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