Ducks Battle Satan

When I listen to records like this I just want to give up writing this blog. Must find words to describe sounds. Very hard. I suppose if I think of Kevin Drumm in terms of his recent output he takes on either the guises of the drone genius of Imperial Distortion and Organ fame or the noise beast on records like Sheer Hellish Miasma and Land of Lurches. When I first forked out my cash for his self-titled debut and the followup, Second, I was expecting something that, while I concede may not have sounded like those more familiar Drumm records, wouldn’t sound quite like this. This almost verges on sound art. The seven untitled tracks almost explore the vastness of silence and the listeners reaction to its disruption. There are long stretches of near silent amp buzz which are assaulted in various ways by what sounds like a plugged in guitar falling down a flight of stairs, strings being violently ripped out, an electrified pice of felt and … well you get the idea. Strange, uncomfortable and challenging. What does it all mean at the end of the day? I have no idea. I simply do not have the patience to work it out. Is it a good record? Sure. It’s a great record. I’m just not sure if it is an enjoyable one. It’s a very different experience to the normal record that Kevin Drumm has given us in the last 10 years or so. This is noise on an almost micro scale and the more I stretch my comfort zone to take in records such as this, the idea that what artists such as Kevin Drumm do is a series of noise rather than as a block of noise  makes sense. Maybe this  is what any noise record would sound like if you took a three second snippet, shaved off the layers and played it all separately as a long strand of sound. Maybe this is an exercise in unwinding noise DNA.  I’m keen to hear other people’s experience with it. Leave your thoughts in the comments.

You may have noticed I haven’t been around a great deal. One reason is because I went and visited my folks in the rainforest in Far North Queensland but the main one though is because I was trying to tackle this massive fucker of a beast, Necro Acoustic.

Christ, where do I start with this one. I don’t for one minute claim to be a Drumm expert  so there is no point reviewing this in reference to Drumm’s previous work. So I’ll simply review it as a noise fan. Necro Acoustic is a five CD box set of noise goodness released by Lasse Marhaug’s excellent Pica Disk label. As a package it is very nice indeed with the five separately titled discs a mix of old and new Drumm, noise and drone. In  fact, to be fair, Necro Acoustic is five new Drumm records conveniently packaged together.

From the outset, I’ll nail my colours to the mast –  Necro Acoustic is overwhelmingly brilliant. My problem is how to describe it to you with even a sliver of intelligence. Sure it is all about distortion and layers and blips but so is a Merzbow record and this, my friends, is a very different beast indeed. I don’t plan to write about all the discs but to give you a taste if what to expect my two favourite discs are Decrepit which includes tracks recorded between 1998 and 2009 and the single track record Organ from 1996.

Most tracks on Decripit are previously unreleased except for a couple at the end which appeared on vinyl in various guises. It runs the gamit from harsh noise, high-pitched drones to repetitive electronic nirvana (Totemic Saturation). What Drumm does on the majority of the track is produce sketches in manipulated and controlled distortion. It is some of the most intelligent and clever noise you may ever hear.

Organ was recorded by Jim O’Rourke in 1996 and made an appearance in an editted form on Drumm’s album Comedy.  This is the first time the entire piece has made an appearance on any format. The track itself (all 50 + minutes of) shifts between mid-level drone and doom laden distortion all created with an organ and various filters and effects pedals. As a listening experience it is a strange one and the only words I can think of to describe it  are it invokes a gentle malevolence. It’s the kind of  drone track that begs to be played on the best equipment available.

The other records in this box set  are Malaise which is a reissue of a douple cassette released on Hospital Productions in 2006. No Edit is a duo of prepared guitar and oscillator pieces recorded last year and Lights Out is four tracks recorded between 2006 and 2008 using two pulse generators and band-pass filter. It’s all extremely good and I know that Necro Acoustic is a big investment but if you buy only one more noise record this year it should probably be this.