Archive for the noise Category

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Phil Blankenship & David Reed – Rhinestone (Troniks) 2012

Posted in David Reed, Music, noise, Phil Blankenship on June 6, 2012 by noisenoisenoise

Troniks, the label of Phil Blankenship best known for his work in The Cherry Point has been a bit quiet.  For a good many years Troniks was releasing some of the best noise records around. One of the first noise records I tracked down was the extraordinarily brutal Live At Camp Blood, a ferocious work out between The Cherry Point and Yellow Swans which in the past few weeks I’ve been coming to terms with after a few years break. Troniks was also behind the release of one of my favourite noise records of all time, Lasse Marhaug’s The Great Silence. If you head on over to the Troniks site right now you’ll find a ridiculously good deal where Phil will send you five CD’s for $20 with shipping included anywhere in the world.  That is one  hell of a deal and if you take him up on it I reckon you should make Rhinestone one of your five because it is just fantastic.

In the past few years the US noise scene  has taken a side step with the most influential bands breaking free of the constraints of noise. The nice thing about artists like Richard Ramirez, Sam McKinley from The Rita and Phil Blankenship is that their noise vision has remained undiluted and that my friends, suits me just fine.

On Rhinestone  Phil Blankenship teams up with David Reed a man whose various projects have been released on Troniks in the past. The single 30 minute track is a noise nerd’s wet dream. The thing I really liked about it was that the static wall of noise which is used by many Troniks artists as the main game is only a supporting player here. That wall of static provides the bedrock to all of the other tricks and noise that gets piled on top. Everything from the sounds of a set of suitcases being thrown down some stairs, some guitar style feedback, Merzbow-esque maximalism, amp buzz and Wolf Eyes post industrial rust belt chic to name a few are messily placed on top of each other  to create what I think may be the first great noise record of 2012.

Mike Shiflet – Gutter Divas (Dokuro) 2010

Posted in Drone, Mike Shiflet, Music, noise with tags , , , on June 5, 2012 by noisenoisenoise

Mike Shiflet has had a great run of releases recently and I promise I’ll get around to posting on them soon but I really wanted to write about this one. Gutter Divas was a cassette only release from 2010 which appeared in very limited quantities on an Italian label, Dokuro. There are still copies floating around on the internets but you need not  worry about such things because for  couple  of bucks you can get your own copy straight of Mike’s bandcamp site. I actually find it extraordinarily difficult to write about Shiflet’s music. He has graciously agreed to an interview but  for  a man who makes a living  cross examining witnesses I’m really struggling to come up with a set of questions that don’t sound lame.

Anyway, Gutter Divas is a two track release which focuses on static-heavy drone. The first track Gutter Divas uses sudden changes in volume to, I don’t know, raise  the tension and  … look what I think he does is smash the passiveness of the usual listening experience that tends to be the fall back position of people like me who are huge fans of the meditative qualities of drone. Drone is an overused term on this blog  and it has a many variants as any other genre but I suppose what Shiflet achieves is a more restless, industrial, overt form which is like a caffeinated ambience. The second track, They Don’t Have The Heart to Tell You is the type of straight up drone record where the subtle insertions of other frequencies and sounds and variations in volume keep the track from being purely static. Although it feels like much less is going  on than the first track, it is far more aggressive in the fact that the drone used is the type that changes the  listener’s ear pressure (which I actually like a fair bit). Gutter Divas is the Shiflet record I listen to the most and a pretty neat starting for those that have never heard him before.

Dave Phillips – ? (Heart and Crossbone) 2010

Posted in Dave Phillips, Music, noise with tags , , on May 28, 2012 by noisenoisenoise

Late last year I was posting about some record or another and several loyal readers began speaking very highly of Dave Phillips. At that time I had never heard of him yet after those comments I started to see his name everywhere. Phillips was one of the co-founders of hardcore group, Fear of God, and after their break up has been producing solo work under his own name.

If  my house caught on fire and I could only save ten of my CD’s I reckon this would probably be one of them. Phillips has moved along way from any semblance of hardcore on ?. This is a record that is all about embracing field recordings and sound collage in a, quite frankly, terrifying way. Much seems to have been written about the third track which to me sounds like a light bondage session with Satan. Nurse with Wound would often insert prurient sounds into their tracks but I don’t think anything comes close to the sheer and utter filth that Phillips puts together on this one.  Yet bum slapping, demonic grunting  and female moaning aside, the manner in which he fuses multiple layered bird calls, static, a loud and persistent heart beat, a swarm of flies, street sounds, accordion, doom piano and other goodies will have your average filed recording nut in fits of pleasure.  It’s like Daniel Menche, Nurse With Wound and Russell Haswell’s Wild Tracks all blended together to create something that is both challenging and accessible at the same time. ? is well worth your time.

Bruce Russell and Roy Montgomery – Split (Grapefruit Records) 2012

Posted in Bruce Russell, Music, New Zealand Bands, noise, Roy Montgomery, The Dead C with tags , , , , on April 28, 2012 by noisenoisenoise

This vinyl release is coming out on Grapefruit Records. a subscription style label in the vein of Three Lobed. On this release we find two of the towering giants of the New Zealand underground. The Pin Group’s Roy Montgomery and the Dead C’s Bruce Russell. My love of the New Zealand  avant garde music scene should be of no real surprise to regular readers but I had very different reactions to the two tracks on this album.

Lets deal with the track that confused me. Bruce Russell’s track is titled Mistah Chilton, He Dead. I’ve listened to it a stack of times. In the car on the way to the tip, through headphones on a long walk and at the supermarket and a few times after my kids have gone to sleep and the house is quiet.  There is no doubt that it is a tricky track to write about let alone come to terms with. There is a squealing, frantic quality to the sound that during its earlier stages reminded me a little of some of John Zorn’s more brutal outings. It sure as shit ain’t the Dead C. It has a bit of the lo-fi about it, it’s not exactly drone but it is not noise as many of us understand it. It has its charms (especially the last seven minutes) but I didn’t a great deal of pleasure from it. And goddamn it, if there is no pleasure in noise then what is the fucking point. I felt the same way about Russell’s work in A Handful of Dust. I just didn’t get it. I am obviously the wrong audience.

The flip side by Roy Montgomery is a very different sound altogether. This is pure chiming guitar drone pleasure. Emotional melodies float over the top to create quasi folk-like psychedelia. It is absolutely gorgeous – an avant garde take on emotion and bliss. Pure pleasure.

I am keen to read other reviews of Bruce Russell’s track. I may be missing something. I’m just not sure what it is.

Mike Shiflet & Joe Panzner – Split (Rubber City Noise) 2012

Posted in Joe Panzner, Mike Shiflet, Music, noise with tags , , , , on April 25, 2012 by noisenoisenoise

This year Mike Shiflet has turned up on my noise radar in a serious way. I had no idea the guy even existed until he teamed up with Daniel Menche on the mighty Stalemate. I’ve now become a bit obsessed. Shiflet’s bandcamp site is a treasure trove and if you haven’t heard his record of last year, Llanos, then you are missing out of something very special indeed.

I was pretty happy when Rubber City Noise (the label that released the fantastic Cane Swords record last year that would have easily been in my top three releases of last year 2011) sent me a copy of Shiflet’s split release with Joe Panzner, a fellow mid-western noise guy. Each artist contributes a 22 minute track. Shiflet’s is titled Recollect and may in fact be the most accessible thing he has done. It is a stunning piece of ambient drone work which begins as a beautifully meditative composition until the comforting tones are stripped away to reveal its desolate heart. An amazingly emotional track from Shiflet which abandons the austere distance of some of his earlier work.

Joe Panzner’s track is titled Reconstruct and begins as a jittering, stuttering noise track that recalls Jazkamer at their Merzbow like best.  Yet lurking under the barrage of fuzz, feedback and static is a Stars of the Lid style drone. It takes a fair bit of active listening to hear it but as the barrage dies down and brief glimpses of calm return the drone shrinks away. It is one of those tracks which combines everything that is wonderful in drone, noise, experimental weirdness. It is a remarkable composition. Utterly amazing.

Both of these tracks contain some of the finest experimental sound you will hear all year.  Rubber City Noise is in danger of becoming one of the best labels around right now and you’d be mad not to get a copy of this. Another absolute winner.

Merzbow – Green Wheels (Self Abuse Records) 1995

Posted in Merzbow, Music, noise with tags , , on February 28, 2012 by noisenoisenoise

Green Wheels is one of those Merzbow records that has  a special place for a Merzbow tragic like myself. The packaging is wonderfully mid-1990’s with the CD and a 5′ vinyl record being housed in a cheap plastic video case. It’s another one of Merzbow’s fetish objects and now ridiculously difficult to find. Every now and then they pop up on ebay and I think this is where I tracked this one down.

Like much of his mid-1990’s period Green Wheels is an uncompromising cascade of brutal noise. Somewhere between Oested and Pulse Demon. It’s extremely good and if you ever see a copy I recommend you consider nabbing it.

When I first started ducksbattlesatan (or noisenoisenoise as it then was) my focus was to try to write sensibly about my interactions with more experimental music and describe the sounds from an outsider’s perspective. As I started to listen to more difficult and noisier records I became interested in coming to terms with other people’s reflections and writings on noise but those excursions have all been disappointing. Listening to a record like Green Wheels after a decent break from Merzbow had me reflecting on a quote from Alain De Botton who said that ugliness is the the material manifestation of a crooked soul. So if the quote is correct I’m scared to follow the reasoning to analyse noise as a genre. If noise is the most ugliest of sounds what does it say about the souls of those who enjoy it. Am I a deeply crooked or abhorrent soul?  I suppose it highlights in some way, that writing about noise as a musical genre and it development over the years always has some problems. Every essay or analysis I read on noise seems to miss a fundamental point. If noise itself is left over sound or valueless then where does the aspect of pleasure in noise come from. It can’t be simply an appreciation for the transgressive and it surely can’t be a reflection on my nature. I think it reveals that noise has value – that to say that it is left over sound misses the point.  Or maybe what gives noise value is the context. For instance a 30 minute recording of a jack hammer has no value but that same recording of a jack hammer when covered with layers of fuzz and other sound may be a highly meditative experience which I as a listener give value to. So intrinsically the sound may have no value but with context it’s worth is secured. And this is how records like Green Wheels have worth and how people like me  derive pleasure from them.

Cane Swords – Big Warmup In The Mouth Of Eternity (Rubber City Noise) 2011

Posted in Cane Swords, Drone, Music, noise with tags , , , , on February 20, 2012 by noisenoisenoise

At the end of last year I stopped posting as much as I should have. I’m not sure why. It may have had much to do with the lack of sleep that my kids inflict on me on a regular basis. So sometimes I feel a bit of a prick because there are records that get sent to me that really blow me away. When I first heard this I emailed the  band to get some further info. I certainly don’t post on everything that gets sent my way but I do listen to all of it. Cane Sword’s Big Warmup In The Mouth Of Eternity was a record I fell hard for and one that should have been in my top five of last year. So I feel really shitty that after telling the band how much I dig their record I didn’t end up posting on it – and that was March 2011. Again, I can’t stress this enough, I feel like a prick.

So, anyway, with that out of the way lets talk about Cane Swords. Cane Swords are the “house band” of Rubber City Noise a record label/performance space/equipment manufacturer run by Curt and Karl from Akron Ohio. Big Warmup was originally released on cassette but you can download it for free from here (and while you’re there click on all of the  Black Unicorn stuff – amazing). Cane Swords record their material live and in one take. They have some idea of the theme when they start  but the sound is built through live experimentation. In my email exchanges with the band they pointed to the strong cathartic and hypnotic thread and when I first heard it I was reminded of the Yellow Swans, the sci-fi B movie records of Merzbow and maybe a bit of Oneohtrix Point Never. But that only tells part of the  story because Big Warmup contains influences in drone, noise, experimentation, dark ambience, pop and  hypnogogic electronica. It is a complex, immense record which contains everything I like about experimental music. I may be a prick for not posting earlier but you’d be a prick not to hear it.

Werewolf Jerusalem – Confessions of a Sex Maniac (Second Layer) 2011

Posted in Music, noise, Richard Ramirez, Werewolf Jerusalem with tags , , , on February 13, 2012 by noisenoisenoise

One of the  things that has struck me about noise is that for a genre that encapsulates useless or left over sound, noise artists seem to get a kick out of documenting their output with elaborate box sets. Kevin Drumm, Jazkamer, Incapacitants, CCCC and of course Merzbow have all released quite significant box sets in recent years. The question is why? What makes the tracks that are placed on these discs representative or more significant than anything else they’ve done. The answer is that they, for the most part, are not. There is of course some significant noise pieces on some of these discs, Kevin Drumm’s Organ on Necro Acoustic comes to mind but in the case of Merzbow for instance why is Timehunter a box set and 1930 not. The answer may be in Merzbow’s rather famous interview with Edwin Pouncey in the Wire from 2000. In that interview Merzbow’s fascination with transgressive sex and the erotic are explored. Had it not been for that interview (and the Merzbook)I would have missed the whole erotic nature of noise recordings because, frankly,  it is all a bit lost on me. Merzbow was a bit of a perv in the day and he described a box set like the Merzbox as a fetish object. Now that is something that any record nerd can relate to because these box sets with their well thought out liner notes are fetish objects for people like me. Am I ever going to listen to Merzbient again? The answer is probably not – but would I ever sell my copy? Shit no!

This now brings me to Werewolf Jerusalem’s Confessions of a Sex Maniac. My lovely wife ordered it from Second Layer for  me for Father’s Day at year. Nothing says Happy Father’s Day than listening to a few hours of Richard Ramirez’s static harsh wall noise project. Over its four discs, Ramirez explores the manipulation of something which can only be defined as pure noise. This is not a project where you listen to it over and over again  to  tease out the layers to reveal hidden sound and recognisable forms. This is noise in its most primal and dense form.

There is a great essay from Sam McKinlay in the booklet which accompanies Confessions. In it he says that after listening to one of Werewolf Jerusalem’s early works … that release led myself and other in the constantly evolving harsh noise scene to firmly believe that texture and concentration itself can mean violence, drama and even dynamism within the crackles and crumbles.

I absolutely love the idea of deep concentration of noise, free of layers and distractions can lead to a subtle yet violent variant of drone. The texture and tone of the noise might change but the intent is always the same. Sound which  carries this much violence should not be as calmly meditative as it is.  Everything on these four discs is pretty essential for any noise nerd especially the collaborations on Disc 4 and the packaging is like a sugar rush to a noise fetishists such as myself. This was one of my favourite releases from last year and deserved more attention.

 

Treasure Hunt – Seatec Astronomy (Slyme Records) 2012

Posted in Music, noise, Treasure Hunt with tags , on February 4, 2012 by noisenoisenoise

Treasure Hunt is the name that Myles Byrne-Dunhill gives to his ongoing musical project. This is his second album after the excellent Meems of last year. Myles calls Treasure Hunt a pop collage project but I think that what he actually achieves on Seatec Astronomy is a the next line in avant garde pop music of a lineage which includes  bands like Vibracathedral Orchestra and Sunroof. Myles is one of the  new breed of artists who embrace the pop cultural references of their youth without irony. It’s OK to like pop music now and that idea is refreshing and has been the theme behind many of the great records released on Not Not Fun for instance. In making that reference though, it is important to point out just how experimental Treasure Hunt is . There are some similarities with the  Danse Manatee sound of Animal Collective  but it is the layers of field recordings, tribal drumming, blissed out drone, marimba’s it’s like the Avalanches for the Hypnogogic pop set. I can’t recommend this highly enough. If you like your pop music difficult this may be the record for you.

All of Myles records can be downloaded off his bandcamp site.

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