EVP research is commonplace within the catalog of Firework Editions, a Swedish label run in part by the conceptual artist Leif Elggren. One of Elggren's more infamous projects is the Kingdom of Elgaland-Vargaland which occupies a liminal political space between the boundaries of countries; but within the magisterial constitution, Elgaland-Vargaland annexes the psychic realm of dreams and even goes so far as to abolish death. With this proclamation, the kingdom offers citizenship to ghosts, spirits, and apparitions; and seeks communion with such entities through EVP - Electronic Voice Phenomenon - whereby voices of unknown origin mysteriously appear on the electronic mediums of tape, radio, and digital recorders. EVP researchers like Chicago's Michael Esposito claim these voices to originate from spirits beyond the grave; and there's quite of lot of late night entertainment coming from their spooky if questionable paranormal research. Esposito seems to hold more of a metaphysical and poetic agenda in his work, by reaching out to the sound art community as a crucible for his admittedly unnerving recordings. He's collaborated with the aforementioned Elggren, fellow Elgaland-Vargaland cohort CM von Hausswolff, John Duncan, FM Einheint, and now Francisco Meirino.
Esposito's role in this collaboration with the electro-acoustic artist Francisco Meirino is that of a taxonomist, with Meirino doing most of the heavy lifting on the album. Meirino made a series of field recordings in a former school of anatomy in his native Switzerland; and upon hearing something odd in the recordings, he passed everything onto Esposito, who in turn discovered over 30 incidents of EVP in Meirino's original recordings. Those discovered events became the inspiration and source material for Meirino's composition which blisters with static bursts of noise, caustic flares of electricity, and hissing fields of magnetic disturbances. Amidst these jarring events (which come together as a something not dissimilar to the Hafler Trio, Joe Colley, or G*Park), Meirino cycles through the EVP material in repetitive phrases. It's still not all that easy to hear what Esposito claims to be in these recordings, but the mechanoid repetitions lend to a very cold and disembodied aesthetic which couples perfectly with Meirino's splinterings of electro-acoustic sound. Esposito may have been the inspiration for the album; but it's Meirino who makes it all sound so damn good.
Further down the rabbit hole goes Dan Melchior! Slow Down Tiger is the latest sonic adventure of continuously deconstructed pop for the occasional collaborator with the beloved chanteuse Holly Golightly. That said, for those looking to his lo-fi garage pop quirks, Melchior does have an album on Castle Face due out in the summer of 2014; but we gotta say that he can continue to produce these long-form weirdo collages for as long as he wants! "Tongues" rolls out with an eerie, hypnotic sitar-n-electronics loop that grounds a series of media samples / spoken word snippets from a variety of sources. The fine people down at the Starlight Furniture Company (you should really see their storefront on Mission Street in San Francisco, they really DO sell furniture! really cheap stuff, too!) have mapped out many of the sources including BBC broadcasts about poll tax riots in the UK less than three decades ago, as well as Russian and Chilean poets, obscure film clips, and some cultural lamp-lighters who shine their philosophies of curmudgeonliness and traditional lore on those who care to listen. As Melchior cuts the power on the tape loop machine, a ghostly guitar drift trickles through the shadows, dripping in equal parts with maudlin syrupiness, inky depression, and overdriven spring reverb. The vocal readymades continues to dot this landscape of guitar dronescape as dreamy allusions to those Delia Derbyshire dream-reciting experiments from the early '60s or the delightfully subversive tract of daytime soap collaged by Daniel Steven Crafts some 30 years ago. The flipside "Hospital Poem" is a desolate piece of lo-fi minimalism for chord organ and electronics, evolving into a heartbreaking, loner meditation that in all likelihood takes up the theme of Melchior's wife's cancer and her ongoing struggle with the disease. Great. Great. Great.
While Dan Melchior is probably best known for his Broke Revue, and for playing with Billy Childish and Holly Golightly, we've been digging his solo records quite a bit, the weirder the better, with the recent C.C.D.E. Music being the weirdest so far, at least until now. The Heron sports a sticker proclaiming this to be "more experimental" and is on a label called Limited Appeal. Couldn't be more appropriate cuz this stuff is pretty far out, freaky and psychedelic, but not like garage rock psychedelic, more sort of tripped out WTF? psychedelic, with much of the record sounding more like the Shadow Ring, with Melchior delivering deadpan spoken word in a thick English accent over all manner of strange noises, freeform fuzz and warped electronics. FX heavy percussion drives much of the record, that slips from tangled glitchy weirdness to space acoustic guitar strum to dirgy noisy psych to crunchy riffy plod, replete with fluttery woodwinds. Melchior's vocals are also sampled and sliced and diced and looped into the background music, adding still more weirdness, and his wife Letha delivers some spoken word as well, their vocals constantly tangled up and morphing back and forth. We're generally not huge fans of spoken word, but the Shadow Ring style vocals kinda sound cool here, especially with all the sonic weirdness going on in the background. There are bits of atmospheric ambience, and collaged textures, and some moments of truly sublime beauty, which do balance the more unhinged audio experiments, and free wheelin' abstract psychedeic freakouts. Stick around for the closer too, with its rad harmonized guitars and minor key melodies, buzzy and psychedelic and really super cool.
LIMITED TO 231 copies, each one stickered and hand numbered. Housed in a diecut jacket, with a printed inner sleeve and printed insert.
Ultra underground noisemakers Graveyards have a bunch of stuff out, all of it so limited none of it has made it into AQ, BUT, we managed to get a little handful of these, the most recent release from Melee, who as far as we can tell is the rhythm section of Graveyards with some added man power on trumpet(!).
Won't get into it too much as we only have a few of these, but Melee, are pretty great, doing a sort of abstract ambient thing, weird little electronic squiggles, distant hums and rumbles, low end drones and streaks of static and tape hiss, disembodied melodies and melodic fragments, drifting amidst slow shimmering soundscapes of ultra minimal buzz and throb. It's actually pretty dreamy, and as the band sort of blisses out, it does sort of sound like some VERY minimal abstract Taj Mahal Travellers thing, abstract and organic, simple, but rife with layers of sound and constantly shifting overtones. Some serious, super abstract, minimal psych dronedrift for sure.
Packaged in hand painted soft plastic tape cases, with paste on hand screened artwork, with a photocopied insert, each tape also with screened label and hand painted.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES. We have 5 or 6...
Originally released as a super limited cassette, this killer chunk of witch house gets the deluxe vinyl treatment, and fuck the haters out there, it sounds as good as ever. Again, it bears repeating that for a genre that seemed to be born, get WAY too popular, and then incur a ridiculous backlash in such a short amount of time, the number of ACTUAL releases is surprisingly low, with most of the tracks released as cd-r's or mp3's or on SoundCloud or whatever, which is kind of a bummer, cuz as much as popular opinion may have turned, we still love this sound. The thick gloomy synths, the skittery crunk like beats, the chopped and screwed vocals, the doomy psychedelic ambience, all woven into some weird sort of grim gloomy electro, which appropriately goes by many genre names, drag, grave rave, zombie rave, cave rave, but you know what, we're fin with witch house. And really, if you dug the Salem (and really how could you not?!), then this will definitely push those same buttons. Not nearly as M83 blown out shoegaze pop (although there are some very M83 moments), and minus the rapping, Mellow Grave while sonically similar in many ways, definitely have their own take on WH, which is more of a gloomy new wave pop, infused with all the above mentioned elements, we hear bits of Joy Division for sure, New Order, Cold Cave, seems like adventurous fans of those bands might dig this as well. Industrial percussion, wheezing ominous synths, rhythmic stutter and skitter, warm deeply crooned vocals, loads of psychedelic effects, the songs usually crawl and creep, but when the tempo gets cranked, the frantic vibe is pretty exhilarating.
The opening track might still be our fave, with its horror movies synths over drum machine skitter and deep rumbling bass buzz, it's easy to imagine this as some sort of modern John Carpenter influenced composition for some crazed art flick, and then the vocals come in, and becomes some sort of dour witchy synth pop, laced with all manner of tangled melodies, and clipped and looped voices buried in the mix, haunting and hooky and so great. The second track is just as cool, sacrificing the thick low end heaviness for some killer stuttery industrial beats, that wind around more crooned vox and cool hooky distorted synth melodies that almost sound like some weird guitar buzz, the whole thing peppered with these machinegun like blasts of percussion. So killer. Recommended for fans of any of the current crop of new / cold / synth / electro wave, and obviously anyone who digs Salem, Balam Acab, Mater Suspiria Vision and all the rest, this is most definitely your new favorite record.
Ever since we heard Wave-Lox, possibly the most famous piece by composer/pianist Lubomyr Melnyk, we were totally smitten. The sound an impossible mashup of Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Charlemagne Palestine. A modern reimagining of the minimalist tradition, with his Continuous Music system developed over years and years, finding inspiration in harmony and expressing it through fluidity and virtuosity, dense flurries of notes. Later, the playing would become faster, even setting a world record, but always at the core of Melnyk's sound, was harmony and melody and simple beauty.�
It's appropriate that KMH is the first actual Melnyk cd ever released (all the rest have been cd-r's) as this was his first actual recording. After years of perfecting this new technique, KMH was finally released in 1978, and while reminiscent of Reich's Music For 18 Musicians, it was something entirely new. Sound based on the movement of dancers, the music of moving and standing still all at once.�
For those of you familiar with other Melnyk discs we reviewed, the sound here, while notably different, will at once be quite familiar, the main difference being that the sound is not so dense, there are not so many notes, the playing is not quite as fast, instead, it's deeper, and slower and almost dreamier, still warm and magical, but like a slowed down, relaxed version of Wave-Lox. Almost more traditionally twentieth century sounding, but at the same time, still wonderfully unique, and much more emotionally resonant than much modern minimalism.�
For those who have yet to experience the amazing sounds of Lubomyr Melnyk, this is the perfect introduction, the first recorded instance of his Continuous Music, a technique involving continuos melodies, constant playing up and down the keyboard, with the pedals constantly depressed, allowing the notes to ring out and drift into one another, the various notes and overtones blending and beating, creating strange and mysterious harmonies.�
Little fluttering clouds of notes drift in weightless swirls, like dust motes in beams of sunlight. It's like the musical equivalent of a snowglobe, notes drifting and floating everywhere, forming shapes, and then just as quickly turning back into separate notes again, the sound both wintry and warm, dreamily dizzying and serenely soothing. So totally captivating. A glorious glimpse into the formative stages of one of our favorite modern composers.�
Packaged with all new artwork, new liner notes, photos, and the original liner notes from the original release.
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It's been a while since we've heard from pianist Lubomyr Melnyk, master and creator of the Continuous Music technique, a playing style that involves incredible dexterity, the player creating swirling flurries of notes, in fact, Melnyk holds the record for most notes played per second! But as we've mentioned in past reviews, Continuous Music is no mere gimmick, Melnyk uses his technique to create dense shifting soundscapes, almost like a 20th Century Classical Oval, notes and melodies constantly in flux, dizzying and dreamy, a massive shape shifting organic whole, that seems to constantly change shape and tone and timbre. But the music of Melnyk is not difficult listening, just the opposite. His music is serene and hypnotic, mesmerizing and gorgeous. You can read way more about Melnyk and his technique in some of the other reviews, but needless to say, every new release is a thrill. And yes, it's another cd-r, but according to Melnyk and the label, there are so many pieces, that they'd rather make them all accessible, instead of making 1000 copies of just one. Who are we to argue? Besides, there's the fact that aQuarius is one of the only places in the world you can get Melnyk records.
Anyway, The Lund-St. Petri Symphony is another example of Melnyk's incredible skill and his deft arranging. This piece, originally composed and performed on organ, is recorded here on solo and double piano and is another shimmery expanse of Continuous music, with Melnyk sustaining a speed of 11-14 notes in each hand for the entire duration of the piece! What's even crazier, is it was meant to be played on THREE pianos (or organs), but was never recorded due to the fact that according to Melnyk, that much sound would not translate to modern recording techniques. There were plans to record the third part and release it as a separate lp so folks with two turntables could experience it in all its 3 piano glory, but it hardly matters, even on one piano, the sound is stirring. Minor key and melancholy, the notes glisten and glimmer, the melodies dense and ever shifting, the whole thing so completely entrancing. If you can imagine Pop Ambient music being created with just pianos, it would probably sound something like this.
As always, WAY recommended, this one only available at AQ as far as we know, and limited (maybe only 50 copies?). You like Oval, Eno, new age, Pop Ambient, or just wondered what it would sound like to hear 10 or 12 'normal' piano players all playing the same piece simultaneously, well, a little like this. Divine!
We've long been fans of Ukrainian pianist and composer Lubomyr Melnyk. Have a quick look at the aQ site for much gushing, and a way more detailed of Melnyk and his 'continuous music' method of piano playing, which he invented, and involves the sustain pedal continuously depressed, turning Melnyk's rapid clusters of notes into gorgeous almost psychedelic sounding flurries, lush swirling clouds of sounds, which are once again in full effect here, which by the title, you can surmise does consist of three solo pieces, just Melnyk and a piano. Proper Melnyk releases are a rarity, since he decided long ago, that with so many releases, he would press up cd-r's, as a way to affordably have all of them available. But recently, Melnyk has been getting much more attention, having released a fantastic collaboration with James Blackshaw, and having several proper releases on actual labels.
Three Solo Pieces is as gorgeous as you might expect, the opener "Marginal Invitation" is brooding and melancholic, the playing measured and minimal, at least until a few minutes in, when the sound seems to transform, and suddenly, the listener is surrounded by warm, lustrous notes, and constantly shifting textures and melodies, the most dramatic part being where Melnyk abruptly lets up on the sustain pedal, and the notes suddenly snap back into a staccato framework, the notes still rapid fire, a different sort of swirling arrangement, dizzying and dramatic, Melnyk, slipping easily back and forth between the two. "Corrosions On The Surface Of Life" is atypically atonal, sounding much more '20th century' than most of his pieces, but no less compelling, a continuous cascade of notes and melodies, a blurred swirl of sound, tense and intense, the angular feel adding a sinister vibe to the proceedings, but before you know it, the sound is transformed, gradually shedding the more atonal elements, until it's downright lovely, before those dissonant notes gradually creep in again. The 18 minute closer begins like some famous classical piece you just can't put your finger on, the magic of Melnyk's mastery, conjuring up a piece at once utterly unique, but at the same time, one that sounds so familiar, the arrangement ingenious, as the low notes seem to be gradually shed over the course of the song, upper register melodies gradually coming to the fore, until finally, it almost sounds like music box melodies, dizzyingly repetitive, and mesmerizingly trancelike and tranquil. Fantastic!!
One of four new releases on the always fascinating, and often perplexing UK tape label The Tapeworm. This one comes courtesy of long time aQ customer and pal, bad ass artist, and scribe for the mighty Wire, Mr. Edwin Pouncey, aka Savage Pencil, along with his partner Sharon Gal, a UK artist and broadcaster. Besides doing time together in a noisy rock outfit called Pestrepeller, the duo unleash a pretty grim din as Meltaot, whose sound is a strange assemblage of abstract guitar drones, whispered incantations, abstract percussion, all woven into a candlelit crawl through some subterranean sonic doomscape, equal parts harrowing atmosphere, noisy abstraction and blackened beauty. Imagine a more artrock Abruptum, lots of squealing feedback way off in the distance, thick chordal buzz up front, lots of space, plenty of scrapes and creaks, moans and whispers, the female vocals are feral and haunting, sometimes slipping into some sort of demonic processed chantlike vokills. We also definitely hear some Angelblood, but picked apart and stretched out into some sort of unholy soundtrack to an endless night lost in a haunted forest, pursued by some unspeakable evil. Intense, and weirdly beautiful, each side a single track, each titled a 'rite', which is precisely what these sound like, the mysterious rites of some forestkult, conjuring up all manner of sonic demoncy.
Fans of atmospheric blackness and grimnoize will for sure dig, and even people into other abstract foresty weirdness, a la Sylvester Anfang, Avarus and the like, as long as they're up for something a bit darker, could do with a wonder through these black woods.
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES! With a killer Savage Pencil cover illustration.
OK pay attention because this is confusing. The first twelve tracks on this disc are the first time on cd (the vinyl is out of print) of the soundtrack to the film Tropic of Nipples. Participants include noted rockcrit / Blue Oyster Cult lyricist Richard Meltzer, Guided By Voices head honcho Bob Pollard, the legendary-since-the-'70s noise outfit Smegma, and something/one called Antler.
In various permutations these folks cobbled together a soundtrack that's equal parts GBV-style fractured pop and totally annoying declamatory utterances (like the Nihilist Spasm is also wont to do) over a bed of random noise.
*However*, this cd also issues some material never before available, notably six tracks of Meltzer's punk band Vom, who were SO GREAT! Releasing one record in '78, they played an absolutely rippin' Voidoids-Richard-Hell-style, fiery three chord punk. So great, boy are these guys due for a proper reissue. (Maybe Peter Buck will do it, he's reportedly their #1 fan.) Other extras include a song Pollard wrote with the late Jim Shepard.
Worth the price of the disc if you like the three VOM samples below. If you're not into those, I can't strongly recommend the rest of the material here.
NOW ON VINYL!! What we said about this great Melvins album when it came out on cd last year on Ipecac:
Folks have been chomping at the bit for months since it was first announced that the kings of sludgy goofy heaviness were to team up with the master of creepy, sinister ambience. And we do mean 'team up' as in write and record together, not a split record or anything like that, a good ol' collaboration! So here it is. The first track is a creepy slithering dark snippet of sound, super minimal and slowly shifting. So much as we thought, the only way these two behemoths of the underground could cooperate and have it work would be for it to be a drone record. Well the second track blows that theory out of the water. A wickedly fierce, super dynamic barn burner, with a KILLER riff, and some spooky drone-y breakdowns complete with a haunting little melody played on the strings above the neck, and then some serious shredding leads. Maybe the best Melvins song in forever!! But what excatly is Lustmord doing while the Melvins rock? Maybe he strapped on a guitar and joined in the riffing. Or more likely, he supplied the track with all of its weird little sounds and murky background noises. Either way, who cares? It's an incredible track. The next track is a weird tribal workout done Melvins style, with exotic tribal percussion over rumbly drones and distorted guitars providing the melodies. Sounding not unlike a way heavier Muslimgauze! The centerpiece of the record though has to be the 20+ minute title track which sounds like the perfect hybridization of the two bands. Massive slow rolling drones slip and slide through clouds of machine like whirs and muffled outer space sounds, distant clatter and swirling sonic splatter. Eventually the guitars roll in like a huge crushing wave of sound, very Earth-like before it slowly develops into another killer riff, repeated over and over and over, bombarded on all sides by strange effects, swooping chunks of sound and strange, clipped 'almost-vocals' before trailing off into a slowly decaying barely there minimal hum. The rest of the record sort of seesaws back and forth between pounding and churning classic Melvins style sort-of-metal riffing, and really haunting otherworldly minimal dronescapes. VERY reminiscent of Old Man Gloom's drone / dirge combo. But hey, you can't argue with more drone or more dirge or more sludge or more Melvins or more Lustmord. Not at all. When all is said and done, Pigs Of The Roman Empire sounds like someone took a really great Melvins record, and a really great Lustmord record, and sort of chopped them up, and mixed and matched and made the perfect hybrid of the two. Which when you think about it is pretty awesome. We've thought of doing that all the time. Earth and George Winston, Bjork and Thuja, Squarepusher and Jandek, Motorhead and PJ Harvey, A Minor Forest and Keiji Haino (well that one's mainly to piss Andee off), and the list goes on and on and on.
The L.A. sound art duo Mem1 gathered together a great line-up of collaborators for this, their second album released earlier in 2009. Steve Roden, Jan Jelinek, Frank Bretschneider, and Area C are the heavy-hitters from our perspective, although those contributions from the those we've not heard of - Jen Boyd, Ido Govrin, RS-232 - seem to more than pull their weight. Mem1 works from an electro-acoustic context reworking cello through an interconnected series of electronics, most of which are probably driven through Max/MSP patches. The results typically settle into a slumbering drone sensibility, as noted in the Jan Jelinek collaboration which interweaves dark plucks from the cello with fizzing Tim Hecker-esque digital washes. The RS-232 pairing is a creepy, nocturnal track of sci-fi sound design for deep industrial hummings scorched with slow burning arcs. Frank Bretschneider offers an exception to this rule through his pulsing post-techno rhythms which gyrate in pools of reverb beneath looping sustained patterns of resampled cello. Beautiful stuff!
With artwork by the man behind Svarte Greiner and a conceptual framework dealing with "plant and animal poisons and their antidotes," Alexipharmaca is an album that wouldn't be out of place on Type. The Los Angeles based Mem1 is a duo comprised of Mark & Laura Cetilia, employing plenty of high-tech gadgets to abstract, obfuscate, and accompany the languid sounds from Laura's cello. Softened drones and delicate atmospheres are the dominant structures for Alexipharmaca, certainly casting a long gaze back to Erik Satie's idea of wallpaper music through the lens of Brian Eno's ambient and Akira Rabelais' esoteric digital abstractions. The movements of the bow across the strings of the cello are sometimes all that remains, as the rest of the sounds have been rarified, pitch-shifted, softly mulched, and recast as a ghostly undulation of sound crosshatched with digital ephemera and microsonic pin-pricks of glitchiness. While many of the quietly rendered sounds enjoy a jewel-like preciousness, Mem1 infuse these passages with a ghostly bleakness that occasionally grows ominous.
A while back we reviewed two cds from the LA based duo of Mark And Laura Cetilla, one a collaboration with bigger avant music names (Steve Roden, Jan Jelinek, Frank Bretschneider), the other the duo's own dark sonic concoction, and while the guests on the collaborative record definitely made for interesting listening, we much preferred the Cetilla's work unadorned, a hushed minimal darkness, brooding, and softly caustic, ominous and strangely menacing. The sounds here on their first proper full length lp, seem to be a continuation from the music presented on that cd.
Three longform compositions, of smoldering lowercase sound, what sounds like bowed strings, and reverberating metal, blurred into a murky concoction of shimmering grey thrum and dense softly undulating swells, the vibe is definitely cinematic, conjuring up all manner of bleak and abject imagery, evoking decay, and distance, the drones alive with overtones and constantly shifting layers, noisy in places, but the noise blunted and smoothed out into rough expanses of warm buzz and softly prickly hum. There are moments of pure unfettered speaker shredding noise, but even within these blown out squalls, lurk all manner of rich texture and subtle shading. That said, most of the record is spent in hushed drift mode, the final track the most fully fleshed out, with the original instruments still recognizable, the tones organic and only lightly effected, drifting on a sea of distant blackened shimmer, and softly roiling whir and hiss, before finally smoothing out, into a final coda of warm, dreamy (and still slightly ominous tranquility). Dark abstract loveliness for sure, the sort of thing that folks into Jasper TX, Machinefabriek and Type Records might dig quite a bit.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES, each one hand numbered, packaged in super swank matte finish jackets, and includes a download coupon as well.
While we've definitely dug the last few records from Canadian blackened neo-folk duo Menace Ruine, we were initially a bit confused by their shift from grim, psychedelic, experimental black metal, to their newly minted neo-folk incarnation, and while much of the mood and musical ambience remained, some of us still longed for the group's previous incarnation. But over the course of the next two records, we grew to dig their witchy, mystical sound, one that shared seemingly everything but sound with the black metal that birthed them, sinister and haunting, abject and ritualistic, it's no surprise that they continue to be embraced by the BM scene, even though they had essentially ceased playing black metal long ago. But on Alight In Ashes, their blackened strain of neo-folk has definitely drifted even closer to the great black abyss, the sound already grim, but here even more cloaked in shadow, the soaring dramatic vocal incantations, the perfect foil for the roiling blurred riffage and muted power electronics that churn underneath. In fact, the music sounds like slow motion black metal, blurred into sinister swells of smeared riffage and buried rhythms, it makes for a fantastic combo, when coupled with the vocals, which we've seen compared to Nico, but we still hear Jex Thoth or Blood Ceremony or Christian Mistress, and in places, the vocals sound remarkably like a female Mike Scalzi from Slough Feg. The vibe throughout, much like the record before it, continues to be haunting and harrowing, very much like these are in fact mysterious rituals, and arcane incantations, the music often building to dense, near psychedelic crescendos, or slipping into hushed mesmer, the opening track might be the most black metal thing we've heard from Menace Ruine since they shed their black buzz, a sprawling, dynamic expanse of murky metallic churn and smeared shadowy psychedelic shimmer. Elsewhere, the sound shifts to something much more medieval, that ancient music simulated by electronic buzz and minimal percussion, or the music groans and heaves, like a symphony of moaning strings, even sans vocals, the music here would be some fascinating collection of blackened electronic ragas, but with the vocals, the sound is transformed into some sort of divine doom-ed blackened medieval folk, and we find ourselves no longer missing the black buzz one bit.
Not quite black metal, though doubtless Menace Ruine would happily bask in the smoldering embers of a charred church somewheres up north. Not exactly militaristic neo-folk either. Nor are they a noise band. Well, maybe noise. But that's only part of it. Their dark, distorted drone textures are also often adorned with witchy female vocals, a la Jex Thoth. So, three albums in, this Quebec girl-boy duo of Genevive and S. de la Moth are still quite hard to define, though we know we like 'em, and the Menace Ruine music they make (indeed a mix of noise, drone, folk, and black metal moves) is grim as well as sometimes quite gorgeous, that is if you're like us and can find the beauty in ten-minute long tracks of misanthropic sonic miasma. Perhaps it's the way the ceremonial lamentation of Genevive's gentle singing merges with the slowly churning electronic extremes of intense, dense distortion and feedback... Certainly this new release via Aurora Borealis (following previous efforts on Alien8 and Tour De Garde) is a fine continuation of their unique post-black metal noise-folk aesthetic. If you liked The Die Is Cast that came before this, you'll probably like this too. And fans of bands as diverse as Burial Hex, Dead Raven Choir, Velvet Cacoon, Current 93, Wolf Eyes, and Alcest, among others, ought to check out Menace Ruine if you haven't already.
Daniel Menche's "Crawling Towards The Sun" catches the reclusive noise artist in transition from the intense furnace-burn of albums like "Screaming Caress" to something much closer to a soft focus haziness to his drone work. Out of his earlier abject, pseudo-holocaust references, Menche has attained a majestic darkness to his sounds putting Menche on par with the latest work from such contemporaries as Lustmord and the Hafler Trio.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The infernal sounds of low end rumbling, creaking pipes, and the variable noise of heat induced stress on metal continue to emanate from Daniel Menche's smoldering electroacoustic albums, yet here on "Field Of Skin," the source material is not from the furnace, and actually was culled from a Menche amplifying the sounds of his own body. With both sonic references to intense heat and to the flesh, Menche conjures some ghastly metaphors on this highly effective low end noise / drone album.
We haven't even come close to carrying all of the many recordings Daniel Menche has has released over the years, as his output of scalding noise coupled with caustic drones is now starting to rival the massive catalogues of fellow noise-mongers Merzbow and Francisco Lopez. Menche's work seeks to channel a raw, primal, and unmistakably masculine energy through his impressive noise arsenal often citing the rituals of Japanese warriors and Native American war chants as jumping off points for his atavistic expressionism. Flaming Tongues is one of many exceptional releases that Menche has produced in 2005, marking one of his most prolific periods. Menche presents us here with one of his typical strategies in counterpointing an expansive timbral minimalism a la Eliane Radigue or Jonathan Coleclough with a blistering vein of scalding noise that threatens to smash through the drone with an incendiary detonation. Menche constantly teases with the possibility of such a violent explosion, but never actually does. Instead, Flaming Tongues stands as a constant pressure cooker of grating textures, seething white-hot noises, infernal atmospheres, and volatile electro-acoustics.
A few years back, Daniel Menche recordings occupied a brutalist space, where tortured wheezes of somatic activities adjoined harsh textures of rough stones upon strained glass in the production of thick slabs of smoldering noise. Yet, Menche has recently emerged from an extended sabbatical, to showcase the softening of his craggy, bleak attitudes with an equally powerful sound that
The amazing Drone Records label, run by Stefan Knappe of Maeror Tri / Troum, has been quietly releasing super limited, hand made slabs of gorgeous drone music for years now. Mostly 7", always vinyl (although there will soon be a 2cd collection of early out of print singles on Andee's tUMULt label), each disc an ultra personal exploration of the drone, sometimes soft and dreamlike, sometimes harsh and noisy, but always beautiful. Recently, Drone has launched a new series, 10"s this time, with a very complicated premise: "A concept that embraces the prospect of infinite possibilities for artists to create music about the intangible such as: the unnameable, the unspeakable, the unthinkable, the unidentifiable, etc. Various aspects related to "The Unknown". Sound artists and artwork designers were invited to work on the theme of the "grey matter" / the "dark continent" surrounding us & within us. Transforming this paradoxical idea into acoustic and visual objectifications." Phew. Pretty heady stuff. But these first three installments are up to the task, creating dark and disturbing and truly though provoking dronemusic. We can hardly wait for the rest of the series.
Up first is sound artist Daniel Menche, whose contribution buzzes and crackles and is not as minimal as one might expect. Metallic insect like buzzing rings and reverberates beneath streaks of keening high end and upper register pulses. The disparate sounds slowly blend into one another and the disc approaches actual NOISE, a wall of lawnmower roar wrapped in short circuiting electronics and swirling sonic loops. The B side steps way back into the darkness, unveiling a gorgeous and creepy piano dirge, all low end, the notes piling up, overtones upon overtones, building into huge swells of thrum and throb, bathed in a prickly cloud of hiss and static and white noise.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Pressed on brown and black swirled vinyl.
Man, is The Tapeworm tough to figure out. But maybe we don't want to figure them out. A label, a CASSETTE ONLY label, that traffics in an insanely wide range of sounds, how they're all connected we're not sure, field recordings, seventies style disco funk, obscure trip hop by super models, gorgeous soundscaping, avant outsider sound art, spoken word, turntablism, strange women reading Baudrillard, heavy drones, solo piano, interviews with artists, faux sixties psychedelic jazz, lost new wave... All we know is there aesthetic kind of reminds us of... well, OURS! Which is maybe why we're so in love with this label, and pretty much everything they release. This week elsewhere on the list you'll find some nineties recorded but seventies style dubbed out weirdo disco funk, and then there's this right here, a collection of field recordings from Daniel Menche, two side long tracks, each a recording of a waterfall in the Oregon mountains, and both weirdly lovely. Knowing that these are in fact recordings of waterfalls, makes it easy to identify the sounds the second they start, but after a few minutes, the sounds become less and less obvious, and if you were played this recording with no knowledge of the source, you'd likely just assume it was a collaged soundscape of white noise and muted hiss, blurred fuzz and swirls of static, a weirdly hypnotic abstract, totally random and ever shifting soundscape of muted white noise, almost like a Merzbow record, dialed WAY down, all the edges smoothed, into something strangely serene, a sound that while totally natural, when removed contextually from nature, sounds manmade, even though it's a sound we've all heard, camping, hiking, and which once again demonstrates that much of what we discover and create, already exists in nature, which is both incredible and incredibly humbling. A fantastic sonic document. LIMITED TO 250 COPIES!
Much of Daniel Menche's recordings have mustered primal forces (the self, the voice, the natural world, etc.) channeled into a potent sound design of powerdrones, concussive rhythmic assaults, and sustained explosions; yet Terre Paroxysm, on Utech, is something of a detour into more subtle constructions. Following a similar modus operandi as on his Kataract album on Editions Mego, this Portland noise merchant constructs everything from recordings of ice, wind, and rain, with considerable amount of electro-acoustic treatments. The album begins with a slow crackling of what sounds like crushed gravel slowly being pulverized into smaller and smaller components, until Menche reduces his earthen composite to their molecular and atomic base elements. Here, Menche's natural sounds become electrical, buzzing and vibrating as if the whole desert were wired with miles of hissing fluorescent bulbs. Abruptly, Menche cuts the power and ends the first track. A haunted watery drone introduces the second track with a soft percussive underbelly that punctuates a frigid trickling of water and swelling high-frequency tones. Here, Menche's texture and drone configurations resemble those of Small Cruel Party, G*Park, or Coelacanth. Quite nice! The third track continues along that vein with a series of repeating patterns of slushed texture orbiting around sharply sparkling electronic tones and deep subharmonic rumblings, all of which slide into an insectoid chorus at the end of the track. The finale is the most psychoacoustically tense piece found on Terre Paroxysm with a sinewy set of pierced sinewave tones that undulate above a blustery howl of crunched noise. While this fourth track is typical of Menche's catalogue, the more restrained elements of Terre Paroxysm are where Menche is at his best.
With the two preceding recordings "Crawling Toward The Sun" and "October's Larynx," the ultra-physicality of Portland based sound artist Daniel Menche noticeably waned in favor of a more Zen approach in meditative awe of the drone supreme. "The Face Of Vehemence" is something of a return to those more physical sounds with an emphasis on densely textured noises passing through the stereo field. For this album, Menche took as an inspiration "Sun and Steel" -- a book by Japanese writer Yukio Mishma, whose partially autobiographical tales are noted by a preoccupation with the body, its beauty, and its degeneration. The themes of a majestic beauty and a putrescent abjection have always run through the work of Menche, typically swinging from one end of the spectrum to the other. "The Face Of Vehemence" is a rare example for the artist working with both extremes at the same time mostly by exposing an overwhelming beauty with the archetypes of noise. Menche opens this album with a sustained discordant cluster of notes from a harmonium, conjuring a similar transcendent abrasion found in those epic Hermann Nitsch "Harmoniumwerk" albums. Throughout the album, Menche mars his thick drones with processed field recordings, whereby bristling electricity transmits from a chorus of crickets and grumbling frogs pronounce menacing bellowings. The manifestations of the sublime should always strive for grand metaphors, and "The Face Of Vehemence" succeeds in rendering those metaphors undeniably audible.
Across his prolific catalog over the past 12 years or so, Daniel Menche's recordings have been almost synonymous with scalding noise and boldly masculine aggression, much in the same way that you know what to expect when you pick up a Merzbow record. Yet, there are a couple of exceptions to the Menche confrontational agenda. The most notable recordings in the lesser known, Menche drone sound would be October's Larynx, Crawling Toward The Sun, and now Wolf's Milk. All of these recordings hold a golden shimmer which steadily changes from a somnolent ambience into a smoldering drone of compacted static, rasping vibrations, and even a few distant hints of the mangled electronics of his noise persona. Each of the three lengthy tracks on Wolf's Milk ramps up to the immersive atmospheres and steadily deflates back down to a stately dronefield, which all together recalls BJ Nilson and even Phill Niblock. A really nice record, in the usual nice Utech packaging!
Kiyoshi Mizutani began his career working in Merzbow (when Merzbow wasn't just Masami Akita alone). After parting ways with Akita in the late '80s or so, Mizutani released a number of solo recordings, most recently focusing on field recordings. His first foray in his search for natural sounds was the less than perfect Bird Songs, but since then Mizutani has blossomed into an exceptional contextualist of found sounds. Garden is his collaboration with Portland noise veteran Daniel Menche, who has been struggling for several years now to calm his work, but can't quite seem to shake his preternatural talents for explosive noise. On this recording, Menche handled all of the low frequencies, while Mizutani was responsible for all of the high frequencies. The source material was a finely captured field recording of Japanese locusts and crickets, presumably from the Mizutani archives. The slow organic chorus of those insects starts out with a very hypnotic, natural introduction; but Mizutani offers small clues to his manipulation by first repeating the choral phrases which would never be so precise in a natural setting, and later by filtering out everything but the timbral roots. Mizutani's gradual shift from these environmental sounds to almost mechanical ones is particularly unsettling, especially in communion with Menche's ominous bass plod which slowly emerges over the course of this recording. Within this metamorphosis of sound, Mizutani and Menche rewrite insect languages as metallic, inorganic, and alien ones where apocalyptic implications abound. Really gorgeous. Released on Randy Yau's immaculately designed Auscultare label.
Super limited cd-r from this bizarre band of noisemakers from down under that just so happens to feature one Mr. Oren Ambarchi. Totally blown out lo-fi free noise splatter. Big distorted drums, wild animalistic grunts and howls, skronking horns, warbly detuned guitars, massive sludge bass, angular riffing, minimal reverb drenched click and glitch, wheezing falsetto vocals, spastic free jazz drum splatter, super distorted fuzz rumble and shrieking Boredoms style vocal freakouts, all tangled up into a gloriously maddening chaotic jumble. Fans of OLD Boredoms, Hanatarash, Butthole Surfers and all things bizarre and brutal, damaged and demented, noisy and INSANE will want to give this a whirl.
Killer packaging: a pink spray painted disc in a clear jewel case with cool light pink and dark pink spidery patterns painted on the case.
WE ONLY HAVE ABOUT 8 COPIES OF THIS AND WE'RE PRETTY SURE WE CAN'T GET MORE.
This new improvisational group of extremely prolific downtown NY musicians just happen to all be women, and is being marketed as "one of the first all women supergroups" by Tzadik. Combining the amazing percussive work of the young Susie Ibarra, the post-drum
Not sure who Todd Merrell or Patrick Jordan are, but we sure as heck are familiar with the third part of this drone trio, the Baker in question is none other than Mr. Aidan Baker, he of Nadja, Arc, and a million or so releases under his own name.
This live set finds Baker handling guitar duties, but you'd never know it from the sound, augmented by short wave radios, electronics, and various bits of processing, the sound here is deep and dark, a crumbling and epic expanse of rumbling shimmering low end. Roiling clouds of murky melodic fragments, distant swells, throbbing low end pulses, barely audible bits of static and washed out glitch. Very cinematic, if you were watching a film that was almost entirely dark, with just barely visible shifts in the various shades of black and grey. Lovely though, minimal and haunting. Think Coleclough, Chalk, Lustmord, that sort of ambient darkness.
But the second track is an entirely different beast. Simple guitar strums, minimal melodies, the strings struck softly, the metallic buzz and clang ringing out into the ether, some sort of underwater slow motion Fahey, smeared and soft and dark and dreamy. The final half of the track, the guitar disappears completely, leaving streaks of feedback that sound like the cries of gulls, grinding slow motion slabs of shifting low end, whirling windlike whirs, almost like a manufactured nature recording.
The guitar returns for the third track, drifting gently, while the background noise builds into a slow motion wash of sound, the track culminating in a cloud of chimes and reverbed percussion, seasick swirls and struck steel strings, before slipping languidly into the final track, a lugubrious underwater crawl, all of the sounds muddy and indistinct, a sonar like ping buried way down in the mix, underneath it all a thick blanket of constant whirring drones, quite lovely.
Packaged in one of those cool, 6 panel, gatefold aRCHIVE sleeves, glossy paper, super striking image of forest and clouds, LIMITED TO 600 COPIES!!
Another fine offering from the Hooker Vision imprint which has been championing some weird and wonderful experimental outfits from the Southeastern US. Merryl is the work of North Carolinian Will Isenogle who spins a couple of mighty fine corrosive dronescapes on this tape contextualized by film snippets from stoned UFOlogists gazing into the night sky and postulating about the alien civilizations that may be orbiting the earth. Out of the opening found text, Isenogle builds a hazily levitating drone laced with kosmische allusions; but he slowly envelops this with a crusty transmission of tape mulched noise and amplifier destruction that would make Campbelle Kneale proud. The second side reprises the shimmering, delicate dronescaping found at the beginning of the first with undulating tones and soft-focus ambient melodies of dreamtime melancholy and a gravelly texture of shortwave radio static sliding up to the foreground. Druggy, lo-fi hypnosis at its best; but be warned, Towel Crowl is limited to 100 copies and it's already sold out at the label!
Let's settle this bullshit once and for all. The best Merzbow record of all is of course the Merzcedes -- the legendary (perhaps to the point of being mythical) conceptual artpiece of raw Merzbow noise permanently fixed into the cassette deck of a Mercedes sedan. No, we haven't actually had the pleasure of experiencing the Merzcedes; but the Merzcedes is the best Merzbow album regardless of all comers!!. It's not "Amlux" (which was claimed to be the 'definitive' Merzbow album), it's not the "Merzbox" (the massive, ridiculous 50 cd retrospective), and it's not "24 Hours - A Day Of Seals" (hyped as the 'most satisfying' Merzbow album). It's the Merzcedes. End of argument.
This illogical rant is not to say that any of those aforementioned albums are bad; but, it should illustrate the point that any quantification of the Merzbow's massive catalogue into generic superlatives is not only stupid but also useless to any critiques about Merzbow. "Most satisfying"? How could you ever know? But, this new mini Merzbox is indeed a fine addition to his canon.
As has been the case for many of the contemporary Merzbow albums, the four-CD set "24 Hours - A Day Of Seals" centers on mechanical loops of volatile grindings, ugly digitalized flanges, and cascading white noise. Is it manipulated field recordings of harbor seals? It could be. It could also be a guitar, or a vibrator, or just some analogue synth twaddle, or a seal playing a guitar! Whatever it is, it should "satisfy" your Merzbow/noise jones for at least as long as it takes to listen to all four cds. Those partial to heavy guitar-based drone noise rock a la old Skullflower or Ramleh might find portions of this particularily enjoyable.
A very eclectic and adventurous offering from the Ryori No Tetsujin of noise. "A Taste Of Merzbow" serves up a smorgasbord of sonic catastrophe, texturally shifting from Akita's current digital synthesis practices to the jagged cut'n'paste aesthetic that harkens back to the days of "Ecobondage" and "Batztoutai With Material Gadgets". Conceptually, Akita has assembled a collection of recipes that correspond to each track, though the relevance and/or significance of the relationship between composition and cuisine is unknown to us. Most unusual is the use of distinctly digitally rendered randomizations and algorithmic structures, not of common practice in the past. While not as powerful as the recent "Hard Lovin' Man" or "Amlux", this is still an extremely potent mÈlange of furious vehemence and elegance. Very Mego, very Merzbow. Seconds, anyone?
Merzbow's Dust Of Dreams is another bludgeoning record of scalding noise for all of those raw nerve endings that need to be damaged just a little bit more. Compared to the almost jubilantly rhythmic Senmaida (one of many Merzbow records alongside this one to hit the stores in the early fall of 2005), Dust Of Dreams is a far more dour recording, with the rasping haze of mechanical wasps constantly swarming above seasick marching rhythms. If you've always been confused when Merzbow is pegged as being psychedelic, Dust Of Dreams will only perpetuate that confusion as the kaleidoscopes of swirling noise are of a leaden grey, as opposed to dozens of other Merzbow records which explode with a molten synaesthesia of nauseating flourescence. Nonetheless, Dust Of Dreams is still miles above almost every other recording of the globe's massive population of Merzbow wannabes.
Yep, that's right, Masami Akita exploits the powerful and hypnotic depth of everyone's favorite musical amphibians. The record begins, simply enough, with the soothing rumbling croak of the webbed feet wonders, gradually evolving into an explosive demon that only Merzbow can conjure up. Handsomely packaged in a gatefold sleeve adorned with colorful baby frogs and layered with a
Although it says that this is not a remix record on the sticker, not sure what else you could call it. A bunch of folks incorporate bits of the Merzbow record Amlux into their original compositions. The sound is all over the place. From hip-hop instrumentals to crazy turntablism to glitched out big beats to all out noise to malfunctioning video game sounds to riot grrl-ish techno to droning soundscapes and beyond. Features: DJ Spooky, DJ/ Rupture, Plug, Alec Empire, Negativland, Hrvatski, Mouse On Mars, KK Null, Kim Cascone, Kim Hiorthoy, Nobukazu Takemura, E.A.R./Sonic Boom, Cornelius, Atom, Custom Drummer, Bola, Jack Dangers, Freiband and a bunch more. Two discs!
We were all ready to pan this. I mean, do we really need more Merzbow? More ear splitting, speaker wrecking Japanoise? And is Merzbow's "last analog sessions" really all that newsworthy even meriting a triple cd box? And is Merzbow's 23,000-and-counting album discography in need of a 3 disc boost? Well, not sure we can answer any of those questions (um...yes we can..NO). So while this IS more of that shrieking crunchy fuzzed out white noise that is Masami Akita's trademark, that you've heard on perhaps hundreds of records, these three discs are actually pretty darn good. Textured and thick, lots of pulsing rhythms, throbbing rumble, shrieking hiss and fuzzy non-melodies. Casutic and face melting indeed, but also surprisingly listenable! Don't take that to mean that if you don't like 'noise' that you'll like this, 'cause you probably won't. But if you do dig stuff like Masonna, Merzbow, and the like, or even if you're a fan of Total, Skullflower, and other noisy drone and just want to try something a little more extreme, then this would most certainly fit the bill. Comes in a nice, silver-embossed slipcase with the cds in individually printed sleeves, with a patch (although, it's a bit of shameless promotion with Important Records embroidered right there next to Merzbow).
Ohmigod. The Merzbox. It's finally here. For real. The ultimate artifact of Japanese noise music. 50 cds. Yes 50 cds! A weighty book. A metal medallion. A t-shirt (xl). A silkscreened poster. Stickers. All housed in a softpack case that's a little smaller than your average briefcase.
We've left the book intact in its hermetic (shrinkwrapped) seal, but unzipped (literally) the container which holds the cds. We'll trust that noble publication The Wire with their analysis of the book as an exceptionally researched and interesting document. I (AQ's Jim) intend on embarking on what could be a stupid project. Each day I work, I will subject myself (and AQ's beloved customers) to one of the Merzbox's discs -- that is, until we sell the stock we have (only 2!), or I decide I really need to own it, or I go insane, or some combination of all of the above.
For those of you not familiar with Merzbow (not that you're going to be too likely to purchase this if you're not!), this is the noise project led by Japan's Masami Akita working at times with Reiko A (who I believe is his wife) and a few other cohorts. If you recall your art history, Kurt Schwitters began a project in the 1930s of constructed the Merzbau -- a house which was shaped, dissolved, and built out of junk. Akita's project of a similar name take the junk of sound and transforms it into blistering noise assaults with an incredible spectrum that has warranted this 50 cd collection.
Disc One starts off with cable buzz that could explode at any moment but doesn't. With everything from Merzbow that I've heard being so abrasive, mind-erasing, and abusive, I was pleased to see that it didn't explode. Rather, Merzbow takes a direction you'd more expect from Sun City Girls or the No Neck Blues Band with what sounds like banjo pluckery and tin cup percussive rhythms.
Disc Two. Remember the guy from Police Academy who vocally emulated R2-D2, airplanes, and coffee machines? Well, Merzbow does that too, as this disc is a complex display of various squiggles that probably don't have the comedic definitions that I got from it. Buried underneath the varied knob twiddled squeals and high-end vibrations is a noxious rumble, making this one quite a bit noisier than the last.
Disc Three. This is the problem with this set (aside from the price), I dropped in, by mistake, Disc Forty-Seven, thinking it was Disc Three. 47 sounded really groovy, sorta like Alec Empire's drum machines getting some terminal abuse. But I'm on Disc Three, which is much quieter affair, with a looping sample of distorted flute (?) in the background, with Akita scraping two pieces of metal together with restraint (!). Then there's a kazoo and amplifier piece which sounded a lot like Gerogerigegege (the noise band fronted by a masturbating 50 year old accountant). They make me laugh a lot. Regardless, it scares me how much I like this piece.
And there's 47 more discs to explore! One man's world of noise/music. The Merzbox, ridiculous yes, but incredible also. Itself a work of (conceptual) art, lovely (and mind boggling) to behold. Buy now, or cry later -- needless to say, as we only have 2, and it's a limited edition, as if you doubted that!
We will admit, we've pretty much reached our Merzbow saturation point. For all the joking we do about bands who are WAY too prolific. Nobody come close to Merzbow. Not even counting the mighty Merzbox, Merzbow must average a release a month. For the last 20 years. Holy shit. You do the math. And some months there are 2 or 3 new Merzbow releases. Does anybody need every single one? We're pretty sure the answer is no. And there are probably a few people who could argue that nobody needs ANY. But c'mon, for every pointless disc of straight white noise feedback, there is a disc of weirdly chopped rhythms, or weird karaoke noise, or a record made from all jazz drums. Maybe the ratio is quite that balanced, but there are quite a few discs well worth checking out. And Metamorphism is definitely qualifies. Sure most of the disc is a head shredding barrage of brutal digital glitch and shrieking looped feedback and all sorts of caustic harshness, but even within a squall of such brutality, there are lots of cool little sonic subtleties and bizarre alien melodies, careening and getting all tangled up into impossible shapes and mixing to form even more unlikely sounds. The final track is our favorite though. Some damaged detuned Jandekian guitar buried under thick swirls of spacey FX and fuzzy white noise whir, all the while haunting ghostly stumbling melodies hover and drift within a lurching looped psychscape of tangled and garbled sonic splatter. So cool. So even after maybe thousands of records, he's still got it in him to surprise us with something super far out and surprisingly listenable.
Another way in which certain Merzbow records stand out is their packaging. The Merzbox of course, 50 cds, a shirt a book, a poster a medallion, all in a weird rubberized case, the legendary Merz-cedes, an actual Mercedes with a Merzbow cd permanently stuck in the stereo, and a dizzying assortment of strange shapes and weird cases. But Metamorphism definitely has to be one of the nicest we've seen. A thick velvety bag, holds the disc, a printed insert on thick glossy cardstock, all housed in an incredible heavy marble box, hinged on one side, with a fossilized Ammonite engraved into the top. So amazing. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
From Jim O'Rourke and David Grubb's new Drag City imprint, the previously-unreleased companion piece to Rainbow Electronics, one of the classics that made the King of Japanese Noise worthy of his title. Fine stuff with lots going on, and "rainbow electronics" is as fitting a description as any.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Not just another Merzbow noise-blast disc, this is a remix compilation that lets folks like, among others, Jim O'Rourke, Panasonic, Autechre, Bernhard Gunter, and Masami Akita himself, take the noise and create something perhaps more obviously structured with it. As such, it's pretty interesting, and if you're not going to buy all 2,000 Merzbow releases this year, this one at least should be considered. In fact, even if you weren't going to buy *any* Merzbow this year or any other year, "Scumtron" might still be for you. Certainly fans of Panasonic-style beat-cruch won't be disappointed.
I really don't need to listen to any more Merzbow records in my life, as several years back I (Jim) took the task of enduring the entire Merzbox (all 50 CDs of monstrous, punishing noise.) Yet month after month, Masami Akita continues to churn out extraordinary records from his battery of noise machines. With the roll of the die cast in my direction, I strap myself in for some raw aural brutality. Senmaida stands out immediately with its galloping drum machine breakbeat that precedes the virulant boils of his signature seering noise, giving Merzbow a legitimate noise grooviness previously held by Christine 23 Onna and Aufgehoben No Process. The beat itself starts out a little stiff, which is not surprising as Akita-san is not really known to get down and boogie; but when the noise machines begin to explode with their volcanic psychedelia of molten noise, the breakbeat takes a step back and actually forms an excellent counterpoint to the noise. Out of this rhythm (which come to think of it really does sound like a Garage Band preset, ha!), our noise hero lays down several lumbering industrial loops of a percolated squiggle alternated with a menacing plod, out of which comes the shredding noise and a post-Neubauten metal bashed rhythm. And oh, yeah there's a track built out of a sample of a sheep's bleating which oozes with the danse macabre of Alec Empire. Be prepared to be impressed by Senmaida!
