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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.

 

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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.

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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.

 

 

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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.

 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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

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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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Lorenzo Senni – Quantum Jelly (Editions Mego) 2012

Posted in Lorenzo Senni, Music on November 25, 2012 by noisenoisenoise

Lorenzo Senni  is a name I’ve heard before, mostly from  his emails about Presto? Records, but who I have never actually heard. Now I’ve admitted in the past to being a bit of a label whore and Editions Mego is one of the labels that I spend a great deal of cash keeping up with. More importantly  do you see those shoes on the cover? I own them but mine are orange. Right comfortable they are. See that blue gel substance in the sole. Bouncy it is. It also tells you a bit about Quantum Jelly itself.

There are a number of Mego artists that play around with the carcass of techno in all its various forms. snd’s Mark Fell is probably the best known. I’ve always found Fell’s work to be extremely uncomfortable because of the way he shaves away all of the fun from techno and creates sterile minimalist beats. I suspect that the techno that Fell is inspired with is of the stark Basic Channel variety. Senni is much more concerned with that cloyingly sentimental Western European trance music so beloved by, you know, the Dutch for instance. Yet unlike Fell, Senni doesn’t try to obliterate the beats beyond recognition. The tracks are simple and reductionist but some of the cheese is left in there. This is most obvious on the third track MakeBelieve, which I hated myself for liking. But you know, there are reasons why this stuff is popular. It is after all basically emotional music for the essentially soul less. There is a fair amount of colour in this jelly but it may be best not to over think it. It is a record that is not going to change the world but I can’t help but like it. As comfortable as those blue asics trainers.

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Locrian & Christoph Heemann – S/T (Handmade Birds) 2012

Posted in Christoph Heemann, Doom, Drone, Locrian, Music with tags , , , , on October 16, 2012 by noisenoisenoise

Here are two artists I don’t know a lot about. I knew about Heemann from his collaboration with Merzbow and work with Nurse With Wound and the Chicago duo Locrian have made a previous  appearance on this site with their Rain of Ashes record. Before listening to this record I kind of knew that Locrian mined a drone metal sort of sound palette. That sort of sound  feels very stale to me now. The  number of submissions I receive from bands who still play it have not instilled me with a great deal of confidence that there is anyone thinking freshly about metal in a drone  context. When this arrived I was in two minds whether I would listen to it but I did and I’m glad I did. This is a truly great record. It is also a pretty difficult sound to pin down.  There is a shit load going on on this records four lengthy tracks. The first track Hecatomb is one of my favourite pieces of music mright now. It’s roots are obviously firmly in a drone metal context yet it is the injection of Necks style piano and  a feeling of improvised abandon with the guitars which lend the music an open, expansive feel. The second track lifts its skirts to reveal its blackened metal soul whilst the third track Edgeless City is an excursion through ambient drone with a sinister edge that gradually becomes much more oppressive.The final track, The Drowned Forest sees the artists getting their inner druid on for some ritualistic vocal action which become more intense as it progresses. It’s strangely beautiful and overwhelming all at once.

2012 has seen some excellent collaborations and split LP’s. Swanson and Shiflet, Dilloway and Lescalleet, Shiflet and Panzner, Blankenship and Reed have all produced amazing records this year. Add this too the pile.  This record has restored my faith in  bleak metal.

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Bee Mask – Elegy For Beach Friday (Spectrum Spools) 2011

Posted in Bee Mask, Drone, Music with tags , , , on October 10, 2012 by noisenoisenoise

I have seen some unbelievably great shows this year. One of my absolute favourites was back in July when Rites Wild and a rather unimpressive local act supported the great Bee Mask aka Chris Madak. Of course with any great show there is always great merch and I just so happened to get myself a copy of Elegy For Beach Friday before I left.

It is difficult to describe the experimental  electronica that Bee Mask produces. It is fair to say that on this record, the foundations of the  sound is rooted firmly in drone territory but infused throughout are Caretaker-style nostalgia, bubbling electronica, buzzing insect-like sounds, broad sweeping elegiac passages of sheer beauty, synth excursions and clouds of opaque and menacing drone. As an album, Elegy works extraordinarily well notwithstanding that it is a compilation of rare vinyl and tape tracks from 2003 to 2010. In fact rarely has a record had such an effect on me as this. It is one of those records that seeps into the consciousness and is an almost perfect rendering of great electronica that explores  beauty, menace and sadness. Bee Mask has a new EP on Room 40 and his new Spectrum Spools release of new material arrives in a few weeks. Don’t be surprised to see either of those reviewed hear soon. Elegy is mesmerising and fantastic.

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Hallock Hill – The Union / A Hem of Evening (Mie Music) 2012

Posted in Hallock Hill, Music with tags , , on September 9, 2012 by noisenoisenoise

I’ve listened to and digested every Mie Music release from the last few years and it occurred to me whilst I was listening to this record by Hallock Hill that this small boutique label has introduced me to music and artists that have sent me off on musical tangents that I never expected. In effect the taste of some guy called Henry has now become part of my musical journey. This is the guy who not only release one of the best things Daniel Menche has ever done in the spooky Yagua Ovy but also rereleased Gate’s epic Dew Line record – just because, you know, he wanted to.

Take this double LP from Hallock Hill for instance. I am a noise and experimental music guy with a nostalgic bent for late eighties hardcore. I like my music shockingly difficult – bordering on indescribable. So why has this record of 15 of the most hauntingly beautiful improvised acoustic guitar tracks had me completely mesmerised for the past few days? Before playing this record  the idea of listening to acoustic guitar solo music – well look, quite frankly, it probably wouldn’t have happened. But Hallock Hill, otherwise known as Tom Lecky has created a pretty yet occasionally dissonant space for people like me to drown in. This double record is actually two separate works. The Union was originally released last year and A Hem Of Evening was recorded about the same time but finds it’s first release here. I don’t play the guitar and my desire in creating music finished at the end of HIgh School so I have o idea what Lecky is actually doing but it sound like there are three separate guitar players at times particularly on the amazing The Sheets. The effect he creates is both archaic and meditative. This record could have come out anytime in the past 40 years – music like this is timeless.

If you haven’t got a record player, I’m assuming Boomkat will have a digital copy for sale soon enough. Check out samples at miemusic.co.uk.

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Arsenal – Factory Smog Is A Sign Of Progress (Touch and Go) 1990

Posted in Arsenal, Big Black, Music with tags , , , on August 29, 2012 by noisenoisenoise

I bet you are thinking to yourself, “why on earth do I need to read a review about some late 1980’s hardcore band that no-one remembers of even cares about”.  Well the reason that I wanted to draw this to your attention is that Arsenal was the final pre-law school  band of Santiago Durango,  the bass player for Naked Raygun and most importantly Big Black.  When Albini folded Big Black and then went on to his finest hour in the terrifyingly great  Rapeman, Durango moved on to Arsenal which he may have been the only member of (I stand to be corrected – info is limited). Now at the time that Durango was releasing the mighty Manipulator EP on Blast First, Albini was creating all sorts of fuss with Rapeman to the point that his much protested tour of the UK ended in the band breaking up. I suspect that Arsenal kind of got  starved of oxygen at the time. Durango then went on to release the Factory Smog Is a Sign Of Progress EP on Touch and Go and then ceased to exist. The CD of Factory ….. that I tracked down on amazon also includes the Manipulator EP. The only other place Arsenal every appeared was on the famous Devils Jukebox 10 x 7inch single boxset that Blast First put out in the late 1980’s. The  single fro that compilation, Little Hitlers, appears on Manipulator.

So there you have it –  a career of nine released tracks all contained on an out of print but easily available  CD.  The music itself mines a much more straight forward hardcore path.  The chilling obliqueness of Big Black is set to one side  for a more music friendly approach. It is still a ferocious record (particularly the four tracks that make up the Manipulator EP) and the reason I  recommend it is that it is absolutely soaked with “that” bass sound. If you have spent any time with Big Black you will know what I mean.  If  I was to nerd-out and create my late 1980’s hardcore supergroup then the role of bass player would have been given to Durango. His playing is easily identifiable and, well, it makes me very happy hearing it again outside of the context of Big Black.  If you have any interest in mid-western hardcore from this period then Arsenal is worthwhile hearing. It is a bit of a lost gem quite frankly.

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Mike Shiflet – Sufferers (Type) 2011

Posted in Drone, Mike Shiflet, Music, noise with tags , , , on August 10, 2012 by noisenoisenoise

Type records have been releasing some absolutely cracking records in 2011/2012. Two of the finest are the Mike Shiflet records Sufferers and Merciless. Both records were recorded just before Shiflet’s ground breaking Llanos record of last year. Sufferers came out at the end of last year and is my favourite of the two. It’s always hard to categorise Shiflet’s music. I suppose the starting point is to call the tracks on Sufferers drone but I just feel that the use of that term is just not quite right. There is a melancholic deliberateness to the work here.The sound moves incrementally and  in some ways it has the overall feel of an ambient version of Wolf Eye’s  Burned Mind record of a few years back. There is a lurching post apocalyptic field recording quality to the first few tracks but it’s Shiflet’s use of volume and intensity of the sounds that makes Sufferers a couple of steps away form an ordinary drone listening experience. This is drone for the rust-belt noise guys – the sort of thing which seeps into your consciousness to leave you just a little creeped out and extremely unsettled.  Tremendous.

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Thanks Keith Fullerton Whitman

Posted in Keith Fullerton Whitman, Music, noise on August 10, 2012 by noisenoisenoise

The flu kept me away on the night but this has made me very happy.

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Pete Swanson – Man With Potential (Type) 2011

Posted in Drone, Music, Pete Swanson, yellow swans with tags , , on July 31, 2012 by noisenoisenoise

Sorry I haven’t been around. Life has kind of gotten in the way of updating this site as much as I would like to. That doesn’t mean that I haven’t been listening to a shit-ton of great music but in between the impending arrival of my third son, selling our house and a fucking horrible bout of Influenza A, the desire to type out my thoughts on records kind of collapsed. I even had to miss Keith Fullertom-Whitman’s recent show at the IMA because of the evil flu. One show I won’t be missing no matter whether I get sick, my kid gets born early or some other life issue is Pete Swanson’s gig at the Judith Wright Centre in August. The Yellow Swans are my favourite band –  period. I think for the last Yellow Swans record I reviewed here, Going Places, I said that the band just kept going from strength to strength wit this continual ability to make a better record that their last. I think Pete Swanson has managed to continue this quality into his solo work.

There are records of the past few years that i call my “Holy Shit” record. Albums that are just so flawlessly fantastic that  they attain the right to be called instant classics. In that group I place Black To Comm’s Alphabet 1968. Burning Star Core’s Challenger, Yellow Swans Going Places, Mike Shiflet’s Llanos, Daniel Menche and Kevin Drumm’s Gauntlet, Cane Swords’ Big Warmup In The Mouth Of Eternity. I also think that Man With Potential is up there with those records. Man With Potential sees Swanson embrace electronica and variations of techno, dub and minimalist beats and inject it with a giant dose of melancholia to replicate the rave at the end of the world. It’s stunning stuff. An album that is such a leap to the left of the  tremendous guitar  drones of the  I Don’t Rock At All. This is vinyl only but for a couple of bucks boomkat will sell you the mp3. One of the best records you’ll ever buy.

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Haswell & Hecker – Blackest Ever Black (Warner Classics and Jazz) 2007

Posted in Florian Hecker, Music, noise, Russell Haswell with tags , , , on June 28, 2012 by noisenoisenoise

The location – Warner Classical and Jazz Corporate Office, London 2007

Phil: Thanks for coming everyone. As you know this meeting has been called to discuss the first quarter releases. So what have you all got?

Debbie: I have some great Ray Charles reissues.

Phil: Great – they’ll sell like fucking hot cakes. What else?

John: I’ve got a new 18 year old cello protegé from Malaysia.

Phil: Sounds good. Is she fuckable?

John: Hell yeah!

Phil: What do you have Bill?

Bill: Well I’ve been reading the Wire and there are  these two guys called Florian Hecker and Russell Haswell and they are into sound art and shit.

Phil: I’m listening …

Bill: See what they do is feed pictures into Xenakis’s UPIC machine to produce sound and music. It is totally off the charts! It sounds like electronic squelches and drones and stuff. It’s  a total mind fuck.

Phil: It may be the amount of PCP I’ve just had but that sounds like an absolute winner.

Bill: They may not be fuckable but the sound totally fucks with your mind so same same if you get my meaning.

Phil: You had me at “may”.

Fast forward three months later

Phil: Bill can you come in here for a second.

Bil: Sure, what’s up?

Phil: You’re fired. Get out.

* I quite liked it by the way.

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Merzbow – Merzphysics (Youth Inc) 2012

Posted in Merzbow, Music, noise on June 11, 2012 by noisenoisenoise

The days of forking out a fortune for these sorts of releases may be coming to an end. This wonderful 10 CD boxset of previously unreleased tracks from 1994 cost me an absolute fucking fortune and I have kids for fuck’s sake. I shouldn’t be spending my children’s school fees on obnoxious noise.

The years 1994-1996 were an incredible time for Merzbow records. Think about records like Pulse Demon, Venerology, Mercurated, Oested, Noise Embryo, Green Wheels, Noizhead, Spiral Honey – all are amazing and among the best work Merzbow ever produced. The purchase of Merzphysics also coincided with me finally seeing Merzbow live. That must rate as one of the best shows I’ve witnesses. The wonderful Lawrence English from Room 40 took advantage of Merzbow being brought out by a festival in another state and organised a free show at the excellent Judith Wright Centre. For an hour Merzbow wore some noise making contraption as a guitar and rubbed it with various implements (my favourite was a plastic spaghetti ladle). It created a continual bombardment of fuzz and feedback , the noise pulsed, chugged, zoomed and threatened. Around the forty minute mark my friends ran for it. It was simply too much for them. I stayed but in those last fifteen minutes things got dark. The noise just became so amazingly oppressive. The floor of the theatre started to feel liquid. It stopped the hipsters who were trying to mosh and dance, dead in  their racks. It was the most extreme sound experience I have ever had. The whole vibe of the room changed, blackened. It just became  gobsmackingly evil. After that experience, listening to Merzphysics is an absolute doddle.

The ten discs that make up Merzphysics are similar in form to those albums that I listed above. These are the types of Merzbow records that I really like getting stuck into. The tracks eschew the recognisable forms of his later work and embrace the multilayered pure noise that pretty much defines the genre. The pleasure in records like Merzphysics is to get amongst the layers to tease out the sounds, to squeeze below the levels of aggression to find its beating heart. The tracks are probably a bit less harsh than those on Venerology and Pulse Demon but this is not a box set for the uninitiated. In many ways I prefer this to Merzbow’s last great boxset Merzbient. Although Merzphysics as a physical package isn’t particularly impressive compared to Merzbinet (and it is much more expensive), the tracks are more the sort of things that I look for in great Merzbow tracks. I just wish it was more affordable so people can hear it. If you can afford it, buy it. The only way of getting hold of it is to buy it off the Merzbow website.

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