The Mudsuckers were a collaboration between The Charlambide’s Tom Carter, experimental musician Robert Horton and GMS of Yellow Swans. I’ve owned this for a couple of years and bought it primarily on the Yellow Swans collection because I am a Yellow Swans nerd – end of story. For the most part this is on the same noise dimension as a Yellow Swans record but have you ever wondered what Sonic Youth’s Death Valley 69 would have sounded like if Mouthus and Yellow Swans covered it and removed all the tune. I hadn’t, but when listening to the extremely fine opening track Endocrine Disrupters, that whole desert gothic, no wave vibe gurgles under the layers of distortion and drone to produce something very special indeed. Although nothing else quite reaches magnificent heights of the opener, the remaining four tracks are great examples of improvised noise and processed field recordings. Mudsuckers is one of those great noise records that rewards with repeated listens because I guarantee that every time you listen to this you’ll hear something new. Remarkable.
In the past couple of years there has been an increased interest in everything No Wave. One of the bands that gets overlooked in a scene dominated by DNA and Lydia Lunch and the other No New York bands is Theoretical Girls. The band were a four piece lead by Jeffrey Lohan but rightly or wrongly it is better know for two of the other members Glen Branca and Wharton Tiers. During it’s life time the band only released one seven inch single so this compilation is the most complete, and I think only, record that deals comprehensively with their output. It consists of some studio tracks, demos and live tracks. Despite the hammy lyrics of tracks like Computer Dating Theoretical Record contains some of the best late 70’s punk you can hope to meet. In many ways it is a classic of the No Wave genre because whether they are being punk, rock or producing walls of dense sound, everything is infused with slabs of nihilism and detachment. The live tracks on Theoretica lRecord display the indifference that No Wave bands had for their audiences and the apathy they received in return. This is not only a great no wave record but one of the best punk records you’ll hear. A band that deserves a much better place in history.
Forget any pre-conceptions you have about this series, because Merzbow has left his best record to last. Chabo contains one long track titled “Resurrection”. I know that I’ve read elsewhere that Merzbow doesn’t give much thought to his titles in terms of the context to the noise they are attached to, but I can’t help but wonder whether “Resurrection” is his sign that the pure noise has returned and his experimentation with that damn drum kit is over. Chabo is pure noise through and through. The drum kit seems to have been discarded in favour of all that is good with a white hot Merzbow noise record. I’m putting this one up there with Hybrid Noisebloom, 1930 and Tombo for pure noise pleasure. If the drums are somewhere in here (and I got a sense of them somewhere deep down in the layers around the 26 minute mark) then they are processed to a degree that makes them almost imperceptible. Chabo is a pure noise record through and through. This is THE record in the series that all Merzbow freaks need to own. If this is an indication of what we have to look forward to in 2010 then it might be a very fine year indeed.
I’m not a huge Jazkamer aficionado. I’ve nibbled at the edges of Scandinavian noise but I’ve never truly embraced it. Well in the last couple of days my back has been spasming like a motherfucker and my resultant physical inactivity means that I’ve had a chance to actively listen to the three records of their’s that I own. Jazkamer are a core duo of John Hegre and Lasse Marhaug. On Art Breaker they are also joined by Iver Sandoy. I don’t now that much about Hegre but any noise jerk has probably come across Marhaug’s name in their travels. The thing about Jazkamer is that they may be one of the most diverse noise acts out there. I’ll be posting on a couple of their records in the next couple of weeks but I decided that I’d start with Art Breaker for no other reason than because it is the easiest. What Art Breaker delivers is a noise artists version of Grindcore. There are 58 tracks on Art Breaker . The longest is nearly two minutes the shortest is 5 seconds. Only six of the tracks are over 30 seconds in length. And it is fun, fun, fun. It’s just mad. Almost like a more ferocious Napalm Death with a Merzbow fixation. A word of warning though, if you’re not open to all forms of experimental noise then you may want to do some research before picking a Jazkamer record to dabble with. The three records I’ve heard are so different from each other you’d think that they were made by different artists. I like them all but for very, very different reasons.
I’ve been on a bit of a Merz-break. Last year I posted on 28 Merzbow records and that was less than 50% of the Merzbow I actually bought last year. The common theme to many Merzbow reviews I’ve read in recent times is that he is a one dimensional noise artist, but after listening to that many Merzbow records I can attest once and for all that the theory is wrong. My words of advice to anyone looking at taking on Merzbow is to start with a couple of Merz records and then get Pulse Demon, Amlux, Dust of Dreams, 1930 and Sphere. I think those records give you a decent overview and you get a starting point that allows you to explore the style of Merzbow that works for you best. In 2010 I’ll probably pick up some of his newer work but a full scale mining of his back catalougue might be for someone else to accomplish (and this from the jerk who a week ago shelled out for Turmeric).
I’m kind of glad that this series is ending although it did manage to bring some new ideas into his sound. Overall I’m not sure whether it has been successful as a body of work but I might leave that post for 2011. I didn’t necessarily enjoy all of the ideas on this series but there was enough great stuff to keep me mostly interested throughout the year. Pt.12 opens with one of my favourite tracks of the series, Destroy the Cages, which is chock full of the whirling noise maelstrom and devoid of recognisable forms and reminds me of his work of the late 1990’s. It’s terrific and certainly an antidote to the common drum kit theme of this series. The drum kit makes an appearance in the final two tracks but despite my heavy recent criticism of that damn drum kit, they’re not too bad. I’ll still be glad to here him put the drum kit away for a while but maybe that’s just me. One more to go.
Posted in Doom, Music, Sunn on January 16, 2010 by noisenoisenoise
This is the first record that Sunn O))) put out and if you are looking for a record that captures the purity of the style of subsonic bass frequencies and riff after riff of doom metal then this is the perfect place to start. But to committed Sunn O))) fans this doesn’t hold the same interest as other Sunn O))) records and if I was to advise you to start anywhere I highly recommend White 2 and White 1. Black One is also great but by that stage their sound had starting incorporating more black metal elements. Flight of the Behemoth is still my favourite though. The stuff with Merzbow is still some of my favourite music out there. This isn’t the Sunn O))) record to rush out to buy if you are new to the band because it was always really meant to be a demo. It still rocks but there are other Sunn O))) records that are a bit more satisfying.
One of my resolutions for this year (read my only resolution) is to read is to start reading the booklets in records I buy. For instance I had no idea until I was having a bit of a cruise through Discogs that Menche made an appearance on Monoliths and Dimensions. DBS was never meant to be a fan site of any sort, it started as a way of trying to articulate noise and experimental records without getting too pompous about it all. But if you hadn’t picked it up by now, I am a fan of many of the bands that I post on here. Being a fan is different form being a band tragic because I think the latter term indicates someone who is passing a less than critical ear over the records they listen to. For instance I’m a bit of a Merzbow fan but to be fair his output for 2009 was patchy at best and downright dull at worst. There is Prurient I love and some, you know, not so much. In the case of Daniel Menche I have yet to encounter a record I think is anything less than brilliant. I think the same way of Kevin Drumm but I’ll leave that for a later post. Menche has a wonderful drone quality to his pieces of experimental sound that are rich and rewarding. You know when you have really good wine and you get that amazing mouth feel. Well Menche is kind of like that for your ears. Take for instance this record from 2007 (which is a very fine vintage for Menche indeed). The only hint as to what you are listening too is a line on the rear of the digipak that says: Daniel Menche: Organ and trumpet deconstruction. If you can hear any trumpet over the four tracks of Bleeding Heavens then you’re either high or lying. I discovered a smattering of organ on the second track but that too was a bit elusive.What happens on a great Menche record is that his deconstructions become an electronic drone with static under notes, the drone evolves and changes not so much through the use of pitch but more through volume and intensity. Sometimes it evolves through the use of oscillations to produce that noise being blasted through a ceiling fan vibe. His sound is almost like layering sound on top of one another until the ones at the bottom are taken away over the course of a track until it collapses. Although , its fairer to say that these tracks don’t actually collapse per se, they just cease to exist, no explosion, just an intensification of sound and then … nothing. At times it is simply breathtaking. The first untitled track on Bleeding Heavens may be one of my favourite noise/drone tracks because it show just how amazing this sort of sound becomes when drone is so malevolent that it cuts a gash through the Earth’s crust. The second is a stunner that evolves in to powerful oscillations. The third is probably the least successful and doesn’t quite have the momentum of the other tracks but the final piece is a tremendous trip into semi-dark ambient territory before gently sliding into the void. Amazing. This is as good as any place to get into Menche and I recommend that you do.
Oh My. There is a very good reason why Rifts is getting as much press as it is. In 2009’s dying breath Oneohtrix Point Never may have produced the finest record of the year. This record is a compilation of a couple of records released on No Fun Productions and other labels. Importantly it features Betrayed in the octagon, Zones Without People and Russian Mind along with various tracks from limited run cassette releases. As a starting point you may never do better than the 27 tracks contained here. There are moments of beautiful drone which recall some of Menche’s best work, synth lullabies, experimental electronica, eighties influenced new age. Indeed Laser to Laser feels like the work of someone wearing a purple leather fringed jacket in a cloud of dry ice.
So many of the best records of 2009 have reinterpreted memories of music past that I think that David Keenan was right in pronouncing a new genre of music. And if that genre does exist then Rifts may be one it’s defining moments.
I saw this at my local indie record store shortly before Christmas. Before I shelled out for it I thought I’d have a bit of a look around the interwebs to get a sense of what it was all about. The interwebs were strangely silent so in a burst of civic duty I thought I’d shell out the cash and try to give some sense of what Space Music sounds like. Space Music is a piece of abstract sound art commissioned for the Melbourne Planetarium’s Science in the Dark series. The piece is based on the theory that the resonant frequency of the Big Bang was F#. I suppose that if I try to put it in the context of Nurse with Wound it’s fair to say that this is one of the most ambient and minimal pieces of their’s I’ve heard to date. If I was trying to describe this to someone who hasn’t heard Nurse With Wound the piece itself is probably a lot like travelling through space. At times there’s a great deal of “fuck all” going on as you float almost silently through space with just the hum of your flight craft making any aural impact , every now and then you hit a meteor shower and it fucks, to varying degrees, your electronic equipment and sometimes the ship gains consciousness and tries to kill you. An ambient piece which somehow managed to alter my idea of what “ambient” can mean
Besides introducing me to Ryoji Ikeda, Miles also shares a love of one of the greatest records of all time. Thanks for the review Miles! (If you want to review something for ducksbattlesatan drop me a line at noiseisnice@gmail.com – only rule is – nothing lame)
Double Nickels on the Dime is pretty damn perfect. Odds are you’ve heard of this by now but if you haven’t heard this behemoth of an album you really owe it to yourself to go out and get it. With this Double Nickels, Minutemen produced one of the most ingenious, creative, and charming rock albums of the 80s. The album is sprawling too, covering way more styles and subjects than most punk bands would. I know a lot of people who were intimidated by the amount of songs on this. It varies by a couple tracks depending on which version you get, it’s always a little shocking at first, but always brilliant. It’s unbelievable, 44 songs in 70 minutes, but what’s even more amazing is that there really is almost no filler on this album. I can’t think of a single moment on this album where I felt a song sucked, they all kick ass. In a movement that got pretty stagnant in the 80s, Minutemen are a punk band that is incredibly versatile. “Anxious Mo-Fo” immediately shows this, the jazziness of bass lines, to the bluesy guitar solo at the end are unique for a punk band, and these traits shine throughout the entire album. It would be stupid to try and describe all of the songs on this album, but they’re all awesome. There’s a great sense of humor throughout the whole album that keeps it enjoyable throughout, and it helps make some of the more serious moments on the album feel that much more powerful. The shift from the amazing “Viet Nam” into the gentle Spanish guitar of “Cohesion” is completely unexpected, but it works somehow. Get this album if you don’t, and if you have it think about the last time you gave it a spin, check it out again. This is the kind of album where your favorite song changes every time you hear it, and with so many damn songs you’re going to find new things to love after countless plays.
These have all been my favorite song off Double Nickels at one point or another; I think everybody who listens to this album accumulates a list.
This blog has been running for over two years now and finally on post 264 I get around to posting on a home town Brisbane noise/sound artist. My friend M bought me Mise En Scene for my birthday this year. This is the woman who introduced me to Nurse With Wound so her taste in most things is pretty sound but for some reason I hadn’t actually got around to listening to this record until four months later. This is one of those exquisitely put together experimental/ambient/electronic/drone records that every now and then some out of the woodwork. At times it sounds like Peter Rehberg accompanying The Necks (Exhale) but the rest is much harder to describe. It’s certainly ambient in places with interjections of harsh electronics. I think field recordings might be involved because many tracks have a sound that reminds me of insects in the tropics. If you’re looking for some comparisons then I’d suggest that there is some Fennesz influence at work and some of it reminds me of KK Null’s Fertile in places. Stunning – you can track it down here and listen to some samples.
My first draft of this post was quite dismissive of Black Vase which might come as a bit of a surprise to some given the previous praise I’ve dumped on Prurient’s work on these pages. The trouble might have been that this is a totally different beast to the other Prurient records I own – Evol’s word for Black Vase was “challenging” – which might be the understatement of the year. This is very challenging stuff indeed. Cocaine Death is almost cuddly compared to some of the sonic nastiness going on here but in many ways Black Vase is no less rewarding. Black Vase doesn’t exactly have a musical theme but it sure as shit has a lyrical theme, that being S&M. Never understood S&M myself mind, but that hasn’t stopped me enjoying this. The first track Romans Shower displays a certain hatred for the listener with its super high intense frequency which certainly gave me a few painful moments. The lyrics though (and hats of for putting lyric sheets in the booklet) are pervy as can be – well as pervy as they can get when creamed death metal style over the accompanying sonic mess. After the violence of Roman Shower the tracks become, if not easier to listen to then certainly a great deal more tangible with big drum beats and percussive elements anchoring the next two tracks while noise shears in and out of the cauldron. Even Silver Flashlight which begins in much the same high frequency vein as Roman Shower eventually allows some drumming to ground it all. For noise nerds the real treat is in the 17 minute long title track which is pointless explaining but has some powerful droning elements which I thought were pretty good. From then on Black Vase has those cathartic and violent elements which often anchors the best noise. Although this is certainly not the record if you’re thinking of having a dabble, I think it’s great. Just know what you’re getting yourself in for.
Whitehouse are one of the most important bands to have released records in the last 50 years. From their work as artistic directors for the opening ceremony of the Sydney Olympics, to their remix work for Beyonce, Whitehouse have done more to define modern pop music than any artist. U2, Cold Play and Jay Z all display the influence of this now sadly defunct band. Sure you may have heard the bass line of Wriggle Like a Fucking Eel in Timbaland’s latter day work with Justin Timberlake but it may be their Pulitzer winning poetry for Philosophy which may hands down define them for eternity . Whether you are into pop, rap or musical theatre, Whitehouse will have you snapping those fingers and tapping your toes*
* Writing about any record from the godfathers of power electronics is going to be a difficult to do. If you can come to terms with the sheer dodginess of the lyrics, the noise itself is an almost cathartic experience. Skip through track 4 if you know what is good for you, but the rest will take you some where else whether you actually want to go there or not. A disgustingly foul bastard of a record. I recommend it.
You see, if this had been released this year it would have been my album of the year but it wasn’t so you know, whatever. I love this but I am a little afraid of it. Now that may sound totally lame and it is but there is something really intimidating about Sheer Hellish Miasma. This is noise and drone in the hands of a master. The sound moves around like sand in a storm and from what I can make out is made from layers of tightly woven static which for the most part is pitched very low. The longest piece is The Inferno which is a fat slab of greasy drone punctuated with Merzbow-light electronic trickery. The opener Impotent Hummer is where my fear comes from. On the surface the tracks is a slowly moving, volume boosted drone track but when I concentrate I’m sure I can hear the sound of some sort of life under the impenetrable fog. Well at least I think I can because just when I think I can hear them they disappear. They’re either there, it’s a trick to the ears caused by the dense layers of drone or I have may a mild psychosis. Take your pick. The most fun track is the very short Turning Point which is what hard house sounds like played by John Wiese at 400 beats per minute. The whole thing is rounded out by the calm and beautiful Cloudy, which considering the power of what precedes it, is like having a nice sorbet after chewing through a raw piece of venison, well at lest until the track eats itself whole in the last 20 seconds. Utterly compelling.
Yay! Menche is back. As a devoted follower of all things Menche, it’s nice to see him back in his solo guise. At the beginning of 2008 he released a statement about how he wasn’t going to release any more solo work and instead focus on visual arts etc blah blah blah . Don’t know what changed his mind – don’t care either. The important thing is he is back. Back!!! As an aside you should go read his blog over at www.danielmenche.blogpost.com. Menche may be the coolest high school librarian ever. Now to Kataract. Those bastards at Mego are releasing only 500 of these because noise music is so far up in own arse that only 500 people deserve to listen to this or it could be an economy of scale thing with the view that this stuff has a small market and 500 copies all they can shift. Whatever the reason I tracked this down from those nice people at Cold Spring and fucking la di da I’m one of the lucky 500 so you know … worship me as a god.
So what’s it all about then. Kataract is one 40 minute track of processed field recordings and water falls and electronic loveliness. I love it. It’s harsh and droney and dreamlike and awesome and if you don’t buy this you suck. Seriously. You know you want to hear what processed waterfalls sound like. You’re kidding no one. One of the albums of the year.
There are people who just should not make music anymore. Bowie, The Rolling Stones, Flipper and now Death in June. Unless of course you are looking for vaguely fascist, neo-folk gobshite. The early album are crackers. This is just crap.
I’ve wanted this record for a while and it is only now, thanks to the resurgent Aussie dollar that I could justify buying it. Every Merzbow collaboration I’ve heard has been a cracker, particularly the great records he did with Boris and Sunn O))). … and the Devil makes Three might just be in the top three records I’ve heard this year .
Porn are a trio that pump out greasy slabs of the finest sludge metal this side of the Melvins which makes sense given that Porn is also the home Dale Crover. Now until listening to …and the Devil makes Three, I’d never heard Porn except on the youtube videos’s I’ve added below and you gotta admit that they certainly fucking rock. On this collaboration it feels like Merzbow fills in all of the gaps in their sound to create just this big fucking behemoth of noise rock. Fuck it is good and hands down the best thing Merzbow has released this year (so far as I’ve heard anyway). If you ever heard Rock Dream (his live collaboration with Boris) then you might have an idea of just how well Merzbow’s scree and hiss works in the context of metal. I like Porn a bit better than Boris so for my money this is the one to go for.
I get a lot of people contacting me through this site asking me to review their records. The emails always go a little something like – I notice you like Band x – you might like us etc. And this might seem a bit lame but 9 times out of 10 I really do enjoy the record they’re spruiking. Without this site I might never have hear four of my favourite artists this year – Golden Sores, Chord, TODD and Derek Rogers. Now I can add Locrian to that list because this record is simply fantastic. Take the vibe of Black Metal, mix in some drone and post-metal and you might have something close to what this sounds like. The record itself has two tracks, the first, Rain of Ashes is a mournful, bleak piece which might be the best thing to listen to when you read Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. It’s almost like a cross between Black Boned Angel and Pelican. There are muscial themes at play rather than simply noise and dark ambience (not that there is anything wrong with that). The guitar which at first seems blissful becomes sadder and more claustrophobic as the track progresses. The second track is Sehsa Fo Niar which is oddly enough the entire first track played backwards and it is just as bleak only the creep factor pumps up to 11.
This was originally released on Fan Death as a c60 cassette. It’s still for sale for about $4.00 from the Fan Death site. This CD has been released by the French label Basses Frequences and the artwork and sound quality are excellent. It might be worth your while checking out their site because besides picking up Rain of Ashes, their web shop is amazing.
Well at least it’s better than Pt.10. This one has some interesting things going on. Nice psych rock vibe happening on the first track cheerfully named Transformed into Food. The second track Once the human meat is done cut it up and mix with the vegetable curry just sounds a lot like some of the more mediocre tracks that this series has become known for. You know – scree scree, thump thump, chick chick on the cymbals. After hearing this I thought that I might just be becoming a bit of a cunt when it comes to reviewing this series- you know noise snobbery and all that – so I listened to some of the earlier ones again and Pt.2 is still absolutely fucking essential in my book and some of those other early ones are very good indeed. I think it might have been Pt.6 when the tedium set in. I’m really looking forward to him not drumming for a while. Bring on the next phase!
