This split from Lithuanian Noise label Terror suggests via one-sheet that this is a release “of pure harsh noise,” “for purists.” The two uses of purity are worth qualifying, as the stream of harsh noise albums has yet to slow – at least to a significant degree – and demand some reflection on their persistence. But first, the basics: the four tracks provided come from the new project by Serbia’s Creation Through Destruction (Alex of the prolific Dead Body Collection) and Texan Richard Ramirez’s collaborative community Black Leather Jesus. Each track is over ten minutes, and the whole disc presents a respectable 50 minutes of material. I’ll mention the titles here – “Uncertainty Principle,” “Stellar Magnetic Field,” “Stall Exhibitionists,” and “Bearfighter” – though they offer zero insight, and their evocation is meant only to jumpstart the dialectic of harsh noise into activity. There is no doubt this is harsh noise as we’ve come to know it historically: a wall of high-frequency cacophony almost white for its density, each piece is nearly static, filling the spectrum from dull to piercing. Taken alone, while a dominant and objective definition of harsh noise, this does not necessarily indicate its purity – something semiotic. Nor does it pass unproblematic from the other side, as defined by the circumscribed “purists” who have the authority to assign authenticity – something institutional. Rather, it is the phenomenal listening experience that I am interested in – something practical – by which I think this disc can best be qualified as pure harsh noise. As described above, the sound encoded to the disc is “pure” as in “raw material,” nearly authorless in its static nature, and composed only by the physical limits of the disc: mine is slightly melted, and therefore concave, skipping as it chafes the CD player’s cradle. The gaps provided by the buffering of the disc provide erratic absences and recoveries, against which the truly indeterminate blasts of noise emerge (that is, a blast-ness which would not result were I to stream the disc direct, without the errors). The few skips which result in the outermost and initial moments provides plenty of tension for the remainder of the listen, where few if any gaps appear: mastered to an obscene volume, there is no turning it down without turning it off. This very hands-off of the author, this non-moral, nihilistic release, purifies the situation by reducing it to a listening choice of the listener, who confronts the situation as it appears and not as an ideal, mystified, impure scenario of spectatorship. In light of this, the “purist” is co-constituted, hearing the sounds in situ, and then, continuing to listen to that demiurge of harsh noise. Edition of 300 copies in jewelcase with booklet.
Terror CD
$15
HERE