Even if I admittedly don’t retrieve them from the shelves as often as I should, split 7” records remain a favourite format for the unexpected and unknown: a chance to use a physical divide as a stylistic wedge, and pair the known with the unfamiliar, the old with the new, or the rote with the experimental. This pair of split 7”s cross many of those divides, drawing projects from within Australia’s current noise/industrial scene.
Innercity Uprising have already released a handful of split lathe-cut 5” records with house band Milat, now upgrading to 7” size to pair with Nunsploitation, a mysterious Melbourne project featuring members of Military Position, Shallow and Expurgatory with only a few recordings and live performances to show for their four years of existence.
Drawn from the group’s debut live performance Nunsploitation’s “Milk” plays it safe both for the format and compositionally, a steady pulse of bass guitar washed in grubbier distortion and threatened by a distant scouring cloud, while an evenly toned piece of spoken word unwinds atop the basic industrial construct. The demurity of the noise components matches the flat spoken delivery, never moving into hostile territory or giving any dangerous impetus to the work; the focus is on the spoken delivery, although its flat and unbroken pace doesn’t make for much of a listening experience either. “Milk” perhaps wants to express more than it does, an audio composition too subdued in delivery, and lost in the importance of its text, to act as a standalone release.
Milat counter with “Nunfucker”, a track of splintered electronics, occasional loops and a heavy fuzz blanket fed through a lo-fi mincer and stapled to vocals which sound as if they’ve been spat through a radio receiver. Milat excel at being loud and obnoxious and “Nunfucker” should have been a blasphemous blast of nastiness – but instead the vocals lack that usual bruising quality, and the electronics are simmered to a fairly bland stew. There seems to be a lot happening during “Nunfucker” – the backing is constantly busy – but rarely is that discernible (although the protruding synth visions towards the end have greater emergence), largely reduced to the track’s gruel-like grey and – like “Milk” – dominated by a vocal line which doesn’t deserve its prominence.
End Projekt is the collaborative project of Tone Generator (SPK), Sys_Frank and Hirofumi Uchino (Defektro), and this split 7” marks the project’s first recorded output for the freshly established Novichok label. The potential for carnage is real, but End Projekt opt to avoid overt industrial disruption, “Fear” instead imbued with tension as manipulated pandemic-themed spoken word snatches are dusted across a sickly moving drone. Coarse low-end bristles threaten to break the skin as the virulent synth shakes with infection, sparks of semi-tonal jitters flashing across the lower register drone and instigating clearer spoken passages which further emphasise the ‘end times’ vision of End Projekt. Restrained yet rich in detail, “Fear” flags serious potential – unsurprising given the pedigree of its performers.
Ebola Disco’s primal energy is a difficult fit for Browning Mummery’s considered industrial workings, but the two projects find common ground in “M.F.”, with Andy managing to elongate Ebola Disco and add layers of detail without losing their wheels-fall-off charm. Matt’s snapping vocals are ever-present, strangling in feedback and buried in the mix alongside charged rhythms, groaning effects, and an unstable synth dervish. In lending his aid Andy Lonsdale has lost none of Ebola Disco’s usual chaos, instead fillling the piece to excess so it overflows to bursting, threatening to explode its unstable elements onto all four walls.
While adopting a similar demure/diabolical dichotomy to the Innercity Uprising 7”, Novichok’s pressing far more capably captures the material (particularly important for the reach of End Project’s low frequency probing) while also demonstrating the benefits of putting some of Australia’s most experienced underground figures to work.
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