Astro & Shayne Bowden ‘Live At OTOOTO’ CD and Reynols ‘Plays The Audience’ 5” (Deterra)

‘Live At Otooto’ was released in 2020 but has found its way into my ears only recently, and can’t go unremarked due to tardiness on my part. The disc collects recordings from an evening at Tokyo venue OTOOTO, each performer taking to the stage for a solo set before combining forces in an evening-ending all-in. 

Shayne’s opening set conjures a piercing opening tone which is never let go: as a searing layer of distortion embraces the track its high tone continues to warble through the thick lower frequencies, eventually swallowing the denser sounds to again ring clear. The second half of the piece then alchemises that tone, subtle synth box permutations sending its upper register purity through the tonal wringer in gory slow motion, its initial viscera melted and minced into a throbbing lower spread of frequency bristle. Shayne’s high end clarity, fondness for saturation and carefully plotted movement is sure to please anyone wanting a little more gesture to the work of Rusalka, and his piece is as equally satisfying.

Not to be outdone, Rohco and Hiroshi Hasegawa each turn in transfixing performances. Rohco’s is perhaps the simplest but may also be the unassuming best, opening muffled dialogue snippets and what may be some brief clenches of sheet metal heave the only discernible additions to a series of roughly hewn and overlapped sheets of feedback and slowly tortured analogue effect roar. The set sweats from its own volume as tectonic fissures are coaxed and carefully dragged into position, the weight of Rohco’s textures supporting my vision of their being summonsed from some deeper geologic source.

Hiroshi Hasegawa’s track may not tremble with volume and fear like Rohco’s, but he has adeptly conjured immersive tracks from synths, effects, and sheet metal for sometime, and his contribution here likewise manages to work heavyweight textures with skill, a heavier synth presence and faster pace giving the set greater longevity than Rohco’s tremorous work, and showing Hiroshi’s now innate strength in crafting engaging, fluid, and unforgiving noise. Hiroshi is so productive that it can be easy to forget just how skilled he is, and how lucky we all are to have him still crafting such unrelenting and engaging pieces.

After those successes the final collaborative all-in is somewhat underwhelming; while I’m sure the event itself delivered more, the recording flattens the morass of voices to what is often a saturated flatline, coarse but undeviating blocks of distortion failing to express the depth of the previous solo tracks, let alone deliver the integration of those as would be expected. There are undeniable moments of deeper grandeur but moreso the result is singular and unflinching, only as small collection of moments delivering the depth I would have expected from this three in shared flight. Those scenes of flight do make the trip worthwhile, but after three standout solo tracks it’s hard for this final effort to deliver at quite the same level.

The rewarded OTOOTO audience is sonically absent from the CD recordings, but assume prominence for Reynols’ short-player. Not just present to applaud and vocalise, those reactions are fed into this inevitably brief record. ‘Part One’ seems to process audience reaction into submission, applause becoming a slow wave of rollercoasted breath, with a murmuring tonality and some armament-like punctuation permeating its otherwise billowy structure. ‘Part Two’ seems to be something of a selective backwards rendition of ‘Part One’, only glimpsing its waves of minimal ambience – but adding spoken word and audience reaction first in isolation but then as deepening layers, surrounding the initially simple and somewhat calmative electronics with textural confusion.

I’ve listened to ‘Plays The Audience’ a lot and I’m sure I still don’t grasp its full effect: the rough seemingly audience-made recording adds another titular veneer to the work but also further distances its purport, the simple and effective radiance of ‘Part One’, gunned by its brief staccato interference, becomes a disorienting experience of unmerited applause, jeer and multi-layered voices – but both too sort to make sense of, betraying different sensibilities on repeat listens. There’s an inevitable curio watermark to most 5” records but ‘Plays The Audience’ digs that hole much deeper, ensuring a quizzical experience over one or multiple listens. 

Both releases are still available notwithstanding the limited run of the Reynols 5” and the live disc being a few years old at this point. Deterra releases may not be so frequent but each is done with care and love for the material, something which is clear from both.

https://deterra8.bandcamp.com

Control & Gruntsplatter 'A Fatal Circle' 7" (Raubbau)

There's long been a closeness between Control and Gruntsplatter - in outlook, aesthetic choices, mastering and production commonality, and a shared familiarity with tragedy and trauma. ‘A Fatal Circle’ features a track from each which at least superficially plays to the duo’s parallels, but in doing so ultimately spotlights some of their differences in detail, both specific to this 7” but also more reflective of general stylistic differences in approach, and which permeate the two pieces which make up this split 7”.

Grunsplatter’s “Hunting Extinction” is drenched in melancholy, each developing tone as dark and despairing as the next. The piece opens with synth layers which raise somewhat quickly in register and menace, a dark low-end tone and slowed heartbeat underpinning the upper register movement, eventually multiplying into a larger swarm of synth voices which emerge from expanding cracks within the original inputs only to distort, warp and burn when exposed to air. Even with a heavy immersion of distended mid-range tentacles emerging from the unsightly central mass, ugly low-end upset and hints of uncomfortable high-end screams are flung from the middle of the piece like satellites destined for solar system reaches only to eventually become unreachable as they drift further from the centrepiece of seething blackness.

Control uses similar compositional elements but adopts a more forceful and direct approach. “In The Blood” finds a similar bradycardic pulse, before adding indecipherable vocal utterings which are cloaked heavily in effects whenever they emerge from the miasma of the piece. While there’s a symbiosis to the dark heart of both pieces on this 7”, Control commands a greater segregation of components and a more threatening aura, in particular found in the storm clouds of low-end tinged vocals of the opening which explode into a more familiar explosive hostility later in the piece. Linked to those sprays of vocal upheaval are uprisings of bleak electronics which explode from the seething electronics are the core of the piece, escalating the depth of the piece as each syllable is screamed. 

While there is a central shadow to both pieces, Gruntsplatter explores the unknown and uncertain whereas Control finds hints of structure, melody and a more defined purpose to the portions which make up its side. Both sides circulate dark semi-tonal elements, however Control seems to pre-empt and allocate the sounds in a more regimented approach – while also remaining mired in a compared to Gruntsplatter’s reactionary interferences. The differences in approach don’t affect the outcome, however: both have summonsed a deep and gloomy mass of death industrial electronics in a manner consistent with the innate sensibilities each has, their core differences in approach encouraging quite personal six minute expressions.

The 7” is limited to 100 copies, abandoning some of the intricacies of Raubbau’s recent releases for a black sleeve adorned with geometric distress in thickly textural paint: fitting perfectly with the more extreme and bleak end of Ant Zen/Raubbau’s interests and picking up the label’s preference for bold and layered aesthetics which are consistently striking and well-realised: the recent run of harsher sonics is a welcome dark cloud across the label’s mix of underground genres, with the label’s strong design and quality control both reasons to trust this release even if – and what the fuck? – you’re not already familiar. 

https://raubbau.bandcamp.com/album/a-fatal-circle

Blood Incantation 'Timewave Zero' 12" + CD

 

When seeing Blood Incantation support Arcturus in 2017, little did I know the Americans would be the ones to thereafter be responsible for best probing the galaxial reaches – notwithstanding the Norwegians' long and respectful career of astral aspiration – as Blood Incantation’s amazing 2019 full-length ‘Hidden History Of The Human Race’ in particular drove the quartet beyond immediate orbit to comb the stars for suitable confrontation. While the group’s renowned death metal explorations have looked for alien life to end our own, ‘Timewave Zero’ sheds the metal instrumentation for an array of synthesizers and integrated analogue electronics, used to wind out long-form meditative compositions which betrays the realisation that the weight of the universe can crush humankind without extra-terrestrial intervention.

Opener “Io” builds steadily on its opening synth drone, further tonal layers added repeatedly as its base elongated tone is used to trigger thriving layered drone, smaller synth flickers and light  , before blossoming into a melodic arpeggiation which flickers the underlying drone to life, finding a contour which supports the upper register as it reaches full Tangerine Dream worship mode. Even when the piece returns to an unchanging droned note it can’t escape the tender chordal shapes which have now emerged, with subtle waveform shifts and derivative melodic shapes opening space for lingering acoustic guitar to weave its own chordal shapes into the trembling synth layers.

Second side “Ea” launches straight into those familiar arpeggiated melodies, additional single note lines supporting that shape with the piece maintaining a greater momentum than “Io”’s peaks and troughs. Even when the synths decline in “Ea” there’s a more active acoustic guitar added to pick out the piece’s ongoing chordal refrain as the melody line remains with the synth (and what I think is a subtle gong is added in the distance), before returning that task to the electronics with some classic dense synthesis and slowed discourse, before descending into a final tonal melt. While neither track is better or worse for it, “Ea” has a more homogenous approach than “Io”, perhaps hitting a more intuitive or familiar shape than “Io” which binds “Ea”’s parts tighter than the wave forms of the first side.

Get any of the vinyl pressings and you’ll get a CD of the same material. However the CD/blu-ray set includes an additional track, “Chronophagia” – also locatable with some resourceful YouTube-ing. The additional track flows with a distinctly darker Lustmord-ian hue or pallour lifted from Klaus Schulze’s bleakest solo work, shadowy electronics underpinning a more inhibited effort than the album proper. The strong arpeggios of “Io” and “Ea” emerge only hesitatingly and nervously, muted by “Cronophagia”’s swelling central desolate tones, thick fumes of displeasure, and comparably uncomfortable harmonic profile. The billowy profile of the piece seems to be hiding something, and it eventually that proves correct: as the smog clears a languid melody emerges with strong overtones of Vangelis’ ‘Blade Runner’ soundtrack, supported by a clean upper register piano refrain and remnants of the group’s still smouldering electronics. If “Io” and “Ea” give the impression that space travel was some stream-of-light euphoria, “Cronophagia” is a reality that the travel is one of isolation, darkness, and emptiness: for all their far-flung searches, Blood Incantation are still confined to the same flesh vessels as the rest of us.

‘Timewave Zero’ wears its influences boldly and plays to them closely, even down to the meditative outdoor scene in the gatefold which could easily have been plastered inside ‘Ricochet’ or ‘Encore’. The reaction from those looking only for more of what ‘Hidden History Of The Human Race’ offered, is predictable albeit understandable, but the chance to do something different – and do it convincingly – is for me even more exciting.  With its intentionally regressed soundset ‘Timewave Zero’ is a break from expectations but also cleverly within idiom, opening Blood Incantation up to further exploration and ambition whether they break from their tradition again or not.

Kazumoto Endo & Boar 12” (Peyote Tapes)

 

When I first heard Kazumoto Endo’s work – I’m pretty sure it was “Most Of My Problems Are Solved By An Afternoon Snooze”, his split 7” with Incapacitants – I was immediately affected by the gravamen of silence, the way a return to volume can make a sound more powerful than were it sitting in a cluster of similarity.

“Homebrew” reflects an updated wisdom from Kazumoto Endo, initial tracts of silence quickly perforated rather than left hanging, part of a multi-faceted experience in which forceful blasts of chopped-up high end discharge are incessantly and unpredictably fired into the air. Initially that strafing encounters relative calm, but as the piece entrenches those uncomfortable silences disappear, removed by what at first is a layer of secondary skirmish with effected scrap metal but what builds, through an acquisition of rapid loops and further magnetised attractions, into a surrounding arsenal firing of backup weaponry; and while resolute in mirroring the frequency profile of the dominant shares of brutalised focus, playing “Homebrew” out also sparks hits of liquefied low-end shudder which add an unexpected haunt to the central shrill tones. The silences which first drew me in are still there at the end – but found within layers which are overlapping others, and which are themselves feeding into Kazumoto’s increasingly hectic and crowded palette.

In comparison Boar’s sounds are far more flayed and finessed, whittled down to highly charged fragments of noise which have been intensely scrutinised, diced, and splayed across the stereo spectrum. Highly processed contact microphoned refuse seems a vase source of choice, but snippets of synth, manipulated feedback, and pure noise saturation all feature, lapsing into occasional loops but more often tumbling in free-fall, discarding cut-up components as it descends unpredictably and unhesitatingly. Single toned scrap metal crunch can give way to sonorous oil barrel thud, and seemingly inconsequential refrains find themselves double-tracked and spotlighted, all part of Boar’s microscopic focus and keenness for upset which propels “Metal Bound Flesh” in its reckless orbit.

It's not just the effort which has gone into shaping the sounds and micro-sounds, but the frantic pace of their unravelling and the segues into uncertain calmative moments which fill sudden moments of space. Boar has poured everything into “Metal Bound Flesh” and it shows: the piece is among the most finicky modern cut-up noise you will hear, riddled with detail and burning with momentum.

While sharing technique, both artists use it for different means: Kazumoto Endo’s side builds in size and intensity as it piles components; Boar sheds its parts as fast as it accumulates them, throwing components into the void as it hurtles forwards blindly but firmly in control. Both more than achieve their purpose, making this LP a standout not only for their respective technical abilities but for how those skills are used to achieve a much cleverer and listenable aim.

https://peyotetapes.bandcamp.com/album/kazumoto-endo-boar-split

Nurse With Wound ‘The Hovels Of The Rich Or The Rigid Digit’ 3”CD (Lenka Lente)

 

‘The Hovels Of The Rich Or The Rigid Digit’ marks the tenth collaboration between Nurse With Wound and French publisher Lenka Lente, their history found across a succession of 3”CDs paired with short books authored by historic European writers including Frank Kafka, Antonin Artaud, Adolf Wölfli, and for this volume French writer, journalist and pessimist Alphonse Rabbe. The discs have afforded Steven Stapleton’s modern guise opportunities to work on a short-form piece (usually around 10 minutes playing time) within an ostensibly abstracted format, and the previous discs have sat in a comfortable, and I wonder if somewhat overlooked, fringe to Nurse With Wound’s ever-expanding discography.

For this release the book is again in French and with no translation, so any ties between music and text are for me at least imagined. Just perhaps Rabbe’s withdrawal from society is mirrored in the choice of intangible murmurs which are fed into Nurse With Wound’s piece, but I doubt it: that kind of attribution would give every experimental artist an immediately vague lofty literary link, and I put Nurse With Wound a step beyond that. The connection between Rabbe’s drug addiction and Nurse With Wound’s recent ‘Opium Cabaret’ CD and LP is probably coincidental, but ‘The Hovels Of The Rich Or The Rigid Digit’ does fall broadly into the ambient bracket of Steven Stapleton and Co’s work – although without the drama which makes ‘Opium Cabaret’ one of the standouts of modern Nurse With Wound.

Rather, this 3”CD is a more serene and stagnant work, emphasising a higher frequency register to remain in the air at all times with a simplicity and glissando of movement more in line with a truncated ‘Soliloquy For Lilith’. The opening delicate shimmer quickly opens up a broader and loosely cycled clutch of tones, concocted tones seeming to merge with slowed and shaped acoustic material in the way of bowed cymbals or resonant piano strings, the interplay of effected and organic constantly difficult to separate and made even more difficult when a subtle layer of further manipulation emerges from the digital concrète rattling which lurks in the shadows of the piece. Those soft tonal interplays continue as the piece dilates slowly and incrementally, the upper register tones kept prominent to obscure a diaphragmatic lower register drone which adds a barely perceptible weight to the piece. Even the piece’s climax doesn’t break the slow drift of the piece, an arc of more urgent staccato clattering and even a rare glimmer of feedback with the electronic tones failing to ignite the gaseous elements of the piece.

Unlike ‘Opium Cabaret’ the detail to ‘The Hovels Of The Rich Or The Rigid Digit’ is much harder to extract, and it’s easier to appreciate the piece in its drift rather than in the finer elements which are there to support the larger structure. It wouldn’t necessarily make for a strong full-length work, but Nurse With Wound’s latest Lenka Lente creation works well as a short escape into the atmosphere with which to return and pick up something else. There’s no doubt Steven Stapleton is skilled in immersive ambience, and ‘The Hovels Of The Rich Or The Rigid Digit’ is proof even if some of Stapleton’s stronger skills are responsible for subtler elements which sit around a perhaps simpler central drone creation.

http://www.lenkalente.com/product/du-suicide-d-alphonse-rabbe-nurse-with-wound

Sewer Election ‘Horse Utopie’ CD (iDeal)

Sewer Election has aced a number of different sub-genres while blazing through the noise underground for over two decades, and Dan’s current productivity and proficiency has produced a staggering breadth and quality of releases in the last couple of years which – coupled with a penchant for micro-edition obscurity amongst larger release set pieces – is even more difficult than ever to fully appreciate.

‘Horse Utopie’ is not the moody disintegration of ‘Skärvor Av’ (LP on Second Sleep) or the dense noise punishment of ‘Glorious’ (cassette on Receiving Vault), and it’s nowhere near the soft synth pleasantries of ‘Psychic Panorama’ (CD on Discreet Music) or Dan’s intriguing collaborative endeavours; instead the CD revels in instantaneous harsh noise, a looser noise exclamation seemingly crafted from live-to-disc sessions and finalised with minimal further intervention which in the project’s early days would have perhaps been used as cut-up fodder but is presented here intact.

Opener “Filter Wound” delivers on its title, skin gashes opening up as contact microphone stammer bolsters a scrappy distortion line which steroids up into thicker and more virulent surges of free-flowing noise sensibility and a largely confined mid-range emphasis, until some breakout high-end synth ignitions and a subtly booming low-end spring from the piece in its final minute or so. The track is linear and constantly developmental, its shifts in tone and emphasis coming from the unseen changes in pedals permutations, but all well buried behind the waves of responsive distortion in which the remainder of the piece is immersed.

Interlude “Dripping Star” strips back most of its rumbling distortion to reveal internal workings of squelching synth, almost slowing to a standstill before hits of blown-out junk metal ravage the piece: the same elements which one suspects drive ‘Horse Utopie’ throughout, but removed from the effects chains which clothe the remainder of the disc. The raw junk metal is pleasing in a CD otherwise light on any identifiably physical sound sources, but particularly so for its torrential quality, swamping the second half of “Dripping Star” in hostility.

Final track “Carve Mono” is the peak noise exaltation, digging deeper and pushing longer (well over half the disc’s playing time) to fill out the frequency profile by running what seems to be two independent or semi-independent effects chains while also spending most of its playing time in a far more invigorated state than “Filter Wound”, this final piece surging as its lines engorge.  Passing clumps of burned-out filter sweep, strangled feedback, thumping contact microphone disruption and blasting synth warfare all become dangerous submersibles in an unstable and unpredictable divergence of competing torrents of coursing distortion, which is susceptible to constant frequency adjustments and captivates a surprisingly strong undercurrent of grittier mid/low range grind.

‘Horse Utopie’ seems to do away with the deeper statements and explorations of other recent Sewer Election releases, instead existing with a certain “because I can” pugnaciousness stemming from its innate creation. It exists for its own sake, and in celebration of what immediacy can bring to harsh noise; learning from the compositional aspirations of other release but ultimately born from fire, finesse and freedom. Without the deeper motivations of other Sewer Election releases I had initially thought ‘Horse Utopie’ may suffer, but the opposite may actually prevail: the disc is motivated by an appreciation for pure and immediate noise making, without needing any further purpose.

https://idealrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/horse-utopie

Aube 'Hydrophobia 1993' one-sided 12" (Cheeses International)

‘Hydrophobia’ was the first Aube release, a single-sided cassette on the indelible Vanilla Records, staging what would become Akifumi Nakajima’s well-known long buildup, sounds derived from water looped, layered and distorted into a drowning torrent. The release is raw and quite raucous, opting to focus on a fearsome force of fluid which is itself soaked in distortion, the movements of the liquid resonating as crisp fissures in the rushing noise which overwhelms the piece.

‘Hydrophobias 1993’ is a previously unreleased redo of that early missive, a recreation of the original side through a different lens and time, similar to the early remix of ‘Submerged Tension’ which saw release on G.R.O.S.S. after a debut on Steeple & Globe. Here the piece is sieved from a somewhat murkier body of water: the fulsome distortion of the Vanilla tape is muted somewhat, the highs not as biting and the low frequencies emerging as muddy thrusts rather than the encompassing flow of the original. The comparison is perhaps a bit unflattering to the later recording, even if that same revelry in coursing noise is equally present on the remix even if reshaped in its course, and the immersive rush of the original is lost somewhat, replaced with a murkier experience littered with semi-submerged uncertainties.

In comparison to the original the lead-in is however more developed, a soft introduction of bathyscape heartbeat syncing into a clanging repetition and muffled low-end rumbling, an initial flurry of noise then winding down into a cantankerous buzzing loop quarantined to the left of the stereo spectrum, allowing more deep sea atmospherics before the centrepiece of gristly noise emerges fully.

It’s understandable this piece wasn’t released in 1993; it’s somewhat regressive when compared to the more refined work Aube had already uncovered in the two years since the  first ‘Hydrophobia’; this 1993 revisitation also travels a less obvious trajectory than the initial tape, missing some of the original’s peak saturation. But as a relic to dig out in 2021, ‘Hydrophobia 1993’ is quite the find, and a welcome bolstering of Aube’s body of work. If you don’t have ‘Hydrophobia’ it’s the better place to start – and I think still available from Vanilla after all this time – but this redo occupies its own space and is a very digestible listen: I spun it at least ten times the first weekend it hit the turntable.

Trajedesaliva ‘Ultratumba’ CD (áMARXE/Ferror Records/Gradual Hate Records)

Trajedesaliva is the Spanish duo of Mon Ninguén and Una Vena, ‘Ultratumba’ being their fourth release in a discography spanning over twenty years. Previous releases have featured an expanded lineup and strong flourishes of jazz, demure electronica and low-key gothicism amid its spread of occasionally avant post-rock ambience.

‘Ultratumba’ channels those sensibilities into a refined instrumentation of synthesizers, electronics, voice and drum machine, losing most of the peripheral genre influences but retaining a flair for the unexpected; it’s taken me far too long to write this review because ‘Ultratumba’ has proven quite elusive, its different shades seeming to take on different prominence almost every listen.

Parte 1 opens with soft synth pads which quickly circle around a John Carpenter-esque melody and synchronized bassline/drum machine, a slow and chilled atmosphere wafting from the opening pair of tracks which are heavy in recent synth revivalism. The opening pair of tracks set a refined and carefully gloomy scene, a tone which ‘Ultratumba’ ultimately prides itself in destroying. The focused instrumentation is a constant, even if this CD varies its intentions at crucial points: my varied reactions reveal three quite distinct moments within ‘Ultratumba’, which assume different emphasis on any given listen.

That graveyard twilight stroll quickly turns to moonless night fright, and with a few spoken words “Familia Ferro” shifts into dark noise and billowing shadow movement overseen by a menacing higher tone, with strikes of grainy industrial faux-percussion dissolving into dead TV static which hints at drowning musical tones as part of the piece’s peak of midnight terror. “Arenas Calientes” keeps that fear-motivated clench while returning to a more familiar dark ambient layering to its synth tones, Una’s whispered vocals rattling through the piece.

The mood of ‘Ultratumba’ shifts again for Parte 2, dominated by looser synth melodic noodling, lengthier spoken word passages, sections of upbeat rhythms, and an overall far more positive sensibility than Parte 1 was willing to admit. I admittedly detach from ‘Ultratumba’ somewhat here, both because Parte 2 sounds more repetitious in its ideas and execution – “Mammillaria Sempervivi” and “Queremos Verte” in particular work a very similar set of ideas – and because of the lighter tone to this second half of the CD, the John Carpenter references shifting to mid-period Tangerine Dream: it’s far easier to slip out of focus as Parte 2’s warmer tones set a more relaxed and unthreatening environment.

The day/night shift of ‘Ultratumba’ may be a little too distinct to draw fans to both halves and keep them there, but in selecting a refined bank of instrumentation Trajedesaliva tap into a more honest and available expression than their earlier releases ever achieved. Whether Trajedesaliva should sacrifice both sides of ‘Ultratumba’ to choose dark over light or vice versa, I don’t know; the tonal shift gives depth to ‘Ultratumba’ but also effects a delineation Mon and Una may struggle to reconcile moving forward. I don’t necessarily want the diaspora which ‘Ultratumba’ effects, but I’m inherently drawn to works which straddle contradictory emotions and realisations – and for that ‘Ultratumba’ deserves the repeat listens it’s obtained in my house, even if in part motivated by a want to revisit particular moments which gained emphasis on a particular playthrough.

https://trajedesaliva.bandcamp.com/album/ultratumba