Blackphone 666 ‘PTN.YLW HARM’ C-60 (Murder Channel)

The local whispers about Blackphone666 were keenly amplified when 2017’s ‘Accumulation’ CD (Dotsmark) brought the project’s furious electronics assault to the wider world, heralding a project born in the ‘00s and more than capable of shouldering the weighty expectations of Japanese’s unrivalled noise and experimental history. Seeming to rise from the fringes of underground dance culture and comfortable with its millennial sensibilities, ‘Accumulation’ balanced flow and fracture, structure and deconstruction, with ease.

‘PTN.YLW HARM’ is something of a stop-gap release, perhaps more a collection of ideas than a fully-fledged full-length, and the release proper – the first side of this cassette edition – is steeped in highly paced gabber beats: flurries of hyper-charged rhythms which dominate the pieces and leave minimal space for the project’s fearsome storms of noise electronics. Those happy to merge their harsh noise with the fringes of extreme dance music may be pleased, but for those – like me – who extract nothing from that scene, this cassette’s almost garish embrace of kinesis weighs in favour of an artform of no attraction.

While cruel squeals of gory harsh noise are emitted on occasion, that lifeblood is obscured by the incessant beats which festoon the first side of the cassette. “Aspect Of Disorder” hits pause on the drum machine long enough for some sickly cries of volt surging electronics, and “Blood Stocks” dials the rhythmic elements down a notch or two as a threshing line of noise flails away in stereo left. It’s too little to properly latch on to for those wanting a further dose of what made ‘Accretion’ so good, and in my view let down by the rigidity of the beats which offer few detours or variations: once the beats hit they remain, trampling out almost all other activity.

The exception to this glut of pushy one-two is final track “In Your Area”, which slows the rampant beats down to a less fevered tempo, before infusing that gait with ashen synth swatches and hoarsely yelled vocals for a far darker and more confronting finale compared to the fast-forward dancefloor overload of the remaining tracks. After 24-odd minutes of frantic flashing of brightness, the constriction in atmosphere and immediate dimming brought about by “In Your Area” shows some lost potential to Blackphone666’s strobing pulsations.

Bonus track “Believe” isn’t for download but is exclusive to the cassette, and takes up the entire second side. The rhythm is distilled down to a snappish pulse which lurks at the edge of the mix, layers of crunchy distortion taking up the space it was denied over the pieces on the first side. The long-form piece hits an easier and more staid tone, rasping sheets of noise scuffing strongly while higher frequency bubbles float through the airborne grit and, as the piece develops, more intense lashings ignite the dormant fuel within the piece and lurch it out of its largely unthreatening course.

Every project is entitled to explore its origins and crevices. ‘PTN.YLW HARM’ tributes a world I’ve never wanted to visit, and was never going to bring me along for that ride. The moments of upstart noise obnoxiousness hint that a return to darker and more nebulous concoctions is intended, so while this cassette is destined for the shelf in favour of its predecessors, I don’t criticise the attempt – even if the outcome leaves me behind – or abandon my hopes for Blackphone666’s future plans.

https://blackphone666.bandcamp.com/album/ptn-ylw-harm

Azoikum & Scatmother ‘Holden Caulfield’ C-70 (Nil By Mouth)

 

Stefan Widmann’s Azoikum has emerged from the ice, pushing out a number of releases in the last couple of years which show no sign of degradation from the time spent away. The project is coupled on this cassette with Scatmother, an outlet for Hagen Verkhaner which straddles primal noise and sordid power electronics for an intentionally unsavoury sensibility which has played out across a range of releases since the mid-‘10s. The two are united here on ‘Holden Caulfield’, the central character of JD Salinger’s ‘Catcher In The Rye’ and used here presumably as a banner for the character’s mental illness and instability which is faintly threaded to Scatmother’s chosen samples.

After a demure introduction Azoikum launches into a fury of tangled and fried noise electronics, multiple lines boiling furiously in a clutter more reminiscent of mid-90s American or Japanese noise than anything else I’ve found in Azoikum’s discography. Drifting away from the project’s more familiar power electronics dourness has not hurt this material at all: it’s powerful, absorbing, and bleeding confidence, equipment punished but clearly enjoying the force deployed upon it.

There are very few sonic components from Azoikum’s material which I can identify or grasp, with only small fragments finding recirculation through a wider reinventive momentum – but that’s the point; this is noise with the futurist drive of Merzbow’s ‘Relapse-era’ but in a somewhat more confined frequency range (there’s little low-end to kick in, and the high end sheen has been kept dialed back), a way to get from beginning to end quicker and with more bruises than the time/space continuum wants to allow. The project’s well-worn power electronics lexicon shouldn’t put off those wanting a fix of high velocity harsh noise: this material is highly satisfying, and stands up well to repeat listens.

Scatmother finds inspiration in a sparser but still disheveled swamp of noise, with leaky feedback, scrap metal and buzzing synth resonating through a darker and more muted display than Azoikum’s bolder hues, and lashed on most tracks by hoarsely yelled vocals which seem to rage in response to the flames coaxed from the familiar setup. At its best the material surges and swarms with invigoration, effective in its brutishness and forging its way through crude weight and nastiness. “Breeders” and “Kshattriya” are both beneficiaries of this approach, ugly distortion-smothered junk and crude synth adjustments  giving a sense of unhinged immediacy which the vocals perpetuates.

It's not an approach which always works, particularly at over half an hour in length. “Proud Flesh”’s ominous opening of delayed junk metal scrapes and unflinching synth sets a more stable and effective tone but that falls apart when the gruff vocals and squirming electronics interject, however the drop in intensity is palpable; “Asperger’s Syndrome” follows and is similarly unconfrontational, the immediacy and abandonment of the better tracks waning through this mid section, unable to keep the energy or depth of sound which gives the better tracks their edge. I prefer the project when it maintains a mood at the expense of ferocity, rather than the other way around; the contributions to this cassette are enjoyable enough when at their peak, but the unevenness and drops in intensity push ‘Holden Caulfield’ back in Scatmother’s discography for me.

Nil By Mouth’s expansive packaging should be well-known by now, and ‘Holden Caulfield’ is the label in its sweet spot: an oversized envelope housing multiple inserts alongside the cassette. Visually the materials are well-made, although the link between what I assume are the Azoikum inserts, and the audio material as titled, isn’t particularly clear: none of the titles match, and the themes seem a little misaligned. Regardless the presentation is a treat, a few rungs above the crowd of Norelco cased cassettes.

http://www.exoteric-zine.com/nilbymouth/

Red Wine And Sugar 'Donkeys Are Led By Donkeys' 10" (Index Clean)

Red Wine And Sugar is the duo of Melbournians Mark Groves and Samaan Fieck, a melding of (as the promo blurb accurately states) “drily delivered text and concrète sound”, found across a small collection of mostly locally released discography entries which have matched Mark’s texts with experimental conjurations seemingly derived from slowed and abused tapes and related media. ‘Donkeys Are Led By Donkeys’ is the duo touching base during 2020’s covid-19 city lockdown, connection as a duo attained through societal and musical disconnect and the sound components then delivered to Altar Of Flies soundsmith Mattias Gustafsson for a reworking on the record’s B side.

The untampered recording of “Donkeys Are Led By Donkeys” starts sparsely, words hanging from silent hooks before being bolstered with a grab-bag of left-field sound. A free jazz sensibility courses through the piece’s sonic choices as discordant jabs, raw guitar clumps, an almost sleazy percussive pulse and a wheezing hum are all shaped through the piece’s opening few minutes, before hitting a cloud of darker murmur which is allowed to close the piece out. While the duo have never been confined in their sound inputs, “Donkeys Are Led By Donkeys” seems more openly musical in its backing, thieving what could easily be The Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation off-cuts to stitch together an experimental home bar version of early morning jazz ambience for Mark’s words to hang off in lament.

The unflinching and unhurried vocal delivery – a constant to Red Wine And Sugar’s discography – echoes the isolationism of the cover, fragments of bubbled-up dysphoria and covid lockdown reportage growing increasingly abstractified with a Burroughs-ian cut-up sensibility to its prose, a sensibility finding reflection in the lyrics’ visual treatment on the front cover. Mark is a careful and evocative lyricist and “Donkeys Are Led By Donkeys” is another layered text which has both superficial resonance and deeper intrigue.

Mattias Gustafsson’s remix/reimagining of the track on the B side mistreats grainy cassette drone with mangled tape hiccups, hiding a distant depth of sound and collection of junk ephemera in its haze which has more than a hint of Nurse With Wound’s murky drone depths. That opening resonance is swept aside by the spoken word returning, a concise staccato to the underpinning sounds maintaining a busy trajectory but still imprinting space around the concrete sounds. The urgency which builds through the original track is gone although its sonic remnants remain differently accented and ordered, with muffled junk caterwaul, Leone-adjacent guitar punctuations, close-microphoned crumpling and disquiet cable hum all finding an irregular cycle at Mattias’ hands.  The spoken word too is subject to degradation, irregular effects and mangled repetitions adding uncharacteristic tone to the project’s usual indifference.

The generation of space within the remix, its opening celebration of error and shadow, and its choices of fragments to limpingly repeat, make the treatment a welcome and distinctly different addition to the original piece, various qualities emphasised and abandoned in addition to the introduced sensibility of the opening. Red Wine And Sugar has always been an intriguing and unique project and ‘Donkeys Led By A Donkey’ furthers that of its own accord, but accented by Mattias Gustafsson’s characteristic imprint.

https://redwineandsugar.bandcamp.com/album/donkeys-are-led-by-donkeys

Merzbow & Prurient 'Black Crows Cyborg' 12" (Hospital Productions)

 

Both pervasive collaborators, the stylistic strengths of Merzbow and Prurient have – to my knowledge – never met prior to this LP, each previously staking out quite different territories even across sizeable discographies which both traverse a wide experimental ground. Nonetheless the shared aesthetic of ‘Black Crows Cyborg’ is immediate and maintained, an acknowledgement of the negativity of familiar environments which finds the collaborators bound to a common experience which manifest in different concerns on each piece.

Side II’s “Cylinders Raven” is how I expected the collaboration to sound, opening grounding buzz and scrap metal soon enveloped into Masami Akita’s nihilistic sprawl. Recent Merzbow has – when in outright noise mode – tended for dark, charred distortions, and to this Prurient adds a fractured unease with blisters of synth thud and shudder and fragments of crude electronics thrown across the stereo spectrum, the layers contorting in an uncomfortable flux as Dominick’s contributions swim through the bloodstream of the piece, met with hostility by Merzbow’s midnight squall.

Superficially “Cylinders Raven” wants to be as relentless as most of Merzbow’s recent harsh noise fluidity, but beneath that surface Prurient plays a strongly divertive role, objects thrown in to divert and ultimately reduce the current, the second half of the piece in particular retrogressing to the junky crudity of 1980s Merzbow as half-alive electronics, scraps of angular metal, and whirlpooling distortion all float in a few inches of soupy gloam, with the depth of the work only revealed at the end, layers stripped away to reveal single elements which were clouded by the larger work billowing from the speakers.

Side I’s “City Barbarism Melancholy” brings clearly owned elements into a very different collaboration. A moody chordal drone hangs in the air like a Charlemagne Palestine concert leaking through a closed door, as independent lines of junk manipulation wrestle on either side of the stereo spectrum, and occasional fissures of pressurised electronics and near-white noise flare up at or near the surface of the piece. While “Cylinders Raven” compacts layers to keep out the light, “City Barbarism Melancholy” breaks the skin of a penetrative melancholy, its intangible drone hanging purposefully out of reach while its scrap metal blows are intentionally raw and bruising. Meanwhile the spurts of angry noise which fall across the piece are swept away by the pervading atmosphere, ejections of pent up despair which quickly fall back into the singular mood which motivates the piece.

Notwithstanding the cities attributed by the liner notes to each piece, I hear each artist studying the other's experience: of Tokyo’s fast pace but problematic underbelly, its problematic elements attempted to be swept away but remaining once all is gone; and of New York’s flashes of immediacy sinking into an isolating experience even when hit by a crowded, unkind jostling nearby – as well as that of its artists who have dug into their histories as well as expressing their modernity, blocks of their respective discographies revisited for quite prominent components of the LP even as a common gloom settles over both collaborative sides.

The presentation of the LP draws the listener into that too, mangled and painted mesh (which has been highlighted with a matching embossing), trash circuitry and electronics refuse all strewn across the cover, and splatter vinyl furthering the effect. I find something rewarding to ‘Black Crows Cyborg’ every listen; sometimes new, sometimes revisited – furthering the urban references which influence the LP – and there have been a lot. The two have managed to create a work in which each collaborator’s materials are easy to discern, but which feed a larger whole which works as its own creation.

https://prurient.bandcamp.com/album/black-crows-cyborg

Blessed Sacrifist 'Loss Of Innocence' CD (No Coast/No Hope / FTAM)

Emerging from an ever-deeper sea of east coast American power electronics/death industrial projects, Blessed Sacrifist pushes genre affiliations with black metal in a manner not underlined so heavily since MZ.412’s mid-1990s desecrations. Clean and simple lines dominate ‘Loss Of Innocence’, evoking the wracked despair of black metal at its misanthropic core: the slow descent and raw vocals of the genre’s depressive introspection, and acknowledging an almost religious solemnity in the treatment of its cold melodies and stripped back textures.

The mission statement is “Isolate Form”, a minor key chordal repetition the building block for an intense, melancholic hymn escalated by fraught vocals and swarming synth. Like all of ‘Loss Of Innocence’ the brush strokes are wide and careful even if the only colour is black, the piece’s ten minutes layered slowly and carefully, baring its musical inspiration across a confined death industrial instrumentation. “Failing Grasp” balances those same sensibilities just as skilfully, blending spook and melodic frown with the darker end of the Berlin School output: the back-of the-classroom synth somnolence of Tangerine Dream’s ‘Zeit’ and Klaus Schulze’s ‘Cybotron’ cast into a burning church.

Bludgeoning elements give ‘Loss Of Innocence’ its peaks, a suffocating opening to the title track drenched in blast beat admiration and manifested as textural saturation, and climaxing again through “Eclipse Of Winds (Forward)”’s immolating distortion which lays waste to the second half of the piece: a track which also veers into full musicality with its opening two chord riff, a poorer overt recognition of the release’s spiritual genesis than “Clandestine Despair”, a stand-alone minor chord arpeggiation which is slightly out of tune and dullened with a strong hint of Carpathian Forest’s early atmospheric pieces. The musical detail is a little flat, but its inclusion is important to fully explain ‘Loss Of Innocence’.

What these tracks expose, however, is the slow pace to the CD: an intentional reflection of the cyclic dysphoria which has haunted black metal since Burzum. Like the dispersive sub-genre it evokes Blessed Sacrifist’s languid and repetitive nature can sink into tedium with the wrong listener or mindset: the focus on mood is paramount, but when not shared by the listener the work can drag in various settings and at different stages of immersion. It’s a message I share some times, but not always: when not fully committed to its atmosphere my point of departure – and while still impressed by its clean and harrowing delivery – is the length and repetitive simplicity of the pieces.

https://blessedsacrifist.bandcamp.com/

Nunsploitation & Milat 7” (Innercity Uprising); End Project & Ebola Disco/Browning Mummery 7” (Novichok)

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.

https://innercityuprising.bandcamp.com/album/split-11

https://novichoklabel.blogspot.com/2021/03/produkt-002.html

Like Weeds ‘Until There Is Nothing Left’ C-21 (Deathbed Tapes)

 

I thought I’d figured out Kenny Sanderson’s post-Facialmess creative form across the half a dozen or so Like Weeds releases to date, but ‘Until There Is Nothing Left’ still sideswipes that understanding. The cassette picks up components of the superb ‘Closer At Hand Than God’ CD and transplants them into a less overtly compositional setting, suggesting the expanse of Like Weeds is not yet settled almost three years into the project.

The title track is the dominant voice of the cassette, a throbbing electronics drone moving in and out of stability, as flurries of sympathetic resonance are flung from the track by what seems to be a cluster of interlinked effects. Those aligned voices start to grow in stature and volume, a searing higher register scorching the piece as a coarse rumble settles in behind, and an ominous regularised pulse encircles the work to apex it and then eventually force its implosion into a clenched hiss of high-end. Each element is simple, but the trajectory of the track is key as it slowly grows in weight and stature, its early form nothing like the brutish colossus it matures into. Facialmess explored a lot of sonic and compositional ideas, but Like Weeds seems intended to address areas of industrial and experimental audio which were beyond even the open arms of Facialmess’ long career – and “Until There Is Nothing Left” takes intent and intense advantage of that, its long form and slow build unlike anything I’ve heard from Kenny to date.

Many previous Like Weeds works play out strange foley narratives, but on ‘Until There Is Nothing Left’ only shortest track “Involuntary Process” has that sensibility, metallic edges scraped against one another and subtly effected, the experience taking on a torturous overtone which is set over dark low-end brushstrokes and an idling ticking. Once again there’s an almost visual overload to the atmosphere of the track, but that type of mini-narrative is not the intended focus of this cassette, and the experience is lost quickly and unapologetically, leading into “My Body Adapts To Its Presence”’s redux of the title track’s electronics flexes.

The final piece doesn’t have the same maturation as the title track but does add some acoustic metal strikes to the blooming of its layers of undulating electronics, the tonal palette broader but the structure less intense as a frantic twitching, warning siren, and low-end exploration are all interchanged without the textural stacking of the opening side. ‘My Body Adapts To Its Presence’ is a more exploratory and free-form take on similar elements to the title track, a greater glimpse of the equipment which is at the soldered heart of ‘Until There Is Nothing Left’ and seems almost surprised by itself as the final few minutes yield a succession of new voices.

Deathbed Tapes’ morbid black and white aesthetic is in usual effect, given extra space thanks to the oversized case used to house ‘Until There Is Nothing Left’ – although that expanse feels a bit unused, with no inner artwork or insert offered up. Both label and artist have a strong voice/aesthetic with inherent flexibility, and this cassette takes advantage of both: a clutch of familiar ideas given extension by the artist and minimalist interaction by the label.

https://deathbedtapes.bandcamp.com/album/until-there-is-nothing-left

Trance ‘Ancient History’ CD (Helicopter/Troniks)

Trance never quite entered the centre of Americanoise understanding, the project running a freer and more ambient understanding which linked to but never aligned with the rougher Self Abuse and Mother Savage surges which dominated my survey of that place and time. ‘Ancient History’ compiles three extended Trance live performances from the early 1990s, recorded at the time on a DAT recorder strategically (or not) placed in the audience and sonically tweaked by John Wiese’s expertise. On each Mason is joined by Elden M, whose Allegory Chapel Ltd project similarly stood near but never in the Americanoise lexicon as I appreciated it – but which I’ve had a long and unassailed admiration of nonetheless.

The first track here is Trance’s first live show, emerging from the shadow of a run of late 1980s/1990 cassette, and heavily reliant on elements of Mason’s earlier musicality as rhythmic patterns merge with free-form junk percussion, flanged but discernible guitar and large empty spaces of withdrawal. The set is too long and meandering to truly succeed, something even the liner notes partially acknowledge, and is at its best when the percussive elements decline near the end, setting up a brief but edgier war of sustained guitar notes which are cannoned out to achieve feedbacked bliss, melting into some brief destructive kinesis; before that, however, the stretch of the piece is a bit laconic for me.

The second set from October 1992 is what I would have expected from a Trance show based upon the materials I’d heard previously: a swarm of mid-range guitar and keyboard tones struggling to be contained within a loosely formed shape, and bounded by minimal percussion. The groaned vocals add a strange ‘80s industrial undercurrent but fit the piece well, which (grunting aside) hits the intended target somewhere between an untidy Aube and a lite version of C.C.C.C. (whose Oakland visit this performance was in support of): better in the denser opening tranche and the gleeful extended closing feedback duel (which finds the vocals re-emerge in a more aggressive manner) than when the guitar takes up a rhythmic role and leaves Elden to fill too big a gap. While experiencing a brief lull in the middle the piece makes proper use of the loudness apparent in the room, genuinely transcendental moments emerging from the volume-driven forces of the duo at the peak of their free-form noise-making, making the fairly demure audience applause at the end rather surprising.

The final track is at Starlight Furniture Company in July 1991, supplementing the American live outfit with core Hijokaidan duo Junko and Jojo Hiroshige, and turning the project away from its more meditative qualities and straight into Japanoise scrawl with Junko’s screams a pervasive and typically abrasive feature alongside the drilling qualities of Jojo’s guitar. Another unusual feature to this track is the clear low-end murmur which has been extracted from the recording, adding a somewhat fidgety undercurrent to portions of the piece which is absent from the confined frequency profile of the other tracks. The collaborative track found edited release on a 7” previously which I’d always attributed to the Hijokaidan part of my collection rather than the American contributors, and hearing the full piece confirms that view – if the screech of 1990s Hijokaidan is for you, then here’s a dialed-in chunk of it.

‘Ancient History’ supplements rather than explains Trance’s history, with only the middle track really profiling the project at its place in American noise lore – although I suspect the first track strongly reflects Trance’s emergence from the 1980s as Mason extricated Trance from its noise rock and proto-industrial beginnings. The recordings stand up well given their age and derivation, expertly salvaged and presented in a typically loving digipack by the team at Helicopter and Troniks.

http://www.iheartnoise.com

http://www.helicopter-la.com

Young Hustlers ‘Hiding In The Open’ 12” (Skuggsidan)

 

My review of Young Hustlers’ debut cassette ‘Encaged’ described a series of tracks built from familiar power electronics components but promising more than it could deliver, the singularity to the pieces wearing quite thin. Of greater moment were the duo’s tracks on Styggelse’s ‘Stadsbranden 3’ compilation, a crueller detachment settling into the two tracks donated to that collection.
 
The opening synth buzz, slow synth excoriation and barked vocals of “Alienation” bash out an effective but primitive power electronics attack opening ‘Hiding In The Open’, flagging that Young Hustler’s stoic primitivism hasn’t been abandoned – but the pieces have moved beyond the motionless trajectory of ‘Encaged’, demonstrated by the emergence of a scalding fuzz into the opening track, and the antisocial remoteness of the project remains strong. What follows is familiar European power electronics but with a heavy dose of unsettling hooliganism bringing similar disquiet to Young Hustlers’ neighbourhood the way Skm-Etr did to Winnipeg in the mid-’00s, notable for what it manages within strict genre confines rather than any attempt to move or expand upon those. The tracks from both ‘Stadsbranden 3’ and the pair’s split cassette with Alfarmania are included on the LP, ‘Hiding In The Open’ the fuller exposition of the tone set across those releases.

Heavy synth currents and burly distortion layers remain the instrumentation of choice but the vocals are the central feature both in attack and tone; “Cocaethylene” sets the scene with an overwhelming glut of effects in which the vocal blasts are immersed, as sickly feedback and a slippery low-end thud take up the small amount of available space which remains. The remaining tracks of the first side follow suit, the unhinged vocals dominating the compositional space, new track “Bacca Bazi” a favourite as the punishing yells become so swollen with effects that they bear the sonic texture of sheet metal bashing as much as they do vocalising, supported by an insistent fast-paced repetition and intentionally irritating mid-range scratching.

Over the second side a balance returns between vocals and instrumentation, Skm-Etr heavily invoked in the rampant vocal effects and turgid synth of “Startpistol Med Hagelpatron”, while the heavy thrust of “Vagabond Annihilation” and glacial synth ebb of “Knullad Av Hundar”, laced with a fuzz of cold wind distortion, allow more space between the lines of hoarse yelling. While playing an intentionally supportive role across the LP the chance for that instrumentation to emerge is crucial to closer “Vagen Ut”, which unwinds a softer mid-range shudder and slow modulations for a chilled finale of introspection, the heavy vocals completely absent and replaced instead by spaced spoken word passages seemingly sampled from news broadcasts or the like. Spoken in Swedish the content of those passages is lost on me, but the sudden shift from hooliganism to introversion is clear: a pause in external hostilities to dwell on the internal motivations which enrage the remainder.

While there may not be solace there does seem to be in “Vagen Ut” an internal recognition of the excesses across the remainder of ‘Hiding In The Open’, a retreat into the shadows after blazing across the city fuelled by intoxicants and malign intentions. The danger which brews in the remaining tracks is palpable, but that detached antisocialism is actually recognised and made that little more dangerous by the clarity of thinking which “Vagen Ut” brings to an already strong LP.

https://skuggsidan111.bigcartel.com/

Mark Vernon ‘An Annotated Phonography Of Chance’ 12” (Misanthropic Agenda)

Last year saw the release by Misanthropic Agenda of a deluxe double LP reissue of Joe Colley’s intense ‘Psychic Stress Soundtracks’, an exploration of unpredictable sound with strong references to film both in the broader sensory media and the cellulose nitrate itself. Now visiting ‘An Annotated Phonography Of Chance’ by Scottish experimentalist Mark Vernon which preceded the Colley release by a matter of months, I hear an even greater interest in cinema – reflected in the foley-like closeness of its environmental sounds, a deeper soundtrack sensibility to grander gestures, and the literal unspooling of reels which ticks through the first side to further fragment its diverse audio components, also returning to close the LP as the final frames fall to the floor.

Across the first side individual tracks quickly get lost amid the ebb and flow of Mark’s work, minutiae of acoustic home recordings – water,  chatter, travel, birds – melting into horrifyingly elongated brass instrument vibrations, chilling ambient soundscapes, choral and piano samples, and a haze of obscure manipulations and peripheral sonic crumbs which further fragment any attempt to embrace a defining sensibility from ‘An Annotated Phonography Of Chance’. It’s an intentional march of distraction, a sequence of left-hand turns where elements are refined within their allocated time and realised with care in production, timing and nuance – but which bewilder within the larger whole as the provoked visualisations scatter across the colour wheel.

Of particular note are the visually provocative moments which delve into almost Goblin-like throb and threat during what I think is “The Consensus Is To Delete” – albeit without the heavy instrumentation – and the intertwined ghostly invocations which unravel from backwards-treated stretches of damp ambience thereafter (“Nossos Ossos”), bold strokes of sound with a familiarly visual edge to it then reduced back to a darker – but equally evocative – scene.

Even if the inputs remain diffuse, the second side of the LP builds a more focused and singular mood, combining windswept electronics, barking dogs, twitching noise vibrations, slow tonal manipulations and sickly wet vivisection into an extended play of shadowy slow-motion dark ambient.  But even after the barrage of sound components which cross the first side, the second still pulls some surprises across its twenty minutes. The creaks and dying haunted house effect reel of “Megalithic Circuit” are especially profound, chewed cassette playback turned into pensive ambient dread as buzzing flies, behind-the-door gesture and resonant low-end surround the listener in a worryingly visceral experience; closer “Simmer Dim”’s focus on vocal utterances – singing, speech and whistling – also shines as a refined close to such a wayward LP.

Misanthropic Agenda has always looked outside noise/industrial confines for its releases, but the last few years have cast that net wider, and Mark Vernon is one of the catches.  The label seems intent on finding unique voices within the broader experimental music lexicon, and ‘An Annotated Phonography of Chance’ gives significant space to one of those. I grew up mining musical interests across genres and sub-genres while still firmly rooted in music’s darker expressions. Vernon’s keenness for experimentation but acknowledgement of mood reflect both those familiarities, even if his expression is a march from mine.

https://misanthropicagenda.bandcamp.com/album/an-annotated-phonography-of-chance

Death Dedication & Necroecclesia ‘Experiment To Destruct’ CDR (Head Tapes)

‘Experiment to Destruct’ looks, feels and sounds like a release I haven’t picked up in a long time: two acts of raw harsh noise ripped to a CDR with a pasted-on label, and with a foldover cover in a thin plastic sleeve: the type of release I received a glut of in the ‘00s, at the peak of the use of CDR as a cheap and efficient choice of underground sound dissemination – but one which has neared extinction in the face of the resurrection of cassette as the chosen base media. The disc is welcomingly crude and unapologetically abrasive, both performances seemingly one-take expressions of late night urge and frustration, a small bank of effects hammered and thrashed into submission.

Immediately noticeable about the Death Dedication tracks is their emphasis on low-end murk, a heavy bass frequency dousing proceedings at the expense of a more balanced production, I suspect the result also of the initial recordings being on analogue tape (given the thin layer of tape hiss mist which hangs above the piece), and giving both the project’s tracks an immediately sinister shadow under which to work.

Both opener “Twisted Limbs Washed” and second track “Do You Still Party” cover a fair expanse of sound, from sore blistered bubbles to soaked throes of distortion, and incorporating humming synth flights, boiling semi-ambient baths, and kitchen cupboard clatter. “Twisted Limbs Washed” is especially prone to being in constant transit, demure lines quickly running into thickly laid slabs, and with a mixture of monophonic and polyphonic tranches both when in full-on distortion mode and when exploring less torching tones. “Do You Still Party” is the more stable of the two, opting overwhelmingly for familiarly cascading bass-heavy distortions, but still falling into a backwater of idling softer noise a few minutes in, and slowing to glimpse a surprising skeleton of junk metal clamour at about the ten minute mark – which then permeates the track as its distortions return to again submerge the source material in viscous tarry noise.

Necroecclesia fires up a single track with an instantly brighter mid-range responsiveness and hint of high-end crispness added to its low-end furnacing, the piece largely immobile in its focus on a tearing central frequency and slowly entering booming bass, only a few small squeaks of higher register worming their way through a central middle register grind while a haunting repetitive throbbing sits at the back of the piece. The final third or so of “Evil Sleep” tears some holes in the previously enveloping approach, bringing some of the low frequencies out and prompting a haunting higher refrain to faintly echo around, further grain and gristle emerging from the thinner texture which has been sandpapered away over the preceding 15 minutes. It’s not the type of noise I visit unless prompted to, but “Evil Sleep” is clear in its vision, intent in its execution, and faultless for achieving its want.

The strangely-titled “Do You Still Party” is the subversive winner for me, less disjunct than “Twisted Limbs Washed” but without the wall-ish stasis which cramps Necroecclesia, and best expressing the solemnity of Death Dedication within its chosen swampish noise output while bringing some movement and uncertainty to the composition. The entirety of 'Experiment To Destruct' is deserving of several listens without necessarily being a release which will protrude from my collection in months’ time; like much of the ’00s product it emulates ‘Experiment To Destruct’ is a turgidly enjoyable listen should I chance upon it, but also unlikely to trigger a reminiscence and want to listen when in the drawer and out of sight. Short props to the suitably obscure collage art, which wraps the disc in layers of the unknown and adds a hallucinatory layer of distraction to the sound within.

Compest ‘Leitern Und Pfade’ C-54 & Internal Fusion ‘Those Who Are Straight’ CDR (Oxidation)

Oxidation started as an online reissue archive of endangered industrial artefacts previously found on  CDR, but has expanded to itself release physical media drawing on label head Marc Benner’s broad experimental tastes. Compest and Internal Fusion are artists who both come from a backstory of earlier material – but that history is at the fringes of the noise/experimental underground which Oxidation more frequently taps, putting these two releases perhaps at the fringe of the label’s work.
Compest is the work of Martin Steinebach, the cross-contaminated result of previously more distinct projects across orchestral and ritual/tribal synthetic atmospheres, rhythmic industrial, and ambient abstraction. The title translates as ‘Ladders And Paths’, a hint at the inter-connections which bind the cassette even as it draws from across Martin’s stylistic interests.

‘Leitern Und Pfade’ in part builds on synthesizer atmospherics which trace an industrial lineage to N. or Hive Mind in their chill. “Leiter” and “Sprossen” utilise slow-moving low synth drones dusted with higher semi-melodics: the former track folds in an unexpected snare pattern and sparse found refuse percussion; the latter adding orchestral overlays in its second half, as its repetitious drift starts to spark a flickering tremble to the piece. Lengthy “Pfad”, and “Oben” after it, maintain a similar link but with a serious kosmische bent and without drawing in disparate sound elements – although “Oben” bolsters its triumphant melodic refrain with some subtle synth voices. These evenly spread performances are more dramatic astral aspirations which would be entirely at home cast across a Carl Sagan documentary.

The remaining tracks further the kosmische leanings while leaving any underground genre sympathies behind.  “Aufstieg” is a meandering synthesizer solo, while “Umweg” and “Abseits” are both constructed pieces, utilising bass guitar, synth-derived sitar, faux-orchestral swells and rhythmic elements which wear their influences proudly, and are unashamedly soundtrack-y in their evocation. Noisier elements are present but difficult to find: the tracks add a fine distorted dust to portions but which is easily lost, and not really the point – ‘Leitern Und Pfade’ has no intentions of finding a home in the post-industrial lexicon.

French project Internal Fusion’s CDR contains only a single track but the piece plays out in movements. Its opening torrent of voice fragments is tightly constructed, with digital stutters, dead-end loops and shifting sound placement setting an intentionally disorienting introduction which the disc then plays on through its duration. The other sonic elements are just as far-reaching, familiarly intangible ambient electronics finding space as do a rush of nostalgic synth melodicism, intense sustained tones, and swarms of harder noise expansion which give the piece a needed harder edge.

Rhythmic constructs are a constant presence – at first intentionally fractured and incomplete, taken by ambient drift or buried in uproar – but over the middle third of the disc ‘Those Who Are Straight’ settles comfortably into a fulsome lilting gait and then winds back into an uneasy off-kilter percussion made from metal and other found sound, as layers of voice again build around the piece.

The blatant beat of the middle, and the piece’s penchant for slipping into rhythm even when not overt (both the beginning and end find uncertain rhythmic components slip into place around the intentionally disjointed vocal manipulations), will keep many at bay. But with some forgiveness ‘Those Who Are Straight’ exhibits a healthy experimentalism – particularly in its extended voice manipulation and at times quite scrappy noise elements – which may attract those usually drawn to more underground pursuits.

Oxidation’s packaging – attaching the disc to a square of moss (for those able to receive plant matter in the mail) may do likewise, imbuing the disc with a curiosity which matches its more unconventional moments. The Compest cassette is similarly supposed to be beeded in a layer of dirt, although international purchasers can order either release without the organic matter, attaching their own localised mire to avoid attracting the ire of border biosecurity guards. Oxidation’s physical releases have overwhelmingly entered the world as bulky, heavy, and/or messy editions which can make overseas ordering difficult – but Mark has been careful to offer modified versions which can find their way internationally.

https://oxidation.bandcamp.com/album/leitern-und-pfade

https://oxidation.bandcamp.com/album/those-who-are-straight