Category Archives: REVIEW

William Bowers’ ‘Post Modern’ is an aesthetic statement not in architecture or concept but like that of a font.  Despite the silly mugger greeting us from his one-sheet photo, Bowers is really a little gentleman.  A typesetter of sorts, he grafts aesthetic angles into musical matter like quotations in a novella.  More important, Bowers lays claim only to the post *space* modern, meaning not really that well-worn epoch, but a general timeliness of coming after modernity struck.  That’s all.  Using a synthesizer he creates nine tracks in a polite 33 minutes.  ‘Post Modern’ is like Sun Araw without the guitar ‘n’ irony, impassioned as Coil, and patient as Scanner.  With a spirited wave from his hometown, the stuttering opener “Hello from Green Bay” offers nowhere in its looping bleats for Bowers to hide alter-interpretations, and this friendly posture carries into the more developed tracks to follow.  “Art Nouveau” “Roman Arch”, and “Happy Wandering” are multi-part soundtracks of pure vibes, with the last a send-up to overground American rave culture and the Orbital in all of us, a bride stripped bare off her beats to the musical essence above.  “Night Moves on Shallow Ground” establishes a rhythmic sequence as in OPN’s ‘Zones without People’, but develops a melody of greater richness in a condensation of feeling – quite contrary to Lopatin’s general exposition of everything but.  Closer “Solaris” is a bleary trance sequence which gets dubbed-over & out by huge bass daubs over ashy oscillations, and which manages to omit all filmic connotation and simply pairs two existential mediums in an appropriately shallow infinity-pool of sound.  100 copies on pro CDs in full-press digipaks.

Haute Magie CD
$10
HERE

Without a doubt my favorite thing Nick Hoffman has set his mind – and label – to so far.  Hoffman (Katchmare, labels Scissor Death and Pilgrim Talk) collaborates with Stephen Holliger as Veyou for this painfully-short C10 called ‘Carcass in the Mist’.  Evoking more mist than carcass, the pair of tracks thrive on breathing room and nurturing repetition to develop into two immediately-immersive listening escapes.  Self-titled “basement electronics”, their approach is less exiled than introverted, meaning the music they produce isn’t the anxious sound of rejection and loathing but rather quiescent and purposeful.  They want to be there.  Having now flipped the tape over several times, I no longer know which is the title track and which is “Metal Shaker”, but the gilded silt of one’s looping drone works in rich compliment to the watery airs of the other, where voices distend and strings pang under an ungiving tape buzz.  Half machines and half atmosphere, the pair capture most of what’s right with experimental music in the time it takes most folks to decide they’ll scrap their set.  50 copies and highly recommended. 

Pilgrim Talk cassette
$6
HERE

There are few things worse than trying to review a compilation of noise music on cassette.  The lack of discrete boundaries on the medium make any collection of songs hard to parse out, but the lack of beats or lyrical identifiers make a selection of 30 different tracks a hellish endeavor to describe.  The rub is, there are also few things better than listening to the wall-to-wall  blast that is the compilation of noise on cassette.  The noise artist’s self-doubt is multiplied in the embattled spirit of competition and inevitable comparisons which the format provides.  This makes for generally top choice selections from a healthy array of folks who, let’s be honest, sound best when taken at 5 minutes at a time anyhow.  And so it is that I’m attempting to sell you on the latest from For Noise’s Sake called ‘Madrid es Ruido’, an unrelenting C120 featuring a wide survey of noise musicians and indentured weirdoes like a scene report from the Spanish capitol.  I’m trying my damnedest to hold on to the bouncing ball, so here are just some of the winners and honorable mentions:

Just to set any expectations on their head, The Wooter start the tape off with some deeply misleading Kiwi freak ala Pumice, in effect suppressing their own noise as a means to diffuse whatever horror is about to follow.  And amply so: Ponzoña chase quickly behind (otherwise most artists take advantage of their allotted share on this doubly long tape) with a bright, chewed up smattering of Maxed out noise sounding like channel-surfing nothing but heavy machinery videos and blocked networks.  Similarly, Ormo sets the trend of support for the John Wiese school of total cuts and alloy sounds, overwhelming a meta-curve with so many sharp little divots.  Against such volume, the lo-fi neighbors don’t stand a chance but to attempt the stunning expression of Plonk Moist’s live contribution “Escarpiados” – with a sharp, manhandled python of feedback, self-deposed guitar and drums, and pure-driven scream – the obvious highlight in a collection full of standout tracks.  Daniel Del Rio makes for a smart contrast, offering a deep churn of swelling dirt in the forgotten perfection of Hive Mind, Games Addiction makes for an original clash between glitch programming and ugly noise warps, and Yo-Raid! manage a dynamic little improv workout of rolling percussion and tin guitar in line with Owl Xounds and the twee trash which opened the side.

Flipping this beast, Ahno Zwei start the second side with a high-definition jazz-noise, sounding high-flick feedback glinting off professional presentation.  Gran Logia plays weird, Silver Apple-scented electronic psychedelia made outta lo-fi drumming, weird audio lecture and whispy streaks of feedback.  In close proximity, Jord Levulma makes a funk noise not unlike the new sounds from K-X-P, following the Logia with murmurs and chatter suppressed under a tremendous wall of deep bass scaling.  Past gabber beats and SPK noise-wave, Eloe Emoe-type drum and bass and cut-up methods which other scenes seem to have totally missed the point on, Noish come with a phaser-futurist decomposition of broken screens and whirring cues, Wiese crossed with Pulse Emitter to really fantastic results.  Roughuh comes with some pretty standard, pretty incredible wall noise using the apparently quite trendy Madrilenian combo of feedback/vocals/bass, Ülpeskriva plies the other popular tweak, a psychotic assault of high BPM live percussion added to the delirious nod of constricted throats and feedback, and Ol’ Pain closes the comp out with a looping, New Blockader mind-erasure to reset the clock.

In total, the tape features contributions from:  thewOOter, Ponzoña, Au, Ormo, Desatrancos, Plonk Moist, La Catástrofe Ultravioleta, Daniel del Rio, Tubular Balls, Asperorers, Games Addiction, pier, bledo, Grassa DATO, Yo-Raid!, dohince, ahno drei, fuguh, Gran Logia, Jord Levulma, Scumearth, Xedh, R.R. Soup Fuck Uzz, noish, shalocins, Roughuh, Oscar Barras, Botox Vox, Ülpeskriva, and Ol’ Pain.  On pro-pressed tapes with simple, glossy j-cards.  100 copies.  Very recommended.

For Noise’s Sake cassette
8€
HERE

A new one from Ohio’s always engaging Teen Action Records, and somehow a “Presentation” by Seven Lies About Girls, the C62 split between Hiss & Hum and S.C.O.A.M. is a hulking collection of sounds as diverse as they are long(form).  By Hiss & Hum, ‘Lately I’ve Been Thinking About Death’ is four tracks seemingly united by titles yet spanning a run of sonic collages entailing Gown guitar mantras to red-lining noise ala Kevin Shields to the lethargic drones of En or Horseback.  A different solo project, S.C.O.A.M.’s ‘Hypnagogic Head Dreams of Teenage Heaven’ is more about breaking apart abstract sound at the molecular level and in effect casting long shadows as landscapes of suspense verging on terror.  Made almost entirely of murky synthesizer, these tracks are far more coherent, and unpleasant for it.  A menacing lot in good company with the coldest studies of Phaserprone.  50 copies.  $8 HERE.

L.A. label Glue Moon offers a C30 from Italy’s Babe, Terror called ‘Preparing a Voice to Meet the People Coming’, a collection of screwy, roughened beats and textured non-rhythms like a less obsessive Alva Noto for a less clever Raster Norton.  Similar to Ben Frost’s epic for its use of noise in dramatic flourish and uni-direction, though all around more stripped-down and lower fidelity, not unbecoming on it.  A fine headphone listen.  Thematically similar as well, the tracks take on a godless, futurist air in tone and title, calling themselves OPN-ish things like “Poolport”, “Transplanted People”, and “Basement Practicing”.  The tape is a welcomed example of something sonically quite serious without too serious extraneous formality.  Pick it up for $8 HERE. 

Also from Teen Action, Great Slave Lake is a pair of side-long monsters of hot electric drone and cluttered occult overlays.  Dark ambient drone jams.  “These Storms Could Have Been Avoided”: a quasi-mechanical workshop of twists and chirps makes a weird campfire of suppressed drums and harmonic gusts, the crowding of which palls in the regular overcast of guitar drones which wash over top.  “Ignorance Has Been Our Downfall”: high-strung and all tangled up, the strings pang and pop in off directions while waves of drone crest and fall in the deep background.  The pessimism and doom so overtly cribbed from Clay Ruby and his ilk is in fact nullified as both are presented in a mode of retrospection which distances the listener from any immediate dangers, and works simply as a meditation on sound and theme.  Hand-numbered to 50 copies, available HERE. 

I was thinking I’d start with a snarky comment about how lately around Animal Psi we haven’t seen much of New Zealand’s Peter Wright, perhaps even so long ago as his 2007 ‘Crater Lake’ CDr for Blackest Rainbow.  But as it turns out, there wasn’t really anything branded with Wright’s name for several years now, so we haven’t missed a beat but to parade our own unexcused absences of late.  Always evocative, the titling of ‘Let’s Hide Under The House Until They’ve Gone’ understate the evolution which is occurring in Wright’s drone work, beginning straight-off with the variegated collection of sounds in the 13 minute title-track.  Constructed with bass guitar, the multi-tracked swell begins to merge with that of labelmate Nicholas Szczepanik to bring out the modular geometries of analog synthesis not in the wholecloth sheeting of drone but through the grainy details of the weave.  Bulbous whole tones bleed around distorted stutters repulse from moist drips of suffocated bandwidth.  This monster of mass-over-direction is then followed by four tracks half its size and quarter as dense.  The cruelly-titled “Evil Earth Hum” is in fact a warming, stereo-hopping track of rich tones ebbing in reverse, beat over top with a flurry of piano strings.  “The Buried Bones of Ruaumoko” builds on a distinguished bass riff with Menchean static walls, pulling in cosmic vacuums and crunchy interference.  “Somewhere Between Forest and Sky” is an anti-drone, filling in the clear-cut spaces of an erasure with birds chirping and other trummerflora.  The final stone upturned, “Endless Slipping Away” feels as busy as the opening track, equally aimless, firing off in all directions with unpredictable colors before it fizzles into smoke.  Keyed to more recent developments in synth landscapes and their convergence with black metal ambients – thinking here of Locrian, Horseback, and the recent tape by Galena – Wright’s development is laudable, as he remains studious in his output while finding his work to new borderlands.  300 copies.

Basses Frequences LP
12€
HERE