Albany Sonic Arts Collective – Experimental New Music (C)

Featuring Century Plants, Grab Ass Cowboys, Ghoul Poon, Bad Costume, and Bone Parade

After nearly a year of watching good shows pass me up at the Upstate Artists Guild down the street from my apartment in the lovely lands of Albany, I decided to brave the unseasonably warm February weather to see Century Plants for the second time. To seal the deal, I perused the myspaces of the other acts playing and started getting pretty psyched for Bone Parade and Bad Costume, as well. So, I headed down to the fabled UAG to see what all the fuss was about, grabbed myself a seat, and waited. For a long time. Apparently Grab Ass Cowboys were supposed to be the opening act and one of their members was running late, so the show was delayed for about an hour. Eventually Century Plants offered to go first, and first they did go.

I had high hopes for Century Plants, of course, after their smashing success with Sunburned Hand of the Man last year. Unsurprisingly, their set was entirely different than the one I had experienced before. Where the “Sunburned” set trafficked in drones and beauty, this one began in stark contrast. The drones from before were still there, but this time they were pierced, interrupted, and ushered by the furious and percussive abuse of the second guitar. The set’s steady progression from beginning to end, eventually switching from bowed soundscapes to more chaotic tremolo picking, was gorgeous. The set was a highlight of the night, and ended up being a fantastic starting place.

Grab Ass Cowboys were up next. They had a cool noise set with a decent drummer backing them. Unfortunately, the drums were mostly inaudible, but what I could hear was a cool addition. The most memorable aspect of the set was seeing a rather tall dude climb on top of a precarious stack of amps, lay his guitar down, and then climb on top of that as well - all to have what I can only describe as a personal adventure with his head up between the rafters of the gallery. The music that ensued was a good mix of noise and face-ripping guitar solos that would do Matt Pike proud. The only proper way to wind down music of this proportion was the unorthodox, and fun-to-watch method picked by our gallery-astronaut… And that would be to get off his guitar, and use it as a tool to unplug everything in sight one by one until there were no sounds left but the backing ambience and drums.

Ghoul Poon. Apparently they played too long, but I didn’t notice until somebody turned the lights on. I’ll admit I never really understood Ghoul Poon on record, I don’t know whether it’s just not my thing or if it’s because I’ve never heard anything like it before, but it just strikes me as kind of confusing… Their set was good, though. Much more centered and slow than I was expecting. It ended up being sort of drones with pulsing bass underneath. It did run a bit long, long enough for the pre-recorded projections to run once and a half, and there wasn’t much to watch, but the projections were well done and provided a good companion to the music.

Bad Costume were easily the highlight of the night. Their improvised set, half electronics and half drums, was nearly flawless. Hella-mad-dumb-wicked-stupid props go out to the drummer for being able to play so intensely for so long. Until that night, Sunburned’s drummer was my hero… And now I have two. His playing style was innovative, full of unique fills great rhythm changes, and musicality. The electronics aspect was various samples mixed with lots and lots of heavy synthesizer to create a whirlwind of sound that could be compared with noise, but in no way similar. The combination of such a powerful sonic experience with easily the best projector piece of the evening was mind-blowing.

Bone Parade were a great cap for the evening. Right before their set I picked up a t-shirt and an album (Along with some Century plants, and a free Ghoul Poon album since nobody else was selling merch… If only I could get my hands on something bad-costume-related!), and hunkered in for some great dark-ambient-ish-industrial-whatever. Bone Parade offered a great, if a little repetitive, set full of material that would fit right on Einsturzende Neubauten’s Silence is Sexy right between “Alles” and “Redukt”. The very full bass and drum machine sounds created a fantastically desolate atmosphere as a platform for some great operatic vocals. To top it off, they made the excellent selection of a largely high-contrast black and white video that added some excellent light play t the atmosphere. A+, I say. Very enjoyable in all respects.

The Albany Sonic Arts collective managed to gather a great and diverse group of artists for a fantastic show. I really do look forward to seeing many more in the future, and encourage those that have the opportunity to attend shows by any of these artists to do so without fail!

Weak Sisters - Final 7" (V)

Weak Sisters is fucking noise. Harsh, like it's supposed to be. It's not a "rhythmic noise" thing or "noise rock" or any of this other shit, it's noise. Loud. Hard to endure. Dark. Unimpeded by guitars and blather about genocide and genitalia. He does wall noise, he does cut-up chaos. Aside from the usual chaos of pedals and electronics, he makes noise through violence. Don't ask me how it's wired, but he uses people as contact mics and fucking attacks them. It's like BDSM - consensual abuse. And it makes harsh blasts of sound. This is what hateful music should be - a direct expression of emotion through action. Pretty much amazing.

Weak Sisters recordings aren't exactly common, but many are still publicly available. I have here a clear 7" - first vinyl I've purchased for myself in a while, since Weak Sisters seems to mostly release vinyl and tape - called Final. As of this writing, it's still available at Hanson Records (hansonrecords.net) for $5 plus $2 shipping in the US.

The first side begins with a pulsing drone for a moment before Weak Sisters screams and switches into a blast of wild changes . . . before repeating the process with a longer, changing drone, screaming, and blasting into a wall of noise. Noises blast and loop and scream like a dying electronic animal. Glitches break and clip and flex their muscles and growl bloodlust. Then, silenced, the disc trails into the rhythmic sound of the needle on uncut vinyl.

The second side starts out with a fucking howl of hate and feedback. Weak Sisters blasts this into disorienting, uncomfortable shrieking soundscapes. The electronics are moaning, wailing, cursing their pain. The initial wails turn into blasts of hatred that freely wander between wildly shifting noises. And stop. And start. And redouble themselves. And change. And end.

This is one of 300 copies, released last August as the first release of "Secret/Wasting." I haven't been able to find out anything about Secret/Wasting - much like Weak Sisters, the label seems to have no presence online - but if this is the direction they're going to continue with, I'm going to keep buying.

This is some of the best noise I've heard to date.

Aube - Purification to Numbness (V)

Aube - Akifumi Nakajima, I should say - is by all appearances not quite your average noise artist. He started releasing noise - which he describes as sound design rather than music - under the name Aube in 1991 - around when Masami Akita started using digital recording and within a few years of the genesis of Masonna. But Aube has curious self-imposed restrictions.

Each Aube release is created entirely with one sound source - glass, the human voice, water, lamps, you name it. Purification to Numbness is one of a number made with a single voltage controlled oscillator, his third such and his seventeenth overall release in 1995. The release is a set of three soundscapes from this source. The first, "Elementary Particle," is a twisting seventeen-minute drone that sounds plausibly like an extremely effected guitar - all layered, distorted pitches and repeating sounds and sound loud, uncontrolled rock. The title track seems more meditative and features more noisy sounds, less of the midrangey Marshall amp attack. Sounds wander in and out, tending more to bathe the listener in an experience - a trip inside a machine-mind. The track spends twenty minutes building intensity before giving way (stopping as suddenly as the first track) to Aube-meets-Khlyst noisy glitches buried in the Aube wall of compressed sound. This all sounds very much like a chance-based live noise improvisation more than anything. Structure is linear and . . . unstructured. Every sound simply is.

Thanks to RRRecords for selecting this piece. I'm more than anything curious to hear more of Aube's work - it seems like a way of bringing home experimentation with sound sources and approaches, like surrounding yourself with electronics and creative minds. Certainly worth further study.

Agoraphobic Nosebleed - PCP Torpedo/ANbRX (V)

As of this record - Agoraphobic Nosebleed is direct and brutal. They take advantage of the punishing power of the drum machines and build fast, effective tracks that are over as soon as the point is made. And better yet, this release is half remixes. Excellent remixes.

Admittedly, most of the time it's nigh impossible to make any connection between the remixes and the original tracks, but a mix of hardcore/speedcore and noise makes an effective combination with the so-called cybergrind Agoraphobic Nosebleed makes. The original tracks blast through and leave a mark, then the remixes keep the energy up and build interest through their varied distinct styles and artistic voices. Ah, the advantage of having Relapse on your side.

And this makes me want to give speedcore another chance. I was disappointed on my first attempt with a Neophyte best-of, but I see some actual potential here. And the glitchy chaos James Plotkin inserts - I might prefer an album of this to Khlyst. Might. Jansky Noise's remix is fucking brutal. And Justin Broadrick seems to have made Agoraphobic Nosebleed into a slow, crushing industrial band. I didn't know that was possible. And Masami Akita made a Merzbow track out of Agoraphobic Nosebleed samples - unmistakably Merzbow.

This CD, this CD I would recommend picking up.

Socialistic Jonny Goblet - Translations of a Seance (K)

Visuals are important when it comes to music. To the fan as well as to a neutral person they can give a first impression of what to expect and whether they should give the music a try or not. Some fancy fantasy painting is as suggestive as a photography of a horribly mutilated body; the former will hardly offer brutal goregrind, while the latter one would certainly not cover a Britney Spears release. Hence, give these visuals to a person some sort of certainty and might even motivate someone to actually buy a release in case the visuals are of an exceptional quality; such was the case when I ordered the «Darkside» release of «Necrophobic».

«Translations of a seance» does not follow this set of rules. On the cover you see some sort of black metal writing of the short form of the band's name, further are there two inverted crosses, a pentagram, a '666' in the top and also two wings on each side. Judging from this impression, one would easily classify this as a black metal release, one from the underground, one of these 'ultra trve' demos; but all this is far from what the band actually performs.

There is no metal on this release; this is nothing even close to it. Instead something weird is offered. Noise in a various degree and with occasionally fascinating atmospheres can be found on this 3"-CDr. There are moments in which you get the feeling like listening to the music of one of these old-school 'horror' games, when you are locked in a room and have to do some certain steps in order to leave it and to proceed with the story. This monotonous themes in the background, the endless repetition of some motives and ideas and sounds that are simply not right; music that wants to mess around with the brain cells. Slightly nightmarish, dark and haunting, but also annoying is the art of «SJG» and each song is different from the preceding one. «Disforming Scratch Transforming» is a very monotonous one, but progresses through the use of new styles of noises and ideas; the same can be said of «Settling Nature of Obsurdities».

«Spirits of the Dead (E.A.Poe)» is an interpretation of a novel by this American writer; the vocals might not be everyone's taste though. Some neat ideas can be found on this release and even though the package might suggest something different, the content can still be enjoyed. Fifteen minutes is this CD-r long and the listener has to go through a lot of different stages of atmosphere until the end is finally reached. Should be listened to in the dark.

Hanatarash - Hanatarash I (V)

Hanatarash's first album is delightfully raw. And it has music washing through the noise without itself being the noise. Eye sings and chants and screeches throughout the clashes of harsh churnings, blasts of noise, and shrill feedback. Try not to focus on the consistent use of "cock" in all the song titles. This record is actually a liberating assault on the ears that doesn't so much evoke rage as it suspends other realms of focus in favor of noise immersion. There's definitely variety - from the melodies and roar of Ultra Cocker to standard distorted noise vocals and drumming in Domination In Spunked Cock to the constant percussion of Cock Combat and the distorted electronic march of Cock Victory. This album singularly fails to convey any sort of message outside of hearing loss. Good noise.

Content Nullity - Rotting Walls of Decaying Sound (C)

Finally, Content Nullity material! After god knows how long of getting teasers, clips, and hearing ideas from the man who nearly got me into noise and industrial, he has finally released Rotting Walls of Decaying Sound through his label, Scrape Tapes (http://www.myspace.com/scrapetapes). This tiny mini-CD contains 20 minutes of dark insanity that starts like a wound, falls in a super-medicated spiral through hell, and then finishes with the death convulsions – displaying them in all their violence and grotesqueries. The real highlights of the album are the middle few tracks, which have a distinct style of layered drone and noise to create a truly chilling effect – worthy of a haunted house in true seasonal style – that turn the album from a great noise album to a true experience. I really cannot recommend this highly enough, I was blown away by it even having heard Content Nullity material before, it just wasn’t what I was quite expecting. Really a grade A album, get it now!

La Monte Young - Poem for Tables, Chairs, Benches etc. (C)

La Monte Young… Celebrated leader of the minimalist style, and well among the first. He has created a large number of interesting things throughout his rather expansive career. Poems for Tables, Chairs, Benches etc. warms up with a very simple and calming sort of eastern chant with a buzzing drone underneath that creates a completely soothing effect for nearly 40 minutes (Raga for Ravi). As the song progresses, a second voice and some percussion is added, creating a slow change and a personal catharsis. In a sort of sharp contrast, the title pieces "Poem for Tables, Chairs, Benches etc (Parts 1 and 2)" present a sort of early noisescape filled with the shrieks and howls of moving furniture. There's not too much variation and the repetition, again, creates a different sort of trance to engage yourself in as you plummet into the abyss. "Two Sounds" is a more barren collection of strange sounds, perhaps treated, and perhaps not. The asynchronous rhythm leaves the listener feeling lopsided and ill-at-ease, but again enthralled with the strange sounds presented to them. I highly recommend this collection for anyone new to Young' work.

Barzel - A Shield of Defense and the Word of the Son of Blood (V)

Barzel is a strange creature. The front of this record is anything but vague: the largest words are the phrase "MILITANT JEWISH INDUSTRIAL." That's certainly a fair warning label - or blessing.

Barzel is essentially a noise project - a strongly rhythmic noise project, harkening to the Futurists' ideals of music made from noise - covered in soundclips of Jewish, Zionist propoganda. In the case of this particular record (I asked David of Barzel), the voice clips are from "an old LP about the birth of Israel," and David gleaned the clips on the new record (which I haven't laid my hands on yet) from a variety of documentaries. He admits that it's hard to find applicable material.

Personally, my favorite aspect of Barzel is the overall sound - David manages to make the industrial noise sound like not only a call to arms in the defense of Israel, but like historical music made for the LP he samples. The distorted, pulsing roar is softened into a vintage vinyl sound that creates something of an amazing atmosphere. Even when Barzel's noise influences come forward in a blast of sound and distorted screaming that would do a live Masonna show proud (as in the track Milchemet Brera/Jewish Steel), it doesn't detract in the least from the historical atmosphere of the overall work.

I'd recommend this record for not only anyone interested in industrial and noise music, particularly older examples, but also for those interested in examples of historical propoganda in the context of race and nationalism. If you can hunt down a copy (try contacting David at myspace.com/barzelx), pick it up.

Mark Solotroff/Stillbirth/Sharpwaist/Silvum/Karlheinz - The Enemy, Chicago, IL, 21/6/2008 (C)

I found out about this gig kind of on a whim. Updating the TIS (www.myspace.com/thoughtimagesound - CLICK HERE FOR HOT SINGLES IN YOUR AREA NOW) myspace one day I was looking at the bulletins and saw that one of the acts that I was friends with, or maybe the venue, or someone or something had posted a bulletin advertising it, and thought to myself "Well, gee, nothing else is working out while I'm in Chicago, I might as well try this out." I worked out heading down with Carter (and, as it turned out, my dad - a veteran of the old school performance art scene- for transportation's sake) and almost half expected us to be the only folks at the show. I wasn't too much off, other than the 6 people performing, during the first set, I'd say only about five other people were there, and the crowd built up to a strong fifteen to twenty people between sets.

The venue itself was pretty interesting. It was pretty much just a cleared-out space in a beat-up old studio apartment with some old furniture to make a small sitting area, and a pretty full kitchen /dining room. The sitting area/kitchen looked out onto a cold (-looking, it got pretty damn hot) concrete area which had the five set-ups in different areas and provided a great viewing space.

Against the rightmost "wall", which was a curtain covering up some sort of very large storage area, Mark started off the night with, as the flier described, "feedback using a clutch of microphones and his voice". Mark described his set as an Animal Law piece that he was still learning the melody to, but his performance was nothing short of striking. I can't honestly quite say I've ever really experienced anything quite like his set. The way Mark choreographed his every move to effect the shape of the feedback in the space was both sonically engaging and made me think more about the sound, making me take it for more than just its surface value. Every motion as small as creating a wall between two of the upright microphones with his hand created huge changes in the song that were somewhat surprising. I think the nicest part about the set was that from the description I was expecting more power-electronics-esque feedback-punching and screaming as frequently used in the other sets. It was much more enjoyable and interesting than I had thought it would be, and was definitely the most surprising of the night. Mark had the most tremendous presence of the performers that evening, performing with an ease that betrayed hours of practice, and years of performing.

Stillbirth came up next, assuming his spot at a small table near "center stage". His set began with him turning on a small table light, and the other lights in the venue being turned off. He presented what seemed to me to be relatively straightforward and very enjoyable power electronics. The lyrics were a bit clichéd in my mind: "genocide - tourniquet - genocide - killing women", but the effects he used to treat his voice were top notch. The performance aspect of the set were pretty good, the point where he fell on the floor and started moaning was a bit silly, but other than that - pretty good. The set was short and to the point, as it needed to be. In my mind the high point of the set was the image left in my mind of the lighting, and the ampeg cab pulsing with the rhythmic background noise, and so-and so standing eerily behind his effects table.

Sharpwaist seemed to be having some sort of issues that evening, but their piece was still great. It was nice to hear power electronics with a sort of lower droning in the beginning rather than the usual wall of white noise or pulsing stuff. It started off as somewhat generic power electronics, which I wasn't really too excited for and the main man spilled his beer on the floor and the guys from Silvum and Set 2 had to help clean it up while they continued to play. Eventually the second half of the duo kicked in and there was some great back and forth action. For a brief moment the main effects man dropped a distortion pedal into a metal crate along with a contact mic (or something along those lines) and shook the crate for just a few seconds, which created some great noise and spontaneity. This, for me, illustrated what the noisier acts were missing and was pretty cool to see. They also used a great series of back-and-forth screams that sounded awesome. In the end they were probably the best sounding of the noise sets.

Silvum in a way stole the show for me. Coming after two power electronics sets and presenting something wholly new compared to everyone else that had played, Silvum was nothing short of a breath of fresh air both in the context of the show and out of context. I don't recall quite specifically how it began, because I admit getting a bit lost in the experience, but what really matters is eventually Nick seamlessly took a piece of tape, measured it against his arm as if he'd done it a thousand times before, and then taped a microphone to his throat. The whole act was itself was very powerful to watch and was almost ritualistic as my dad described it later. The heartbeat worked perfectly into the music, running through some sort of delay and creating a kind of a train-sounding rhythm, and really brought the music forward on a lot of levels. The drone set proceeded with thought and created soundscapes that couldn't help but draw you in. The set wound down with the addition of… Breathing or vocals? I don't remember or couldn't tell. Either way, it sounded great. For the entirety of his set, except when using the mic, Nick stood almost completely still at his mixing console with a tremendous presence and sense of calm (though I might say his pulse might showed something else) which only enhanced the mood. Given my inclinations towards more minimal sorts of things, it's not surprising that this was, alongside the first, my favorite set of the evening. I talked to Nick afterwards and he was a very humble and nice guy, and seemed surprised when I asked to buy an album from him. Well the album was amazing as well, and is reviewed in this months Etherised, check it out.

Karlheinz finished up the night. Musically and performance-wise he was most forgettable. He had been the on-going "sound guy" for the night, and I didn't realize he would be performing so I was kind of excited. He performed three songs during his set, all of which were very much similar, and kind of generic. He screamed about some sort of angry things for two of them, and pointed at people in the crowd and ran around like you would expect him to, then performed an "instrumental" piece at the end which was referred to as the "Karlheinz Drone Set", which at first I took as a joke, then I kind of thought that was what he was doing… Then I just couldn't tell. I kind of felt bad when he raised his arms up above his head intending to swoop down and hit as many pedals as he could and unleash another huge wall of noise, but only managed to reduce the decibel level a bit and knock his pedals all over the place. I enjoyed his set anyway, and he seemed like an entertaining guy. Maybe if he hadn't looked so much like someone I knew, or worn that silly cop hat with the flashlight it would have been better. Oh well.

Over all, the show was great fun. I don't know that I would have picked a different venue to see this group of people, and the intimacy was very welcomed. Each performer brought something slightly different and they were each enjoyable in their own respects. The highlights of the night were definitely Mark, Silvum, and Act 2, all of whom made me think and were enjoyable to listen to.

Thought.Image.Sound - Spread Against the Sky (V)

This is certainly the beginning of a new chapter for TIS. Spread Against the Sky effectively transitions from the glitchy, feedback-soaked noise of past work and collaborations with NTRLWRM to a sort of minimalist, meditative expression of echoing guitar and bass work. The first two tracks, "A Thousand Shades of Night" and "Rabbit Fence," are mostly improvised and center on the use of effects and effects loops and twisted, smashed guitar sounds. Each is a slowly building experimental work, layering interspersed chaotic strumming and ambient drone. "Rabbit Fence" eventually crashes its way from glitchy distorted chaos to softer chaos that brings the word "ambiance" and even "melody" directly to mind.

My favorite track while the record was still in progress, "A Touch of Frost" sounds like pure decanted atmosphere. You can hear the melancholy chords drifting out across the mountains. You can feel TIS sitting and staring into the melancholy of the abyss. Slowly, the guitar and bass build and drop and flow into the delay-harmonised melody of "An Aging Statue." This statue is lonely. Introspective. Quiet. Then the modulated fingerpicking of "Drifting Away" builds tension, rather than releasing it and ending this album's chapter. I'm waiting for the next TIS release, so I can see where this is going. Get this.

NTRLWRM - Intestinal Decay (C)

This is my third NTRLWRM release and this one, in my mind, stands out. It begins with the usual clipped and dirty digital noise, but slowly it works into what it eventually becomes - an assault of high frequency tones. Now, I might not be the best person to review this album since I have a significant degree of hearing loss in high frequency and low frequency ranges, but I'm sure I hear just enough of it to be fine. This isn't quite like anything I've necessarily heard before, but god damn does it give me a headache. The way that Ascaris has arranged the album, it almost feels like if you ripped some beats from Venetian Snares, and layered them over the album… They'd fit perfectly. Each track features a central barrage of unintelligible shit and noise, with faint whisperings of tones barely within the range of human hearing occasionally running overtop. Every now and then, Ascaris nudges things down back into the lower range to great effect, making tracks like Intestinal Decay Philtre the most effect of the group. In the end, the album effectively channels the anger which Ascaris has originally channeled into it, and the headache is really quite worth it.

NON - God and Beast (V)

Boyd Rice's masterwork God and Beast is, unsurprisingly, a bit controversial. I've heard the track "Total War" described as a "Nazi anthem," though I'd unhesitatingly describe the whole thing as a ritualistic, noisy tribute to the ideals set forth by Rice's good friend Anton LaVey.

That's really not important, though. NON's God and Beast stands on its own feet as a classic, musically. The nine tracks keep a flowing, changing, ritual going throughout the 66 minutes - even through the silences in "Total War." Each track has recongnisable and even, surprisingly, memorable shreds of looping industrial noise and defiant, self-assured rants. I've yet to hear another album commonly labelled as "noise" that even approaches God and Beast's accessibility and . . . hooks. God and Beast delivers slow, hypnotic rhythms, swirling ambience, and a collection of what are, undeniably, anthems - of whatever ideology.

This record is also a great introduction to noise. Do you want total war? Yes, you want total war. Pick it up. And it's worth paying every cent, and more. This is one of the few instances in which I would consider buying a fancy version with a DVD and some other "bonus" stuff to jack up the price. And I hate that stuff. Because I'm poor.

Merzbow - Music for Bondage Performance (V)

Of all the Merzbow I've heard so far, Music for Bondage Performance is definitely my favorite. Rather than the harsh, crackling, grinding electronics that dominate so much of noise and even Merzbow's work, Music for Bondage Performance blends noise with softer ambiance and percussion.

"Hara-Kiri Video" features layers of pulsing interacting polyrhythmically with a slow, steady bass drum and swells and clicks and aching ambiance. "Seishi Seppuku Kei" extends the acoustic side of the performance with clashing, echoing percussive crashes vibrations, and scrapes mingling bizarrely over a distant constant tone and arrhythmic heartbeat-like pulses that build and shift and change their context. Over its ten-minute span, it abandons the emphasis on experimental percussion in favor of more shifting, swelling, almost-tones and sustained noises. "Ropes in Tears" builds on tone clusters of tuned percussion and again slowly falls apart into ambience and almost subliminal scrapes and creaks. "Aimei Nawa" builds noise around its ambiance with tone loops, more strange percussive loops, and eventually fearful scraping of a bow on strings that brings to mind one of the poems, "Serenade," from Giraud's Pierrot Lunaire: "With a giant bow grotesquely/Scrapes Pierrot on his viola . . . " in its harsh strains. "Lost Paradise" is a brief venture into chaotically jangling bells that somehow doesn't seem out of place transitioning to the 26-minute "Bondage Performances," a soundscape of not only the shifting tones that dominate this album, but almost noisy, reverberating drums. This track wanders everywhere, combining field recordings of knocking and barking dogs and distant voices and brass instruments and strange loops and crashing blasts of noise and little melodies. Even through broken-sounding keyboard glurps and bleeps and frenetic drumming and mad grinding.

Music for Bondage Performance is much more artistic and advanced than the average noise release, softer, more ambient, but yet just as tense and wild and random. If you want to look into a strange mindscape, look no further. If you want an expansion of what noise is, look here. If you want noise spirit without harsh ear abuse, this is the album to put on.

Aghiatrias - Ethos (V)

अम्बिंस, complex, compelling, sampled from some live percussion and various sound sources, deep, mystical, ritualistic, subliminal, dark chants and mumbled warnings and imprecations. clashing, dark, piano tone clusters, piano as percussion, charles ives, twisted electronics, drum like a cracking whip. lasers, mallets, humming layered sines, prophecies of doom. pounding tribal rhythms, more hissing, cracking electronics. agressive ambient music. industrial. semirhythmic thrashing and pounding.

Navicon Torture Technologies - I Fucking Hate You All and I Hope You All Fucking Die (C)

Navicon Torture Technologies is the dark ambient brainchild of Lee M. Batow, now on its way to a polite and quiet grave. I Fucking Hate You All and I Hope You All Fucking Die is a NTT masterpiece, bested possibly only by Dripping with the Power of Her Flesh. It starts out with a haunting repetitive keyboard line, and then dives straight into the refined cesspool of gritty noise backing a series of effected vocals (repeating the phrase "I want to hang myself, I want to die." and noisy swoops. The album itself is noisy, but not loud. It's truly "dark ambient" in its unique style of unobtrusive, yet compellingly haunting noisescapes.

After a couple similar gritty noise tracks, NTT eases into a very minimal, pulsing noise line, which is soon overtaken by a clean sample of a distraught-sounding girl saying over and over again "I love you, and I'm so sorry that I'm so awful to you. And I don't know, I don't know what to do or what to say. I hate this, and I hate myself…" Over the pulsing underline, a more traditional ambient cloud slowly fades in, adding to the morbid beauty, and striking one-two punch of the track. After Personal Apocalypse, there are a series of more non-noisy, psychedelic-esque sample tracks featuring tribal beats, and more traditional ambient elements, as well as a series of more in-your-face noisy tracks.

The real highlight of the album, however, is Personal Apocalypse II, featuring another sample of the same girl, with a similar backdrop. All in all, this album is one that can only be expelled from an extremely dark and disturbed psyche, and received well by a comparable one. I do not recommend it if you are depressed, alone, or breastfeeding.

Coil - Constant Shallowness Leads to Evil (V)

Constant Shallowness Leads to Evil is a patchwork of glitchy electronics, marimba, experimental percussion, and twisted, ritualistic vocals from the late John Balance. This record could easily be a gateway record into noise, or an almost musical addition to a noisehead's collection.

Coil's work in this context is less connected to beats and straightforward songs than on a typical Coil album - and that's saying something, given Coil's twisted approach to songwriting. There's something glitchily attractive about the tone of Constant Shallowness' swirling, droning, rumbling electronics that has nothing to do with harshness or chaos. Coil's semi-noise has a stronger connection to tones, pitches, and chords than the all-frequency chaos of the average noisework. That said, the music is swirling, drifting, grinding, teeth of giant gears working together, without the piston-pulse of industrial drum machines lowering Constant Shallowness to a glitchy electronic pop piece.

The marimba and assorted percussion connects further to the musical spectrum than the electronic glitches that pervade Tunnel of Goats, but in an atonal-sounding semi-mechanical loop that pulls Balance's effected, groaning ritual mutterings - "I am the Green Child" - into a mystical, drug-hazy trance. Not often can one find razor-edged sounds that create such a numb, mind-drenching atmosphere. This is not a typical Coil record. Pick it up, whether you like Coil or not. You'll not regret it.

Winters In Osaka - Red Tooth, Red Claw (V)

Red Tooth, Red Claw is a well-executed piece of noisework that drags up some bigger names in the noise circuit. The first track, Satyr's Birth, is intense and varied, and contains guest work from respected Japanese cyberpunk author/electronic musician Kenji Siratori as well as widely-respected Norwegian black noise artist Zweizz. This track is trully a blasting and varied work of pure harsh noise, completely delightful to the tongue and ears.

The second track, In the Form of a Siren and Foetus, is a collaboration with fellow Illinois noisician Mykel Boyd, and sticks to the low, consuming, ambient side of noise. Though less exciting, this 13-minute track is an excellently surrounding piece of ambience - like noise reaching out and holding you in its . . . tentacles?

Though sadly only a 23-minute EP, this Winters In Osaka release is very well-executed and I'm certainly considering using it in the future as part of an introduction to noise for a curious music fan. Check out Winters In Osaka and their collaborators when you get a chance - if you like noise, you won't regret it.

Vargr - The Twice High Holy Secret of Constant Generation (A)

With what sounds like a bugle the demo begins only to explode in a fury of buzzing guitars, sounding as if they were run through some sort of broken glass filter, sounding sharp enough to tear right through any unwary listeners eardrums. Everything is awash with noise, even the pounding, stumbling drums seem to have been recorded white hot. And the vocals, when they appear, threaten to overpower everything in a blanket of fuzz. Sometimes the discerning ear can even pick out tremolo picked melodies, but only at a very close listen. Yes, this is truly some harsh and noisy raw black metal. A tad odd too, like the bugle that starts this noisy affair, the rest of the songs are filled with old time miltary snippets. The fourth track rife with them, amidst menacing low end rumble. During this track the mind takes you to a bomb gutted city, a parade of ghostly marching bands leading you through the deserted streets. It makes more sense when you find out the man responsible for this disturbing racket is none other than drone master Henrik Nordvargr Bjorkk (Nordvargr, Toroidh, MZ .412, Folkstorm, etc). This being his third album with Vargr, and marking his third foray into the world of black metal. Here's to hoping for many more releases of "True Black Nekronoise Metal"!

Self-released.

Havohej - Tungkat Blood Wand EP (A)

The first offering from Havohej in seven years, clocking in at a mere 16 minutes, proves quality prevails over quantity. Taking elements of drone / noise and combining it with Paul Ledney's (of Profanatica and ex-Incantation fame) already fucked take on black metal proves to work in all the worst ways. Any guitars you hear, if any, are rendered beyond recognition, whether it be speaker crumbling, blackened droning feedback or wierd little looped "melodies". Over these disturbed ambiences are placed tribally simplistic and pounding drums, reminding one of such industrial (I use this term lightly) type bands as Swans or Godflesh albeit more primitive. Even an occasional militaristic snare roll pops up now and then or even that "doo dat dat" carnie beat. And the vocals, demonic roars that could only of come from the deepest bowels of Hell. All these elements come together in such a way as to paint some abstract (trance-induced) vision of the underworld, all (hellishly) droned out in its demonic glory. So if you're looking for something different than the black metal norm, something more on the noisy and droning side, or for you who just love their (black) metal fucked up then this EP is wholeheartedly recommended.

Available through Hell's Headbangers Records on 10" vinyl.