymbal scrapings which are stuttered and manipulated more into animal cries than any instrumental output – immersed in technique, and finessed with additional sound inputs.

The piece itself, inspired by the Bardo Thödol (Tibetan Book of the Dead), merges those percussive shocks with dark swathes of largely ambient sound for a genuinely haunting affect making full use of the composed sounds and the spaces between them. The first half of the piece is littered with emergent scares of sparse percussion and sympathetically minimalist treatments, a more dominant sound input from Beatriz emerging moreso over the second tranche of the piece, which is in part led by set pieces of shock which are provoked by volume-driven swells of semi-orchestral noise or aeoliphone-type disturbance, and which rise up in volume and intensity as if reaching a skeletal arm at an unsuspecting passer-by. Beatriz’s heavier sound elements seem to include instrumental off-cuts, voice, reverb-heavy synthesis and even some jarring junk percussion-type elements played against Richard Aratian’s percussion performance, the electroacoustic elements initially structured around the percussive sparks before seeming to switch into a primary role over the later half of the piece. It’s an immersive, unpredictable and somehow darkly humourous piece which stands up to repeat listens – it’s had a lot here since ‘Echos +’ arrived – easily, never failing to engage, surprise and delight.

Moving on from the perhaps timid approach of its title track, ‘Echos +’ is electroacoustic music in full flight, constantly blurring the line between acoustic and imagined, between treatment and creation, and between Beatriz herself as performer and those whose creativity births her works. While distanced from modern experimental music in its genesis, the imprint of Ferreyra’s work is found in contemporary realisations of dark ambient and Dadaist sound creation, and is an excellent introduction for those genre dwellers who have yet to explore historical/academic works with a similar inclination.

https://room40.bandcamp.com/album/echos

The Gerogerigegege ‘Piss Shower Girlfriend’ 12” (FOAD)

Adherents know that while The Gerogerigegege may forever be labelled a noise project, it frequently – sometimes infuriatingly – isn’t. 2016 comeback album ‘Moena Hai’ was an exquisite combination of ambient craftmanship, field recordings and in-the-red shoegaze riffing which was somehow easily defining of the project even in its sprawl. But the following LPs were appropriated from 1970s pop schtick in that nonchalant fuck-you way the project delivers in spades, and newly self-released editions were a confusing mess of archival curiosities, self-bootlegged bootlegs, and a revised presentation of classic LP ‘Senzuri Champion’.

Within all that mess of culled cultural excess, lo-fi curiosities, rehearsal circumspection and hint of class, Juntaro Yamanouchi’s credentials as a noise artist lay untouched and seemingly uncared for in the project’s resurrection, but ‘Piss Shower Girlfriend’ is the exaltation of volume, distortion and abandon which has been lying in wait the last four years of the project (at least). ‘Piss Shower Girlfriend’ effects a more immediate and volume-dependent bustle than even ‘Senzuri Champion’’s centrepiece “Violence Onanie” but is similarly liberally noisy and unrestrained. The LP is a festering squall of high volume feedback and vocal noise, with a heavy Masonna feel in its slashes of shrieking vocal gibberish, cleaving feedback air, flip-switch effect injections and occasional pauses of equipment faltering in overheated exhaustion.

While the first side is utterly primal and unhinged, departing only from its shriek-and-howl template with a bath of reverb in final track “Piss Shower Telephone #4”, the second side seems to push some (probably sampled) junk clatter and movie script speech through its raucous amplification, those moments of performed downtime then fuelling spasmodic spurts of fierce movement, garbled vocal jags and greater equipment defeat/interruption.

Each side plays out as a single piece but let’s not forget that – of course – each isn’t. The LP purports to contain 13 tracks even if it doesn’t really, and to make it better the track titles are divine as only Juntaro could do: personal highlights are “Piss Shower Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon” and “Piss Purple Draank (T.V Bastard)”. For bonus points the pressing is a picture disc, cheesecake muscle men innocently handstanding, their smile and serene pose at dubious odds with the vibrant audio content.

I get why The Gerogerigegege is a difficult or taboo project for many, but any and all unpreparedness or selectivity is out: ‘Piss Shower Girlfriend’ has to be the exception for anyone yearning for liberated and deranged harsh noise with a juvenile fascination for loudness, feedback and human caterwaul. ‘Piss Shower Girlfriend’ is the LP which will yet again entrench The Gerogerigegege in the noise consciousness, and lead to a whole new round of disappointments as that newly attracted audience find the next few releases to bear no sonic resemblance or care for convention.

http://www.foadrecords.it/

Gnaw Their Tongues ‘I Speak The Truth, Yet With Every Word Uttered, Thousands Die’ CD/LP (Consouling Sounds)

If Maurice De Jong’s recent releases as Hagetisse, Golden Ashes and in duo Dodenbezweerder speak to different paths of black metal historicism, Gnaw Their Tongues is intent on abandoning that association. Only the final tattered remnants of Maurice’s genre trappings are still stapled to the project’s sickly flesh, little left of the beginnings of the project which seems to have occupied the nastiest and bleakest corners of Maurice’s attentions for well over a decade.

‘I Speak The Truth, Yet With Every Word Uttered, Thousands Die’ strips away black metal’s layers of traditional musicality to reveal an impassive industrial inside, dominated by blocks of cold sound which have been deprived of melody to instead comprise a set of negatively charged drones owing more to the fringes of European postmortem industrial than its church burning miscreants, then sets in largely short-form compositions which share a dismal production robbed of frequency definition and often constrained from the strangled recordings into which Maurice places his textural aberrations.

Despite Gnaw Their Tongues’ rejection of musicality, percussion is an usual driver of ‘I Speak The truth, Yet With every Word Uttered, Thousands Die’; devoid of melodic form, its drone layers clutch at the trajectory given by the pieces’ rhythmic constructs. The burrowing insect slop which opens the title track, leading into a brief martial industrial refrain and more larval electronics layers, begins to writhe as sparse programmed percussion punches through its murky electronics – reducing its bass guitar to a mucousy substance which bulges as the percussive stabs jab it. Likewise “Purity Coffins” alternates its hellish windstorms with punctuations of tense electronics twitching at the provocation of its electronic drum flashes, the piece almost dramatic in its soundtrack-like percussive hits and orchestra-like swells of permeating sound, and “Abortion Hymn” rides free-form percussion into a storm of reverberated industrial spatter, bass guitar murmur and swampy vocal cries: only a few tentacles of mid-range slither emerge from the depressive mass of sound separately, to warily grasp around and retreat unsatisfied.

Other rhythmic constructs follow the turgid pull of the LP’s familiarly hateful textures, beginning with “White Void Black Wounds” commandeering a blast beat to then requisition it as a tool of war, as a frantic spray of artillery merges with seething distortion textures. The harrowing screams of “Here Is No Corruption” are only unleashed when its quaver drum pattern pauses to allow strains of vocals scrapings to emerge from the moist drone which blankets the track, its subtle pattern changes swamped by the clamouring spawn of the piece’s synth lines. Gnaw Their Tongues has never lurched closer to power electronics than in these moments of insistence, textures caught in the churn and seething in frustration as harrowing vocals whirlpool through the pieces.

While not afraid to borrow from the black industrial setups of MZ.412 and the drone-heavy suffocations of Urfaust, Gnaw Their Tongues brings a newly abstracted darkness to what remains, again somehow shaped by its percussive elements. “To Rival Death In Beauty” begins with grotesque vocals and a marauding synth line but is taken away by intermittent fragmentation of electronica rhythmic constructs, the piece managing to move its heaving carcass in time with the pulse set in motion by those early drum machine patterns. Even more absurd, a noirish wash permeates “A Sombre Gesture In The Faint Light Of Dusk” as faltering error messages and an unsettling bass refrain flare into more swollen pustules of greying drone mush, squirming electronics and dripping vocal screams – its urgencies dictated by the return of its percussive elements, as with closer “Shall Be No More” which ebbs and flows as tied to its rhythmic fortunes.

After half an hour of unpleasantness which plumbs the depths of Maurice’s late night self-torment, reflected in a constantly dismal production which has been stripped of any high end presence, “Shall Be No More” finally settles into ‘I Speak The Truth, Yet With Every Word Uttered, Thousands Die’’s brief moment of normalcy. Weak rays of sun reach the later half of the track  to reveal an almost uplifting (at least comparable to the remainder of ‘I Speak The Truth, Yet With Every Word Uttered, Thousands Die’) melody which brings the nightmarishness of the album to a close – as if acknowledging that the LP’s terrors must lurk in both literal and mentally figurative shadows, to be forgotten in the light of day but crawling back into consciousness when the evening arrives.

My initial listens to ‘I Speak The Truth, Yet With Every Word Uttered, Thousands Die’ thought that perhaps the project had spat out a release too reliant on the emotionless distortion textures which shadow much of the LP, but the shaping of ‘I Speak The Truth, Yet With Every Word Uttered, Thousands Die’ is a more complex ordeal than that initial impression, its grotesqueness worsened when you realise that even within that putrid production its parts are connected, and that mess is alive and responsive. Gnaw Their Tongues has picked at the rotted flesh of industrial culture for years, but ‘I Speak The Truth, Yet With Every Word Uttered, Thousands Die’ seems enraptured by the genre’s dark recesses, even as Maurice’s other projects pull threads of more familiar black metal out for focus. Earlier pleasure derived from the chaos and paraphilic pulls of power electronics has failed, leaving only the genre’s bleakest focuses with which to construct this album.

https://gnawtheirtongues.bandcamp.com/album/i-speak-the-truth-yet-with-every-word-uttered-thousands-die

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

Sverre Larssen ‘Wind Harp Recordings 1976-1977’ 12” (O. Gudmundsen Minde)

The history of experimental music is not just in the hallowed names, records, and studios of current remembrance, but in the forgotten developments, obscurities and isolations which are lost in time, of which were never really found to begin with. The intersection of experimental music with other creative – and non-creative – disciplines is an essential part of the cross-pollenation of ideas and techniques which has fed the development of outsider music, and is convergence which has frequently incorporated the earth’s natural elemental forces – the power of which has the capacity to dwarf any electronic creation.

Sverre Larssen was a Norwegian businessman who in the early 1970s constructed a wind harp – in his case a twelve-stringed instrument, capturing the interaction of the wind with the instrument’s strings via contact microphones – through, it seems, a combination of engineering ability, rudimentary external instructions, and a healhy does of intuition. This LP on O. Gudmundsen Minde releases the only available recordings of Sverre’s creation, obtained from his family and publicly available for the first time.

Even across multiple recordings the LP is essentially one – albeit beautiful – outcome: a low tonal drone with slight fluctuations and imperfections, from which a prism of harmonic overtones and sympathetic vibrations come and go, the resilience on the initial octaves giving way to a looser structure in the upper layers of Larsen’s captivating drones.

Where the pieces differ is in the depth and strength of that harmonic overlay, “Nordavinden I” quite strong in its base layer and minimalist in its higher registers, whereas “Nordavinden II” emphasises a mid-range tonal sheen almost absent from the first track. The environment itself is also a variable, the wind more audible on “Sonnavinden” as it merges with the spiralling overtones emitted from Sverre’s wind harp. But even from that singular realisation the result is captivating, the gorgeousness of the kaleidoscopic harmonic movements more than enough to move these recordings beyond ‘simple drone’ descriptors.

I have only two disappointments, entirely contradictory and born from my abhorrent mono-lingualism. The first is the disappointingly short blurb on the back cover, and lack of other historical materials or analysis. For what is promoted as a special historical find, the importance or context of Sverre’s work is difficult to appreciate from the confined description on the back cover. The second is the interviews which pad out the B side, all in Norwegian and featuring only a few gusts of musical content. I’m sure these would be satisfactorily (or at least somewhat) expository if I could understand them (correcting my first criticism), but as it is the B side comes up short.

Even with that possible insight obscured, the beauty of Sverre’s work is standalone enchanting, and  I don’t need an historical context to listen to this LP enraptured. Those with an interest in the works of Alan Lamb or Alvin Lucier’s classic ‘Music On A Long Thin Wire’ will have a (or at least, my) starting point for Sverre Larssen’s work, but the musicality which Sverre extracts is all his own.

https://ogudmundsenminde.bandcamp.com/album/wind-harp-recordings-1976-1977

V:XII ‘Rom, Rune and Ruin: The Odium Disciplina’ CD (Aesthetic Death)

Daniel Jansson has an impressive history in underground music, gaining notoriety in the projects Blodulv and Keplers Odd before emerging on the Cold Spring label as Deadwood, a project merging chaotic black metal elements with hardened power electronics. V:XII draws again on that history, but largely maintains a clear separation from Daniel’s earlier work.

“The New Black” opens ‘Rom, Rune and Ruin’ with emphasis on Daniel’s soulless vocals by subduing the piece’s other elements. The various vocal styles, borrowed from Daniel’s musical history, are key to ‘Rom, Rune and Ruin’ and emerge from “The New Black” through a minimal irregular rhythm, short crescendos of synth, and looming low-end waterforms which all lurk in the track’s subzero blindness, establishing a strong current of dark ambient which flows through the sleeper of the CD.

What follows is “Madr”, a central legacy track which cleverly captures a strong black metal sensibility while remaining rooted in the project’s power electronics/industrial intentions, a melodic refrain and sung vocals buried under the hateful synthesizer, drum machine bursts and grim vocals which dominate the piece as they suffocate, strafe and castigate the track respectively. I haven’t before heard something so melodically capable retain such a strong genre focus and external harshness, and as only the second track on the CD “Madr” quickly sets the bar high, its glimmers of musical legacy giving brief breaths of hope in the ebbs of an otherwise dominating piece. If Deadwood was a merger of black metal’s more raw and unforgiving tendencies, “Madr” acknowledges the genre’s slow melodic abilities without drawing too much attention.

“Yawning Void” and “Vanagandr” likewise bridge the same gap, the former importing semi-melody in its abyssal low-end synth haunt, similar to “Madr” in affect but stripped of everything except synthesizer and vocals; the latter corrals its melodic elements from a transparent synth drift, adding a slowed heartbeat pulse and glacial chill without tipping the piece fully into dark ambient territory. Shards of desolate musicality lie at the core of V:XII’s work, permeating these few tracks in a less subtle way than elsewhere on the CD and tying V:XII to its history.

“Twining Rope” follows as a more straight ahead death industrial work, chilling synth despondency moving into snowstorm flange which is swirled around a mordant rhythm and tectonic effected vocals, a bleak outlook repeated on “Djavulsogon - Deconstructing the Bloodwolf” which strips V:XII down to a basic track of bleak synthesizer and gruff vocals, and the driving drum machine thud and wisps of electronics which underpin gruff vocals on “Ururz” for a strong hint of Trepaneringsritualen’s ritualised industrial rawness.

Penultimate track “BAHF” is the merging of the disc’s various ideas, a slow musical pulse running through the piece as it bursts forth with hardened power electronics vignettes, lulls into slow ambient drift, and a closing harder rhythmically edged apex – again tied together with hoarse vocals which push the piece through its permutations. “BAHF” manages to tie the threads of ‘Rom, Rune and Ruin: The Odium Disciplina’ together and inject some greater compositional movement, without ever sounding incongruous or too stretched.

While each track presents as a standalone creation, ‘Rom, Rune and Ruin: The Odium Disciplina’ has a dark chill through its entirety: an unshakeable iciness which – while familiar to fans of the genres V:XII draws from – cuts across the CD’s genre references and permeates to the unbeating heart of the CD. The clear and nuanced production serves to detail that encompassing frost’s impact on all the timbral components of ‘Rom, Rune and Ruin: The Odium Disciplina’, burying the listener in its dark Arctic scenery down to the last snowflake. In execution and effect V:XII delivers within genre expectations, while adding a clear imprint of its own.