Japan’s Incapacitants have been responsible for some of the most fulsome, bristling, and vibrant noise works – studio recordings but with particular renown as a live act – stretching back over 30 years. It’s often felt like a contest with only one entrant: few have been willing to try and match the efforts of Toshiji Mikawa and Fumio Kosakai.
Finns Savage Gospel bring a continentally different sensibility to the exuberant rush of Incapacitants’ take on harsh noise, but have signalled a clear intent and capacity to produce dense and high volume noise works in tribute – and perhaps in competitive comparison – to the long-standing titleholders. The tundras of Finland give an immediately different sensibility to Savage Gospel’s work compared to the vibrancy of Tokyo’s bustling stimuli, even if the primal power of noise is a common fundamental: the movement and business to Savage Gospel’s work can often occur within the track rather than moving through it, creating a more solid and impenetrable sound compared to Incapacitants’ bustle, when the volume is at 11.
Savage Gospel’s CD opener “Maxihard” is suffocating even at low volume, a slowly vibrating density and seemingly constant block of sound leaving air movement for the wisps of feedback which evaporate from the central mass of oxygen-depriving sound – even as more frantic motions take place towards the rear of the textural hierarchy. “Missing Peace” and “Shortwaving, Not Drowning” are defiantly different, hollowed-out feedback and a slow low-end boil leading “Missing Peace” to some more familiar Incapacitants-like electronics stutter, before again falling behind a curtain of more static noise which on this track is quite fuzzy and transparent. “Shortwaving, Not Drowning” too finds spatial vibration with a less overbearing frequency expanse, its more demure opening passages again exposing the sickly insides of well-abused equipment, and even its denser bliss-outs sharpening a fierce feedback edge – even finding muscular flex in its obscured mid-range.
The blanketing effect of “Maxihard” causes oxygen to slow and time start to slip, movement imagined as much as experienced. The two remaining tracks open the door and head out into the snow to spar: the cold and dark present but clinging to more discernible movement as that becomes necessary for survival. Both approaches seek to press the listener into submission, but the grim ferocity of “Maxihard” is too good for the other tracks to be quite so effective in their capability to exert pressure.
“Extreme Mother Nights” may not be prime Incapacitants but it carries much of what makes this duo so legendary in its dense and agitated sound, which is somehow both insistently thick and roomily unsettled. The lengthy live track starts with parts of its insides showing, garish electronics, throttled voice/filter abuse, and an initial nervousness on display all giving a hesitant glimpse into the duo’s instrumentation. But barely five minutes in the set latches on to its full exuberance, variations on a slightly muffled amplifier roar providing unsettling constancy as high-end shards and feedback tempests are repeatedly conjured from the cauldron of bubbling mass.
Even proponents as skilled as the noise world’s favourite salarymen can’t continue to escalate their sound indefinitely and the second half of “Extreme Mother Nights” recognises that, turning on itself hungrily to dig out a quasi-rhythmic thread from its dense shapelessness, before repeated drillings and angry bursts of self-harming blind fury begin to hack away at the greater whole until the set consumes itself to conclude. The gruesome attacks are as fearsome as many an Incapacitants heyday recording, but are not a constant - but rather an emergent strike against the self, each time seeming to leave a bigger hole until exhaustion and self-consumption trigger a final collapse.
It's highly appropriate this CD finds its home on White Centipede Noise, the label a bastion of pure noise appreciation (in addition to being a highly valuable store/distributor) helmed by Oskar Brummel whose enthusiasm and knowledge run deep. Even with plenty of noise around on which to blow your savings, White Centipede Noise – and this CD especially – are highly deserving of your time, support, and precious earholes. It can be easy to dismiss work as imitative or less deserving than pinnacle works (which Incapacitants 1990s output clearly is), but it can also be unfair when original, engaging, and uniquely characterised recordings such as this CD are being released.
No comments:
Post a Comment