Merzsale *not Merzbow approved

Posted in Uncategorized on May 5, 2019 by noisenoisenoise

Well after 13 years of Merzbow fandom it is time to say goodbye to (most) of my Merzbow collection. All prices in Australian dollars (heaps cheaper than US) – have a look at http://www.auspost.com.au to get an idea of international postage prices. I think it is about $9.00 AU for a CD and for  and 4 CD’s would be $18.00 AU. It’s about $30.00 AU for a kilo of CD’s (probably about 7 or 8).

For Australia buyers look at https://auspost.com.au/business/shipping/domestic-shipping/parcel-post#tab2

Email ducksbattlesatan@gmail.com for questions, offers orders or photo requests. The prices are reflective of the cheapest Discogs prices.

Merzbient $200 (free postage world wide)

Rattus Rattus $20

Tamago $60

Merzbow vs Tamarin $6

Sha Mo 3000 $12

Yoshinotsune $12

Venerology $12 (sold)

Tombo $25

Higabana $12

Pulse Demon $60

Puroland $6

Oersted $8 (sold)

Senmaida $12

Merzbow Vs Nordvargr Parikel II $7

Noisembryo $60 (sold)

Merzbow and Consumer Electronics – Horn of the Goat $30 (sold)

Minazo $12

Synth Destruction (with Carlos Giffoni) $8

Anicca $6

F.I.D. (2 CD) $13

Vibractance $80

SCSI Duck $10

Collapse 12 Floors $8

Dead Leaves $8

Doors Open 8am $18

Aqua Necromancer $20

Machinenstil $14

Amlux $40 (sold)

Kibako (Delux Box) $30

Mercurated (cover has shelf ware) $80

Lop Lop (Delux Box) $30 (sold)

… and the Devil Makes Three (wth Porn) $5uuki $18

Another Merzbow Records (3 CD) $40

Cycle $12

Konchuuki  $18

Sphere $12

Space Metalizer $8

Animal Magnestism $12

Dust of Dreams $12

Zophorus ($11)

Suzume $15

Kukurou $12

Yurikamame $12

Karasu $12

Uzura $15

Kujakubato $12

Kamo $12

Kokuchou $10

Hiyodori $8

Niwatori $8

Shirasagi $8

Tsubame $8

Chabo $8

Dead Zone $8

Kouhei $8

Spiral Honey $50 (sold)

Last of the Analog Sessions (Box set) $75 – Has some damage to spine

Scene $5

Ouroboros $14

Electric Salad $40

Pinkeam $12

Fantail $13

Hybrid Noisebloom $12 (sold)

Age of 369/Chant 2 $21

Keio Line (ith Richard Pihnas) $15

Hodosan $12

Somei $15

Tentacle $35 (sold)

Rainbow Electronics2 $12

Merzbird $7

Coma Berenices $12

Ikebukuro Dada $4

Dolphon Sonar $9

Merzbuta $8

Merzbeat $10

Camouflage $18

Merzdub (with Jamie Saft) $40

Kamadhenu $30

Hanakisasage $8

Green Wheels $80 (sold)

Kali-yuga Karma $30

Kookaburra $20

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The DBS approved records that you should definitely listen to (aka my favorite 2016 releases)

Posted in Uncategorized on January 1, 2017 by noisenoisenoise

Well it goes without saying that 2016 was a year of strange shit. In saying that though, there were some absolutely blinding releases last year that gave me all the feelings at once. There weren’t too many of those records but there was a still some great stuff that came out that made 2016 a but less shit than you may have remembered. In DBS world it was a year of wonder watching my three boys tackle challenges and overcoming them. A year in which my job became insane and I became a published author. A year of podcasting with my mate Ingmar who I would never have met if it wasn’t for this dusty old blog. A year of challenge and reward. Anyway enough of that – here we go.

Records released in 2016 that gave me all the feelings.

  1. Olm – Little Boy
  2. Kristian M Roberts – Two Portraits
  3. Meyer – Negative Space
  4. Andrew Tuttle – Fantasy League
  5. Equiknoxx – Bird Sound Power
  6. Valerio Tricoli – Colonic Earth
  7. Missing Organ – Hard Walls
  8. Anthony Child – Electronic Recordings from Maui Vol.2
  9. Puce Mary – The Spiral

Records released in 2016 that gave me the happies

  1. Sim Hutchins – I enjoy to Sweep a Room
  2. Regler – Regler #8 Metal
  3. Avvennir – Natural Language
  4. Jim O’Rourke – Steamroom #26
  5. Shit and Shine – Teardops
  6. Bjanri Gunnarson – Paths
  7. Aaron Jimmy Harris – Nerves
  8. The Body  – No-one Deserves Happiness
  9. Daniel Menche – Sleeper
  10. Floorplan – Victorious
  11. Pita – Get In
  12. Krause – 2 am Thoughts
  13. Nurse with Wound – Dark Fat
  14. Dedekind Cut – Successor
  15. Whitehouse – The Sound of Being Alive
  16. Oren Ambarci – Hubris
  17. Mike Shiflet – Abstracting Grace
  18. Kevin Drumm – Middle of Nothing
  19. Russell Haswell – Panther Noise

Old stuff I listened to heaps

  1. Various – Dope Guns and Fucking in the Streets
  2. Burning Star Core – Challenger
  3. Yellow Swans – Live During War Crimes 1 and 2
  4. Throbbing Gristle – 20 Jazz Funk Greats
  5. Talk Talk – Spirit of Eden
  6. The Necks – Chemist
  7. Roland S Howard – Teenage Snuff Film
  8. Prurient – Oxidation
  9. Wayne/Jayne Country – Rock N Roll Cleopatra
  10. The Rita/Wilt – Werewolf in the Black Space
  11. Mike Cooper – White Shadows in the South Seas
  12. Lawrence English – The Peregrine
  13. People Like Us – Don’t Think Right /It’s All Twice

 

Cows – Cunning Stunts (Amphetamine Reptile) 1992

Posted in Uncategorized on May 1, 2016 by noisenoisenoise

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Hey Ho. Sorry for the break in transmission. I got commissioned to write an online text book/guide thing which has sucked up huge amounts of time leaving most of my musing on albums restricted to the podcast.So let’s start again shall we?

 

In my high school and university days  I was a bit of a label whore for records coming out on labels such as Blast First, Sub-pop and Touch & Go. In this pre-internet age I had to rely on the record labels themselves to be my own personal musical curators. For the most part they did a pretty awesome job and there were only a few releases from those labels over the years that made me question my collecting masterplan. Like many kids growing up in a regional area, my ability to acquire records was limited to special orders from my sympathetic local record shop (“mate is Killdozer one word of two?”) and an annual Christmas trip to Brisbane where I would paw over the racks in Rockinghorse, Kent and Skinny’s. Those shops are mostly all gone now with Rockinghorse being  one of the last few left in the country. I’ve started frequenting Rockinghorse again this year in a conscious effort to stop buying so many records online and supporting the little guy. Every now and then I browse their webstore and a couple of weeks ago I couldn’t quite believe my eyes. They had, in stock no less, Halo of Flies Music Insect Minds and this, Cows definitive Midwestern hardcore statement of1992. These have been out of print for years and there they were both  on disc and cheap. I headed for an early lunch and bought both within the hour. The big surprise for me was that both records were new. They are two of the first three releases that Am Rep are re-issuing with the help of some mob called MVD Audio Group.

Cows wereone of the classic mid-western hardcore punk bands that spanned the mid-1980’s to mid-1990’s.  Cunning Stunts came out just as grunge was breaking. It’s probably a bit more sedate than Sexy Pee Story their 1993 follow up but there are some absolutely cracking tunes here. The fourth track Mr Cancelled may be the best unknown grunge anthem of the era and has this nice slacker vibe like something wedged between Bitch Magnet and godheadsilo with a cool late-Husker Du musicality (with better drums of course). The rest of the album has similarities with other mid-western bands of the era such as Mule and Killdozer. I love this record. It may be me getting all nostalgic  but I’m keen for the next batch of re-issues. May I suggest Lubricated Goat’s Plays the Devil’s Music, Boss Hog’s Cold Hands and King Snake Roost’s Things That Play Themselves.

 

Prurient – Arrowhead (Editions Mego) 2008

Posted in Uncategorized on January 14, 2016 by noisenoisenoise

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Well Happy New Year and all that shit. In my time proven tradition I try to start each new year with some good intentions to post regularly. From logging into this blog again after an absence of 12 months it appears that there are still a shit ton of you out there popping by to read my confused ramblings on records. In tribute to the diehards, let’s see how I go this year. As many of you know my review mojo has been exhausted over at The Antidote Podcast but due to our inexact release schedule I have missed talking about a ton of records that have made an impact on me over the past few years,

Lets’s start with an oldie. Prurient’s Arrowhead has a bit of a reputation as being one of Prurient’s defining works. As you probably know Prurient is the name used by Dominick Fernow for his nasty, transgressive, noisy musical output. This year he released the epic Frozen Niagra Falls, a sprawling double CD of darkwave industrial goodness which appears to have been universally ignored in everyone’s best of lists for 2015. I think the problem that people have with Fernow (I think the attitude transcends into his other projects such as Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement and Vatican Shadow) is that he’s a bit of a caricature – like a goth art school major with a flair for the dramatic. I’ve been guilty of ragging on him from time to time. I may have even stated that “I was done with him” during a rather tiresome tirade on the podcast. At the time of that statement I was a bit tired of Prurient’s embrace of darkwave forms in his records. Yet in 2015 I began to embrace this side of Prurient’s work. A decent noisenerd should only consideris whether the record is good, and not some semantic argument about whether such and such record is as good as (insert particular band’s name here)  their old stuff.

But whatever anyone’s views on Fernow as an artist the man has made some fantastic records over the years and this critical sniffery from many reviewers (hey I’m just as guilty –  OK) in some ways diminish the fact that he is an important artist in the intersection between noise and industrial music.  Few of his albums give me as much pleasure as Arrowhead. I bought this last year and gave it a cursory listen on the day it arrived. It didn’t start well – a sadistic drone of high pitched microphone feedback ala Roman Shower. I wasn’t in the headspace for it at the time and I moved on to something else. Just before Christmas I gave it another try and discovered that the feedback of the track, Sternum,  is accompanied by minimal drum strikes and some tonal interference which gave the track texture and created tension. The second track, Ribcage, embraces the  feedback once more but here it is supplemented with Fernow’s patented cries of anguish to scale up the creep factor. It is the final track, Lungs, which tickled me the most though. A four minute race of tribal style drumming being immersed in washed of feedback. It may be the closest Prurient has come to a noise banger.

Arrowhead delivers a bucketload of noise goodness in just over half an hour. If you’ve become a recent adopter of Prurient’s laterstuff go back and have a listen to this. It won’t disappoint.

Regler – Noisecore / Free Jazz (Turgid Animal) 2014

Posted in Mattin, Music, noise, Regler with tags , , on January 24, 2015 by noisenoisenoise

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Happy New Year and all that shit. It’s been pretty hectic at DBS as I’ve moved into Daddy Daycare mode for the summer holidays. My chances to listen to music have been somewhat compromised as a result hence the lack of posts. So to kick off the New Year I wanted to bring to your attention this epic two disc release from Regler.”Who are Regler?” I hear you ask. Well  many of you may be aware of Mattin, the Basque experimental musician who warranted a significant story in The Wire a few years back. I’ve written about him when I covered a record by Billy Bao (you can find it by using the  search thing on the site – too lazy to link).

Regler is a duo he performs in with Anders Bryngelsson from the epic Brainbombs. Henrik Andersson also joins the duo on bass and on the Free Jazz disc Yoann Durant provides sax. Essentially this release is too hour long  tracks of uncompromising, play as hard as they possible can, noise. Many listeners might find listening to this a test of endurance, but my experience with it has been one which is oddly hypnotic. I preferred the Free Jazz disc only because there is a little bit more variation. For the part the sax of Durant seems to be subsumed by the unrelenting forces of the bass and guitar attack but there are textures scattered throughout the din that deserve the listener’s attention. In fact the longer the tracks go the more interesting they become  and I think much of that has to do with the fact that  Bryngelsson gets a bit tired and either has a break completely from drumming or simply slows it down a bit (listen to Noise Core 21 minutes in to hear what I mean). I suppose what I’m trying to say is that it is folly to judge the tracks by the first ten minutes of each. There is texture, movement and progression here. Listeners who stick with it will be pleasantly surprised.

If your interested in getting a copy head over to mutant-ape.co.uk. It’s one of the few places you can find it.

 

The Rita – The Voyage of the Decima MAS (Troniks) 2009

Posted in noise, The Rita with tags , on November 17, 2014 by noisenoisenoise

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In the past few months I’ve dipped my toes back into some old school noise. I’ve been trolling Discogs for old Wolf Eyes, Aaron Dilloway and Sick Lama CDR’s and have managed to snap up a few. When I scroll through a Discogs noise seller’s inventory there is invariably a coupe of The Rita CD’s up for grabs as well and I suspect that these records probably haven’t necessarily got the attention they deserve.

I’ve got a fair few The Rita records and this is one of my favourites. For those of you who haven’t heard of him before, The Rita is the pseudonym of Sam McKinlay, a Canadian noise artist who specialises in that most specialist of noise sub genres, Harsh Wall Noise. HWN is pretty well described by its title. It is usually identified by tracks consisting of thick walls of static with very little or absolutely no compromise to anything that may comfort the listener by way of any recognisable musical forms. There are certainly no beats or homages to industrial noise – the sound can either be overwhelming or strangely trance inducing and on occasions exceptionally boring.

I can assure you that The Rita and specifically The Voyage of the Decima MAS are not boring. The Decima MAS were an Italian frogmen unit formed during the second world war. McKinlay references the subject matter by interposing snorkel sounds that he recorded in Vancouver Harbour as breaks in the walls of static that he conjures up. It’s not the first time he has used nautical subject matter and related field recordings, his Thousands of Dead Gods CD from 2006 used recordings of a great white shark dive cage to weave through all the static. I suppose the reason I like both these records so much is that unlike most harsh wall noise, my listening experience has been active rather than passive as I anticipate the use of the field recordings.

This record is pretty great but if you decide to pick up a copy expect something brutal, harsh and noisy.

Merzbow – Takahe Collage (Handmade Birds) 2013

Posted in Merzbow, Music, noise with tags , on November 13, 2014 by noisenoisenoise

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Look, when you neglect a blog as much as I have in the past few years it can be easy to forget what I’ve posted on and what I haven’t. For some reason I was under the impression that my thoughts on Takahe Collage  had been published. Nup – found it sitting in draft form consisting of a number of mean references to Merzbow’s  13 Japanese Birds. Screw that review I thought – time to listen to this again with fresh ( although increasingly degraded) ears.

Merzbow has seemed to go a bit quiet in 2014.  He’s released a few bits and bobs but nothing like the pace he has set in the  past. I’m actually a bit sad about that fact because  Merzbow, ever since the end of the 13 Japanese  Birds Series, has been releasing some of the  records of his career. I’d go so far to say that you can’t really go wrong with any of them. I think most of  CD’s he released in the past four or so years are covered on this site except for the mighty Kibako that I also found in draft form (and which I’ll publish soon).

Takahe Collage is a great example of prime Merzbow. Three lengthy tracks (32, 29 and 12 minutes respectively are on offer. The first track is indeed a bit of a collage, degraded beats give the entire track a post-industrial feel. The second track is my favourite – it starts as one of those Merzbow pieces that create layers from scree, static and noise to form a brutal soup of sound in which no recognisable instruments or form can be detected. I actually forget how much I love it when he just lets loose.  The beats come back with a vengence for the final track. It starts off as a trance track for the damned and never really lets up. It’s great and one of the rare moments where I’ve started bobbing my head to a Merzbow track.

All in all a great Merzbow record and an extremely good noise record full stop. Noise nerds won’t be disappointed.

Secret Pyramid- The Silent March (Students of Decay) 2014

Posted in Drone, Secret Pyramid with tags , , on November 7, 2014 by noisenoisenoise

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Students of Decay released one of my favourite records of all time, Peter Wright’s At Last A New Dawn. That was all the way back in 2007 and since then they have been releasing appealing slabs of drone, ambient and experimental electronic music out into the world. This year I had the good fortune to get myself a copy of the shimmering beauty that is Kyle Bobby Dunn’s The Infinite Sadness of Kyle Bobby Dunn which if you haven’t head it is an absolute treat for those of us who enjoys our trips to the drone/ambient sector of experimental music.

A record that doesn’t stray too far from the drone ambient axis is this mesmerising dose of loveliness. Secret Pyramid is the name used by Canadian musician Amir Abbey. The Silent March was originally released in 2011 on cassette by a small Canadian label however after releasing Secret Pyramid’s Movements of Night last year Students of Decay thought it may be a good idea to give this a wider release.

I for one am glad I did. I only received my copy a few days ago and I can’t stop listening to it. The Silent March consists of seven slowly evolving drone tracks that somehow still manage a dull shimmer under some pretty overcast sky. Sadness can be a beautiful thing in music and this record is a prime example.  The acoustic guitar based Come Down Gently mines similar (although much more subtle) territory to Earth’s recent output over the last  few years ago. It sounds to me almost like Stars of the Lid  descending into western gothic territory. Quite lovely really. I’m a sucker for this kind of sound and if you do enjoy the drone work of Kevin Drumm, Stars of the Lid, Kyle Bobby Dunn or even Richard Skelton you’ll need to listen to this.

It will be officially released on 11 November in Vinyl and download formats. If you are extra smart can i suggest the two CD set which also includes Movements of Night as well.

Sunn O))) meets Nurse With Wound – The Iron Soul of Nothing (Ideologic Organ) 2011

Posted in nurse with wound, sunn O))) with tags , , , on November 3, 2014 by noisenoisenoise

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Hello blog people. Long time no write. I’ve decided to reactivate this little noise blog as a way of bringing records to your attention that Ingmar I don’t get around to covering on The Antidote Podcast. I suppose it also allows me to write about records from the past rather than the new release schedule that Ingmar and I try to stick to. So in honour of Sunn O)))’s recent collaborations with Scott Walker (I’m still putting off listening to that one) and Ulver (just ignore the last track) I thought I’d cover something I’ve been enjoying for a while.

I’ve got two copies of this. The first is a four track version I downloaded off NWW’s bandcamp page and the second copy is a three track version which appears as  the second disc in a two disc reissue of SunnO)))’s OO Void which was released in 2011. That release was a re-release of a re-release by Japanese label Daymare in 2008 which I remember my local indie record store trying to charge me $74.00 for. Out-fucking-rageous if you ask me. The original OO Void was actually recorded in 2000 and got released by Hydra Head records that year.

In 2007 some smarty decided it would be a good idea to send a nice clean digital copy of OO Void to the Nurse With Wound lads to see what they would come up with. So what did they come up with? Only the doomiest, bleakest, blackened version of Sunn O))) that you could possibly ever hope for. For the most part NWW take the doom-laden glacial metal of Sunn O))) and make it into a sinister, quite evil listen. This is less a metal monolith and more a terrifying aural journey into the heart of darkness. Absolutely wonderful. I have a great deal of affection for Sunn O))) particularly Flight of the Behemoth (featuring Merzbow yay!) and the terrific White albums. The wonderful thing about The Iron Soul of Nothing is experiencing the doom aesthetic from a non-metal source. This is less about being crushed and more about being mentally suffocated.

For the most part the collaboration (or is it a remix) is instrumental but on the wonderful Ash on The Trees (the third track) the vocals of Pete Stahl (from Washington DC hardcore band Scream) are somehow extracted form beneath the ugliness of the original record to provide a bleak prelude to a track of unrelenting fear – kind of like a black mass with power chords).

Get this from NWW’s bandcamp page for a quick fix. Essential.

Incapacitants – Eat! Meat!! Manifesto!!! (Rape Art Productions) 2012

Posted in Uncategorized on March 15, 2014 by noisenoisenoise

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As most of the bands and artists who provided my early noise soundtrack  move away from sonic brutality to embrace creepier and more beat orientated methods it becomes almost a novelty to spend time with some old school noise. Incapacitants exist in a group of Japanese noise bands that every self respecting noise nerd needs in their collection. Consisting of two middle aged salary men, the band kind of disappears for years on end before reappearing and producing a burst of recorded material. 2011 – 2012 were particularly fertile years for the band with Eat! Meat!! Manifesto!!! being probably the last in time of those records. Coming out on the charmingly named Rape Art Productions, a Ukrainian label specialising in all manner of grot, Eat! Meat!! Manifesto!!! has a slightly different feel to the other Incapacitant records I own. The first track Eat! sounds like two separated mechanical snakes writhing and twisting whilst separated by green fields of static and proto-industrial noise. Despite its underlying brutality the track almost washed over me live a form of psychedelic ambience. The second and third  track is like the Incapacitants I’ve experienced in the past. Completely uncompromising with an absence of discernible forms. Their brand of noise is like  the ultimate expression of power electronics. I don’t enjoy Incapacitants as much as say, Government Alpha, but records like Eat! Meat!! Manifesto are like the ultimate fight club. Brutal, nasty, extreme and visceral.  Continue reading

Henry Blacker – Hungry Dogs Will Eat Dirty Puddings (Riot Season) 2014

Posted in Henry Blacker, Hey Collosus, Music with tags , , on March 9, 2014 by noisenoisenoise

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One of my favorite records of last year was the mighty Cuckoo Live Life Like Cuckoo by the excellent Hey Colossus, a record that was criminally overlooked by all  cool publications everywhere. I think that’s a bit sad really it was in my Top 10 of last year. So  imagine my excitement when two of the Hey Colossus lads teams up with some drummer or other and release this slab of stoner rock goodness. The first track is the blistering Crab House, a track that is so good it’s like crossing Cruise Yourself era Girls Against Boys with Go With the Flow era Queens of the Stone Age. It’s like descending a stare case into rock n’ roll heaven. The ghost of Touch and Go records creeps throughout the eight tracks on this.  The influences are clear, Jesus Lizard, Killdozer, Girls Against Boys and yes Queens of the Stone Age are all here. This references back  to an era when alt-rock actually meant something, an era before hardcore became watered-down and all the bands singed to Interscope. It’s a big lump of sweaty, beer soaked, flannel wearing rock music that hurled me back to my teenage years. So. Fucking. Good.

 

 

Machinefabriek – Secret Photographs (Important) 2013

Posted in Drone, Machinefabriek, Music with tags , , on March 9, 2014 by noisenoisenoise

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I’ve become a little obsessed with the works of Rutger Zuydervelt aka Machinefabriek over the past 18 months or so. It all started when I  first  heard the amazing Veldwerk compilation which was almost the perfect blend of field recordings, drone, noise, electronic manipulation and sonic experimentation. Since then I’ve tried to track down most of his readily available records and not once have I been disappointed.  I think the main reason for that is that Zuydervelt isn’t beholden to one particular sound. Although it was his processed field recordings that sucked me in, it is commissioned  works for dance and film that keep me coming back.

The soon to be released Episode 23 of The Antidote Podcast will feature two of his more recent works, the challenging Doepfer Worm  and the sublime piece written for the Moscow Ballet, Attention, the Doors Are Closing, and because this blog doesn’t necessarily focus on new releases I thought I’d start with Secret Photographs, the 2012 soundtrack to the film of the same  name.

I’m not sure if the film has seen the light of day as yet but it was to focus on the photographic obsession of Alvin “Creepy” Karpis, a 1930’s gangster that spent his final days in Spain. After he died a large  number of photographs were discovered and sold on ebay. The director of the film Mike Hoolboom managed to purchase them and the idea for the film began.

The soundtrack is made up of three long pieces which span a total of 70 minutes or so. Each of the tracks focuses on a minimal, shimmering drone. That seems to be a term I’ve used before but to further clarify – Secret Photographs is drone in a fragile, Stars of the Lid kind of way rather than the painfully pitched drone work of say Hototogisu. This album is a great staring point for anyone interested in minimal drone work. Indeed it is in a select group of records that manage to stay true to it’s ascetic without ever becoming boring. Simply stunning.

 

Birchville Cat Motel – Nurse (Fencing Flatworm Recordings) 2004

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , on January 2, 2014 by noisenoisenoise

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Well here we are in 2014. This bog (typo and it’s staying) was sadly neglected in 2013 for a crapload of reasons. Firstly Ingmar from evolkweenthemusical and I started The Antidote Podcast which meant that a great deal of my listening time was spent absorbing new releases to pontificate about. Secondly I had a third kid at the end of 2012 and that little rotter decided that sleep was for pussies and thirdly my job got superbusy which has been tremendously stressful but also fun. In any event the opportunities I had to listen to records for this blog were severely compromised. So I had to make a decision about whether to keep this blog going or just letting it slide into the digital ether. In the end I’ve decided that this blog will become much more active in 2014 – but the focus will change to concentrate to records that I need to share with others rather than to offer my thoughts on records that I think will generate traffic. At it’s height this blog was getting crazy numbers of visits and it was even named one of the best music bogs in Vice magazine. That was great for my ego but I think I lost sight of the reason why I started this bog in the place. So there you go – no more negative reviews. If I didn’t like it you will no longer find it written about here. DBS will  now only have reviews of records that I think noise nerds are going to enjoy. So here we go.

Let’s face it 2013 was a pretty ordinary year for music and  I wasn’t particularly inspired by much which essentially meant that my non-podcast purchases focused on nostalgic trawls through discogs and ebay. Nurse was a late night purchase on ebay which I discovered when I was looking for out of print Whitehouse records. Anyone who has followed this bog since it started in 2006 will know that the work of Campbell Kneale aka Birchville Cat Motel has been pretty well covered. In fact at least two of his records With Maples Ablaze and Our Love Will Destroy the World (the title he later took to name his new project when Birchville was retired) are in my top 20 records of all time. Although I enjoy his rock-pig and psychedelic guitar records such as Bird Sister Blasphemy and Astro Catastrophes, I think his best work is defined by his shimmering, ecstatic drone work. 

Nurse consists of one half hour untitled. The thing that sets it apart for me though is the use of beats. It almost starts like a Vladisav Delay minimalist techno record before the high pitched drones cascade over the top and a sublime white noise drone takes over. Yet like the best drone this record took me on a journey. There are subtle and not so subtle interjections of noise and found sound which makes this one  of the best things I heard in 2013 especially as many noise artists started becoming more overt in there explorations of beats. I can’t recommend this enough. There are copies on discogs for sale which aren’t prohibitively expensive – yoiu may want to check it out.

The Dead C – Armed Courage (Ba Da Bing) 2013

Posted in New Zealand Bands, The Dead C on September 1, 2013 by noisenoisenoise

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Armed Courage is the first The Dead C record since the release of Patience in 2010.  Although both Michael Morley through his Gate project, and Bruce Russell with what seems like a million collaborations, have been keeping busy,  it’s taken a whole three years for them to get together and make a new Dead C record. Has it been worth the wait?  Abso-fucking-lutely. 

I ve been listening to this record for the past few weeks whilst I have been in quarantine because of a nasty  virus I picked up off one of my kids. My cabin fever allowed me to spend a good period of time going back through the band’s releases since their re-emergence with the amazing Vain Erudite and Stupid compilation in 2006. Armed Courage is more closely aligned with Secret Earth and Patience rather then the more difficult Future Artists. 

Armed Courage contains two twenty minute long tracks. The first one Armed is a mesmerising instrumental  swirl of droning rock guitar and primitive Sonic Youth avant noodling. Robbie Yeats drums dive in and fade out of the track at regular intervals. It may be my favourite Dead C track since Bitcher from 1995’s The White  House. The second track Courage starts out very differently with a quiet menacing ambiance overlaid with Michael Morley’s vocals which sound like a brain injured every-dude overdosed on codeine before the driving, rocked-out drone, kicks in. It is great and has moments which actually outstrip Armed.

Armed Courage  is a cracking record and it may also be the best recorded album they’ve released to date. If you have never heard the band before then this is a great place to start. These guys may just be getting better and better.

Black Leather Jesus – The Defining Love (Shamanic Trance) 2011

Posted in Black Leather Jesus, Music, noise with tags , on April 8, 2013 by noisenoisenoise

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Sweet mother of God. I must be going through a  self loathing phase at the moment because I seem to have accumulated quite a number of extraordinarily nasty  records in the past few weeks. Let’s for example chuck this opus from Richard Ramirez out for consideration. I am a huge fan of one of Ramirez’s other vehicles Werewolf Jerusalem and to be frank, although both projects explore the concept of harsh wall noise, I think the Werewolf Jerusalem records I own are much more interesting than this. Perhaps it is because those records have a much more guttural pitch to them and this record is pitched just high enough to be mildly unpleasant. I didn’t extract much of interest from the three noise tracks. It’s pretty straight forward stuff and I think The Rita does this sort of thing a lot better. What did get me thinking though is the idea of the inspiration for this project because everything from the title of the project, the names of the songs (You Can Never Have Enough Meat in You) and the cover art indicate that the focus here is on sex, big old gay sex in fact. So as I was listening to the first two tracks I was trying to figure out the connection between the imagery and the noise itself and I wondered whether the link was that both were transgressive (one of the tracks starts with the work “Fist”) or was there a sadism link. It was kind of like trying to reconcile Merzbow’s Bariken with his love of ducks – ultimately a bit pointless. The third track did make the connection clear because it is a simple recording of two blokes having it off. I’m not sure what the relation is to the harsh noise wall (although one of them did sound to be in a great deal of discomfort). So maybe that is the link. This record buggers the bejesus out of your ears. I get it now.

Slomo – The Bog (Important) 2008

Posted in Doom, Drone, Music, Slomo with tags , , , on April 7, 2013 by noisenoisenoise

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Now here is a band that should be much more well known than they are. Towards the end of last year they released their new record The Grain and when I found out, well – let’s just say that I was pretty excited. You see Slomo have released two of my favourite records – 2005’s The Creep and The Bog which came out on Important in 2008. Since then though, nothing, absolutely fuck all until now  of course. But first I think  The Bog is worth bringing to people’s attention. I reckon it may be  one of the strangest things that Important ever  released. Slomo are a duo from England who specialise in a slow moving, doom/ambient/creepy vibe – think what it would sound like if Mike Connelly asked Steven O’Malley to help out on a Failing Lights record. The band describe their sound as highly ritualised glumbient. I love the term glumbient but it may not quite encapsulate how sinister the music can be. The album itself is a  one hour long meditation in blackened dreamscapes and the threat of the unseen. I don’t listen to that much doom or black metal anymore but The Bog has been something I have gone back to  again and again. If you stumble over a copy on your travels it might just be worth picking up.

Joe Panzner – Clearing, Polluted (Copy for Your Records) 2011

Posted in Drone, Joe Panzner, Music, noise with tags , , on April 6, 2013 by noisenoisenoise

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I first heard Joe Panzner last year when he released the absolutely amazing Recollect Reconstruct split cassette with Mike Shiflet. That record was only edged out by Mike Shiflet’s indispensable The Choir, The Army from being my favourite record of 2012. I decided to do a little bit of further exploring into Panzner’s output – the only problem is that there is not a great deal out there. Besides the split with Mike Shiflet he has released two albums proper, this in 2011 and Polished Rocks in 2006 (which you  can get from Panzner’s bandcamp store for a couple of bucks.

Clearing, Polluted is actually a great title for this record because, especially on the first track, there is a counterbalance between micro-static noodling (think very early Kevin Drumm) and absolutely exquisite showers of volume-basted static noise which is quite extraordinary to experience. I won’t lie, I had a couple of tries coming to terms with this record before it suddenly clicked – it is certainly pitched at the more difficult end of the experimental electronic/noise spectrum but  I always think that it is those “more difficult” records that have the biggest payout for the listener in the long term. There is a shit tonne of things going on here from long form drones to John Wiese style noise hyperactivity and if you decide to give this a play and think that the “silent” noise of the first few minutes of the first track are representative of what you are going to experience then  you are in for an absolute treat. I just wish he’d make more records.

Incapacitants – Zashikiwarashi Effect (Ljud and Bild Produktion) 2012

Posted in Incapacitants, Music, noise with tags , on April 5, 2013 by noisenoisenoise

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Who new that Incapacitants were quietly sneaking out a few releases last year of their own brand of uncompromising extreme noise, I  kind of lost track of them after dabbling with the better than the reviews would have you believe  Lon Guy that came out on Harbinger Sound in 2009.  Lon Guy was pretty full on and it firmly planted Incapacitants at the unrelenting extremity of Japanese Noise.

It is for this reason that people should approach records like Zashikiwarashi with some caution. There is no concept of compromise on display here. There are absolutely no recognisable musical forms, no beats, no identifiable instrumentation. Indeed there is absolutely no concession to the listener at all.

This is pure noise; harsh, ugly, nauseating  ear drum abusing nastiness. The five tracks on offer here offer the listener the evil, primal scream therapy oftwo salarymen who are both exhausted and inebriated on Sapporo and sake.

This is not one for the faint hearted. If you decide to track this down, don’t say you weren’t warned. Shit just got real (ugly).

Mike Shiflet – Blurred and Scorched (Wachsender Prozess) 2012

Posted in Drone, Mike Shiflet, Music, noise with tags , , , on February 25, 2013 by noisenoisenoise

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Hey did you know that Mike Shiflet snuck out another CDr in 2012? Me Neither. But thanks to the power of the twitter and the majesty of bandcamp you can snaffle a copy either digitally or a physical CDr if you so choose. I would have got myself the CDr but there is no international shipping so usnon-american noise people will have to make do with the digital version. It should not be a real mystery to anyone who reads this blog regularly that I appreciate Shiflet’s art. In fact he produced my two favourite records of last year. There is just something about the gritty, intense drones that Shiflet produces which do for something for me. Although Blurred and Scorched may lack some of the shimmering epicness of The Choir, The Army, it’s ten tracks are great examples of agitated experimental drone music. It’s the type of sound that is meditative and challenging at the same time. If I had heard it last year it would certainly have sneaked into my top 10. Shiflet along with Aaron Dilloway and Kevin Drumm are currently making up my unholy trinity of US experimental artists right now.

At the moment (until the end of February) Mike is using the proceeds of the sale of Blurred and Scorched to help some fellow Ohian musicians with their medical bills. Coming from a country with universal healthcare I find the thought of that kind of depressing but please make sure you pick up a copy before March and while your there get yourself a copy of Llanos and Omnivores. Both classics.

www.mikeshiflet.bandcamp.com

No Anchor – The Golden Bridge (Grindcore Karaoke) 2012

Posted in Australian underground, Music, No Anchor with tags , , on February 6, 2013 by noisenoisenoise

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Hello there. It’s been a while. Here at casa ducks battle satan I have immersed myself in a shit-ton of new records. So many in fact that I reckon I’ve only listened to about half of them.  Listening to all of these records has kept me away from this blog but that is all about to change. Shit has got me inspired.

So anyway, today I am working on some wonderful legal argument with Kevin Drumm’s excellent Arghhh! CDr keeping the procrastination at bay when I start having a bit of a scroll through the old ipod and find this. I completely forgot that I downloaded this from bandcamp at the end of last year which in retrospect is a disgusting oversight because No Anchor are kind of my favourite Australian band at the moment. Have been for a couple of years when I really think about it.  There is something really satisfying about their blend of metal and hardcore with a smattering of Albini-esque menace. Some of their past records have a much more stoner rock vibe to them but the thing I love about The Golden Bridge is the sheer relentlessness of the first five  tracks. To my ears it is like a mash-up between Fucked Up, early Girls Against Boys and Rapeman. That comparison doesn’t really do the rest of the record justice because shit does get a bit mellow from time to time  in a Melvinsy sort of way.

I have listened to this about four times today and I am loving the shit out of it. Type No Anchor into bandcamp and get yourself a copy – its freakin’ free. You have absolutely no excuse. The best album of 2012 you never knew existed.

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