Noiseweek

SORRY...

2007-10-18T14:54:00.002-07:00

Sorry everyone - life has gotten away from us here at Noiseweek HQ, but we're just about to coax it out from under the couch with some warm milk, and will be back next week with multiple noises and polysyllabic blabbery about same...thanks for yr patience!

EDIT: Ok, sorry, obviously this has turned into a reaaaaally long week...but we're planning to re-up before the end of January and get regular again after that - thanks for your patience, and while you're waiting, why not check out our book, which should be ready to ship next week...

POCAHAUNTED / ROBEDOOR

2007-09-23T23:28:00.000-07:00

Sorry we flaked out last week, but luckily we've got this week something that should make up for the temporary absence...so, you'd think after two decades of writing and reading about music, I'd have written and read enough premature ravings over records that faded after the initial spike of novel enticement, to realize I shouldn't freak over a release I just got. But then, you could also argue that, having seen this kinda reaction so often outta me and others, maybe I've developed a radar for records that sound great both right away and long after...

Anyway, regardless of whatever's actually true in all the above useless over-thought, I can't imagine that my infatuation with one particular record I just got yesterday is gonna subside anytime soon. The release in question is a double-CD split between two of L.A.'s finest drone/noise outfits, Pocahaunted and Robedoor, slyly titled Hunted Gathering and birthed by the tirelessly awesome Digitalis folks. That "finest" adjective is a bit presumptuous - this is the first I've heard of either - but they both have solid discographies spread across a bunch of exclt labels, and besides, there could be 100 similar groups in L.A. and I still would bet that none have generated anything better than what these two super-creative duos have achieved here, easily one of my favorite releases of any stripe this year.

Other than discographies, there's not a ton of other info out there about these two - all I can tell is that Pocahaunted is Bethany and Amanda, Robedoor is Alex and Britt, and two of the four are married and involved in the excellent Not Not Fun label. Other than that, all you really need to know is locked in the beautiful tones and daunting noises of the eight massive tracks on Hunted Gathering. Generally speaking, Pocahaunted trades in more ethereal seances, while Robedoor are more given to monolithic mega-drones, but both seem capable of either and a lot more. What they have most in common is a wide-open sense of space and time, and a beautiful ability to let their music grow and expand to ideal fruition. Which is why the format of Hunted Gathering works so well: alternating 10-minute-or-so tracks from each group and leading up until a capping 13-minute collaboration, it gives enough room to each to spread out their long tones and swelling ideas without restricting either's ability to get lots of great sonic shots in.

I'm starting to veer into starry-eyed platitudes here, so how about some specifics: Pocahaunted's slow, gentle, yet biting stuff is super hypnotic, and the best example is "Warmest Knives." Though it's raw, echoey, and even kinda dark, this aching cut has a soaring lilt that somehow conjures in my brain what might happen if some of the Dead C.'s meandering guitar chords got lost in the ethereal luggage of both Charalambides (in terms of sky-seeking meditation) and Bardo Pond (in terms of smoke-cloud haze and, especially, Isobel's knack for melting flute strains into psych guitar blasts).

Robedoor don't remind me of quite as many people, though their gravelly drones do call to mind Double Leopards (as does the nice packaging of this gatefolded double CD, which when I first opened it made me think of the packaging of Leps' classic Halve Maen on Eclipse), and even the darkened metal strains of the Earth/Sunn0)))/Southern Lord contingent. Perhaps they'll remind you of someone else, but I'll bet it's someone else awesome. Because Robedoor's thick soundscapes are so full of fine aural silt to sift through - at least that's true of their very highest stuff, like my fave track here, "Razed Terrain," which builds cavernous reverberations and ground-shaking detonations out of hums, howls, moans, and thick sonic wind.

So to make up for last week's emptiness, here are both of the aforementioned tracks...hopefully they'll rattle your cranial components they way they have mine...

mp3's:
POCAHAUNTED - "Warmest Knives" from Hunted Gathering
ROBEDOOR - "Razed Terrain" from Hunted Gathering

AETHR MYTH'D

2007-09-09T23:36:00.000-07:00

Gotta be a little brief this week, my apologies...so one of the more underrated labels (or maybe more like underexposed - it's not like people who know the label don't rate it highly) around nowadays is the always awesome Spirit of Orr. I don't have a ton of their releases, but the ones I do have really rule, and their roster is pretty impeccable: Temple of Bon Matin, Ashtray Navigations, Axolotl, etc. I also really dig one of the entries in their "Blueberry Honey" CD-R series - a nice collection of oddities from Massachusetts mind-melders Believers called Forgotten Tracks - and I was lucky enough to be gifted with the fifth and newest episode of this series, The Night Outside by Aethr Myth'd. I've only had it a coupla days, but it's filled up pretty much all of my non-US Open time this weekend...

The band's basic story, from what I can glean, is that they were kind of formed as an alternate version of the Other Method (note the name similarities), with Paul Labrecque of that group (and also Sunburned) joined by Ron Schneiderman (at least for this CD...I've seen them listed elsewhere as Labrecque and Valerie Beth Webber, or Labrecque and Bram Devens, so apparently the parts rotate). Having never heard the Other Method I can't say what the stylistic deviation from the mothership is, but A Night Outside does remind me of Thuja in its organic noise feel, Pelt in its backwoods-y take on Theater of Eternal Music-style drone, and Jazzfinger (who've also been on Spirit of Orr) in the echoing lo-fi envelope that surrounds the band's humming meditations. A pretty stellar set of referents, to be sure...

All of which means that this is a fascinating set of windy drones, slow-growing noise, and eerie folk fragments that manages to be truly hypnotic - at least in the sense that every time I try to jump back to a particular track, the next thing I now I'm four or five tracks down the road before I've realized that we're not in the same town anymore. Makes it kinda hard to pick a fave to post - they're pieces of a puzzle that's easier to see when it's all put together - but I am particularly enamored of the second track, a rolling journey of squawking noises, crowing cacophony, and barely-there percussiveness, all weaved together with tantalizing passages of faded restraint. It's the kinda thing that makes me wanna lay down in a moon-lit forest and keep squinting and blinking in hopes of someday making out what I won't ever be able to see...or better yet have a dream in which I'm doing the same, and this is the soundtrack.

mp3:
~~AETHR MYTH'D - (track two) from A Night Outside~~

DIAL

2007-09-02T19:32:00.000-07:00

Anyone familiar with one of the godfather genres to current Noise, No Wave (and hey, if you're not familiar and want to be, you can pre-order my book on the subject, due out this winter- yes, I really did write a book about No Wave - more on that soon) is surely a fan of the hypnotic tones of pioneering group Ut. Their music throughout the 80's was a pretty unique hybrid of No Wave dissonance and gut-punching rock that continues to be unfairly overlooked, despite Mute's recent reissues of Griller and In Gut's House (someone needs to pick up that ball and bring us new editions of Ut EP, Early Live Life, Conviction, etc etc etc).

One of Ut's pilot lights, Jacqui Ham, continued on after that group's demise with the equally mind-blowing Dial. I had stupidly slept on their output until Jacqui was kind enough to educate me with their new disc, 168k. I was so blown away by the amazing combo of primitive rock, noise, trash-punk, and whatever else you wanna call it on this disc, that I immediately ordered the other two Dial missives, 1996's Infraction and 2000's Distance Runner. Both are thorough forays into wide-open guitar clatter, snarling vocal intensity, heavy rhythmic sputtering, and so much more. I hear at times the dense plod of the Dead C. and/or Gate, the shattering distortion of Sightings, the quicksand lurch of Mouthus, and the pure abstractions of Ham's No Wave brethren, particularly the searing stomp of Mars and the harrowed howl of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. But mostly I hear an amazingly singular take on rock that's been imploded/exploded/fractured into noise, and my jaw is just permanently dropped by how devoted Jacqui still is to making uncompromising music. She's pretty much my hero.

Anyway, as great as those first two Dial records are, I think 168k is a big step up, an unerring set of eight demolishing tunes that cover all kinds of rough sonic terrain without ever dipping into predictability, tedium, or even a single dull moment, to be honest. Ham and R. Smith's punishing guitar work meshes into knots of aural barbed wire, and Lou Ciccotelli's raw, crunching drum sound wraps the whole thing up into a thorny ball of fire. (I apologize for getting so hyperbolic - big shock coming from me, right? - but I implore you to trust me this time; I really think 168k is gonna hold up as one of the year's best, easily).

Jacqui has been kind enough to let me post a track from 168k to whet yr appetite. "Soda Wars" (linked below) is a great example of Dial's sonic mastery: opening with a rolling/truncated Robbie Yeats-worth beat, it grinds two layers of cracking guitar into a lava-cascade of fire-colored noise, nearly swallowing Ham's stomach-hitting howl, which manages to sound painfully desperate and dauntingly authoritative at the same time. If you dig this, I really beg you to get the whole thing. It'll be out soon and available through some distros, and I'll update here when they in fact have it for sale, but until then you can contact me via noiseweek-at-comcast-dot-net and I can hook you up with how to get it immediately.

(on an unrelated note, for all DC-area noiseniks who don't already know - Sonic Circuits is coming up this week - lots of amazing shit happening, hope to see you there!)

mp3:
~~DIAL - "Soda Wars" from 168k~~

VIOLENCE JAZZ

2007-08-26T19:39:00.000-07:00

Received a massive package of stuff this week from the gracious, hyper-industrious Brooklyn label Tigerasylum. Haven't made it through it all yet, but my general impression is that Mr. Schranz has unearthed a lot of choice free-improv splatter, roughly akin to what Mr. Kriney of Color Sounds has also dutifully excavated. In fact, there's some personnel overlap there, as both Herr Kriney and La Otracina guitarist Ninni Morgia are part of the rock-solid Quivers ensemble, and Mr. Morgia also participates in both the salty splatter of The Right Moves (along with Storm&Stress/Talibam! drum-annhilator Kevin Shea) and the sprinting trio Trauma Unit. So, clearly there's some thick spice in the underground water reserves up in NY lately, and Tigerasylum is admirably swimming in it.

Despite the general Brooklyn-centric thrust of the Tigerasylum roster, so far I find myself gravitating most to a CD-R called Protection, by a Boston trio called Violence Jazz. Now, before I explain why, please indulge for a few moments my juvenile aversion to bad band names. For some reason I'm just really picky about what band names sound good to me (I think it's fair to say I don't let that pickyness affect what I think of the music), so given that rather unfair outlook, it's probably best if I stop discussing band names here...but, c'mon, Violence Jazz? Could we be a little more on the nose, for a double-sax wielding group given to noisy extrapolations on jazz-based improv? Also, using a genre in your band name? That almost never works, especially when the only other word is a super-cliched descriptor. Might as well call yourselves Blues Hammer, for god's sake...

Luckily, Violence Jazz's choice of what to play and how to play it is a lot sharper than their choice of name. Their forward-crashing improv is as raging and adrenaline-addicted as anything else on the Tigerasylum roster, but they're also fond of bigger noise and drone touches that pushes their stuff into weird, murky, unpredictable arenas. A couple of tracks here are even strictly atmospheric, kinda nightmarishly so, while others combine high-level jazz cacophony with hammering rhythm, dense guitar and electronics din, storm-like clouds of drone, and a few other things, too. I think the second of the six untitled tracks on Protection does all of the above best, carrying a blinding improv opening into a hypnotically plodding beat and back again. It also includes a weird little break with some kind of phone-conversation sample that I can't say I'm in love with, but I certainly didn't see it coming. And that's the attraction of Violence Jazz - it sounds like they're pretty devoted to finding sounds no one is expecting to hear.

mp3:
~~VIOLENCE JAZZ - (track two) from Protection~~

RELIGIOUS KNIVES

2007-08-19T23:32:00.000-07:00

Been a little behind in my noise-gathering duties lately, but a big thanks to those of you who are sending stuff, and I promise to get on some of those soon as well as accelerating my seeking habits...for now, I'm gonna blab a little about someone you probably already know, Religious Knives. Anyone vaguely familiar w/me or this blog is probably sick of me spewing about Mouthus and Double Leopards, but hey, I'm not gonna pretend that I don't eternally love em both, cause I do. So naturally I pretty much loved Religious Knives (Nate of Mouthus w/Mike & Maya of Double Leopards) before I'd even heard them, and definitely did once I had. The tangent the group took the first few times I saw them - kind of droney/dreamy but structured and even rock-ish music - was definitely intriguing and tough to pin down, and their first few recs that I heard - an excellent 3-track CD-R called RK4, and this year's No Fun debut Remains - kept that mystery going, with most of their songs resisting definition through murky atmospheres and a kind of floating, beat-less forward motion.

Cut to a coupla days ago, when I got to see the Knives again for the first time since January's Winter Ends Destruction fest held in the waning months of Tonic. They've been playing a decent amount lately including a European tour, and judging by the absolutely hypnotic set they played this time, have become a bit of a rock (or even prog-rock) monster. The addition of a bassist (whose name escapes me, sorry) gives their stuff a kind of chugging locomotion, and the way they accent simple patterns with Mike and Maya's radiant guitar, warming keys, and ghostly moans is really stunning. Parts are pretty Kraut-y in a Can sense, but what I really dig is how these guys maintain their noise-sculpture sensibility in the context of structured rock. Every song, as repetitive and patterned as they got, had a core drone and attention to sonic texture that I doubt would be there if these guys weren't already experts at manipulating and massaging pure abstraction.

Mike was nice enough to bequeath me a tour CD-R before the show, a split with the Knives' Euro tour-mates Airport War. Both of the Knives' contributions are still a little airier than what I saw them play this week, but "Everything Happens Twice" definitely captures some of the vibe of their current sound, moreso than anything on Remains. Nate's beat is more prominent, the bass has definitely got the repeto-groove down solid, and Mike's guitar and the spectre-like vox in the second half are right on target. I'm now way more stoked for the band's next release, whatever/whenever - and, oddly, kinda way more into the previous ones now, as you can hear the seeds of this new sound germinating there - so prepare yourself for more sycophantic fawning whenever that next rec should emerge.

mp3:
~~RELIGIOUS KNIVES - "Everything Happens Twice" from Religious Knives /Airport War split tour CD-R~~

DP / DAVE PHILLIPS

2007-08-12T21:20:00.000-07:00

Made a rather hectic sojourn to heat-infested NYC last weekend - hence the lack of substantial posting last week - and finally got to hit the fabulous Hospital Productions underground lair. Surely you know all there is to know by now about Dom Prurient's amazing noise/metal store, but if you haven't been there, I can attest it's all it's wacked up to be. Unfortunately I stopped by on a day wherein not only was Dom not working so I couldn't chat him up, but I only had $20 on me. So I decided to pick something totally random that I didn't know anything about, and the best candidate was a CD with an oversized, full-color cover that read simply "field recordings," with a logo next to it that I later surmised represented the letters "d" and "p". I could tell from the inside info that the CD literally had field recordings on it, and that it was on the excellent young label Little Enjoyer, but that was all I could glean.

There's still not a ton to glean now that I've scrubbed the web - even Little Enjoyer's own site doesn't mention the release - but I did finally figure out from the CD's fine print that these recordings were made by Dave Phillips (i.e. DP), Fear of God mastermind and core brain-cell in the massive grey organism known as Schimpfluch-Gruppe. I don't know much about Dave and his previous pursuits, but I do know he's a commited noisemaker, so I think my mysterious purchase was well-divined.

As far as what's actually on the CD, it's pretty recognizably field recordings - lots of whirring wind, humming insects, gurgling frogs, rolling water, etc - but Phillips has a clear knack for capturing stuff that has the repetition and texture of the best, uh, intelligently-designed noise. Listening on the train back from NYC I initially settled into these pieces as a kind of 3-D audio closet to store my head in for the trip, but as I wrapped back around to the beginning I started to hear weird structures and even semi-themes in Phillips' collection of random, undirected sound. Of course even the numbest brain can find shapes and colors in almost any field recordings, but the best kind produce so many patterns you almost can't keep track. Such an effect only comes from discriminating editing and an ear/head/spirit for catching the right stuff at the right time. These traits, DP has.

Anyway, I'm not gonna claim that this disc is some kinda revolution in field recordings or even a singular noise disc, but it certainly deserves a place on yr shelf if yer into this kind of randomized screech...since everything on here's pretty short, I'll give ya two tastes of DP's collection style, one that he describes as a "noon heat serenade" filled with happy piercings, and one made of bullfrogs "who somehow dig themselves under the earth's outer layer," and proceed to croak in super-fascinating loops. Enjoy...

mp3's:
~~DP - Noon Heat Serenade and Bullfrogs, from Field Recordings~~

SORRY...

2007-08-10T01:10:00.000-07:00

...but the week got away from us again. we'll be back by Monday with something you'll like, we promise...thanks for yr patience...

SPIRIT OF THE POSITIVE WIND

2007-07-29T22:40:00.000-07:00

Got a nice three-CD-R-pack from the Mouthus-run Our Mouth label a while back and have been stupidly ignoring it, but finally cracked them all open (digitally speaking) this week and none disappoint. There's Big Whiskey's Semi-Brown Music, a nice pair of muffled, rattling psych/noise excursions; Lexie Mountain's Blood Shed in the Course of Things, two really excellent 18-minute collages of fractured speech, vocal garbling, and cramped noise falling in the same geo-musical region as some of Carly Ptak's solo stuff; and, the most mouth-watering of the three, a self-titled EP by Spirit of the Positive Wind, the quartet of Mouthus-men Brian Sullivan and Nate Nelson, Karl Bauer (aka Axolotl), and Magik Marker/GHQ'er Pete Nolan.

Now I'm not gonna pretend that the two tracks here are some magic amalgam of these four's best moments - it would be both ridiculous to claim and unfair to expect - but I can say that I'm not totally willing to rule out the possibility quite yet. Cause both pieces have really snuck up on me this weekend - when I checked em out early in the week, they sounded rather unremarkably good, like something you'd really dig if you saw these four jamming on it in a practice space, but that you'd not really think much about afterwards - an elusive, moment-in-time sort of thing. But today I'm surprised to hear stuff I didn't hear before; both pieces actually sound quite different from what I remembered just a few days ago, especially the 16-minute second track "West Wind," which earlier felt like a collective, passive loop sort of along the lines of Mick Jagger's Moog soundtrack to Anger's Invocation of My Demon Brother, but now suddenly feels a lot more active. It even feels like a more subdued, beat-driven version of something from Double Leopards' great, under-appreciated Circa 1999-2001. I'm not saying it's ever gonna be some kinda epic that I return to annually, but there's a lot more happening in it than I first gave it credit for, which for me always means something...

That track's a little too long to post, but luckily the first cut, "East Wind," is almost as good. This is more like what you'd expect from the participants - lots of winding, whistling guitar noise accompanied by little semi-patters of blipping noise and chiming loops. The trebly, gravelly edge of the guitar stuff for some reason paints an image in the back of my brain of a drum-less Blue Humans, or a more stoned version of the great static noise on the Bill Orcutt solo album. Those are both strained comparisons tho - more feelings than actually literal resemblences - and anyway what's more important/cool is that the track doesn't immediately sound like Mouthus, Axolotl, or Magik Markers. It simply sounds like four fertile-minded noise-improvisers making sure not to waste the time they got to spend together, which more than justifies Our Mouth's documentation of said experience (and, hopefully, promotion of repeat occurrences...)

mp3:
~~SPIRIT OF THE POSITIVE WIND - "East Wind" from Spirit of the Positive Wind~~

VALERIO COSI

2007-07-23T20:42:00.000-07:00

Huge apologies for last week's unexplained absence; won't happen again. Been wrapping my head lately around this new album–the first I've heard–by Italian multi-instrumental improviser Valerio Cosi, on the always intriguing Ruby Red label. It's called, kinda blandly, Freedom Meditation Music Vol. III, and it seems to be rooted in pretty open, spacious free jazz. In fact, on a couple tracks that's all it is, but a bunch of others are these weird amalgams of jazz and noise, and sometimes it's not even amalgams, just straight hard cuts from a snappy bit of horn/drum swing to a blinding storm of intense howl. The best stuff is a little smoother than that, melting bits of semi-modality into flattened stretches of drone. But even those spots have this weird kind of incongruity, an odd sense that these things just shouldn't be put together, that I really dig. Maybe it's not so much shouldn't as usually aren't, which is kinda refreshing - even my fave recs of late don't offer anything so intriguingly off...

I think this partially comes from the fact that Cosi made this rec by cutting and pasting together different recordings, so naturally there's gonna be some noticeable juxtapositions and strange turns of sonic phrase. But lots of people do that, so who knows...Maybe it's just not that weird–it is, after all, just jazz mixed with noise–and instead I could just be losing my mind. But after having witnessed about 1000 free jazz shows and probably as many noise ones, I can't say I remember seeing/hearing/caring about anything that sounded quite like this. I've certainly never heard anyone called jazz get noisy in quite this way–even my favorite all-out free jazz terrors keep their noise in the context of acoustic improv, rather than electric bombast (please give me some counterexamples, cause–besides Hat City Intuitive, who do things in a way similar to Cosi but don't sound a bit like him–I can't think of any, and I think that's gotta be more due to my mushy mind than any reality going on here...)

Anyway, while I retreat to my rubber room, I'm gonna leave ya with two examples of Cosi's brilliance, since I owe ya from last week. These are two of the most extreme cases of his jazz/noise yin/yang (the opening track, "Little Hymns to the African Story: i) Chumbani Mule," is more of a true seamless hybrid), with "I Wanna Be Black" (not a Lou Reed cover) offering bouncy jazz interrupted by a car crash, and the even more absurd "You Can't Pretend to Be Someone" chopping Lounge Lizard Heaven into electronic Hades and then some kind of sample-skipping Limbo. Enjoy, and I'll be back with my full brain next week...

mp3's:
~~VALERIO COSI - "I Wanna Be Black" & "You Can't Pretend to Be Someone" from Freedom Meditation Music Vol. III~~

BRENDAN MURRAY

2007-07-09T13:37:00.000-07:00

From our how-the-fuck-did-we-miss-this files: the fine folks at Intransitive have bequeathed us a couple of CDs this week that we're embarrassed not to have already found on our own, as they've been out almost six months now, and certainly weren't hiding. One is a stellar collab from label head Howard Stelzer and NZ destructo-unit Seht, and the other is a really mind-boggling collection of noise/drone/waves/ear-massages/ear-rapes from sound-god Brendan Murray. I call him that strictly on the basis of Wonders Never Cease, cause it's really a pretty much perfect slab of audio manipulation - at least if, like me, you like hard-edged noise but are also a sucker for droning ambience, electronic drift, waves of organ-like waft, and anything else that touches the same kind of lobe-buttons as the power harmonics of Rhys Chatham or Tony Conrad, the hypnotic soothe of the Kranky roster, the melodic noise of Fennesz or Tim Hecker, all wrapped in a noise edge that keeps it from floating into the clouds or fading off into the horizon.

Now that all my overused adjectives and references are out of the way, how about some facts: Murray is a Boston-based drone generator who's been spewing out well-considered noise since about 1998, and releasing it since 2001. Wonders Never Cease is about his 9th or so record, and it was made out of live stuff he recorded at shows in New York and New England. Generally I think the re-working of live material is a much better idea than the putting it out flatly as-is, and this record will from now one be my exhibit #1. Murray keeps enough of the live ambience and impulsiveness in to give his pieces a kinda 3-D reality without the dryness of over-thought, yet does enough reworking and manipulating to make real compositions out of what might have otherwise been uneven peak/valley exercises. Not that I don't love valleys, but Wonders Never Cease manages to make everything peak and still let it all breathe and develop and actually exist, which is why it's blown me away each of the 15 or so times I've listened to it in the past 2 days.

Clearly my brain has lost its ability to do anything but drool in front of this great record, so I implore you to rid yourself of my ramblings and check out "Hymn Two" (linked below), a nice little stretch of chunky, teeth-breaking noise that slowly melts into a windy blast of cold sonic air...then audit some other excerpts on his myspace page...and then order all of Brendan's stuff immediately...

mp3:
~~BRENDAN MURRAY - "Hymn Two" from Wonders Never Cease~~

(VxPxC)

2007-07-02T21:21:00.000-07:00

I'm not super familiar with the work and history of L.A. trio (VxPxC) - there's certainly a lot of info out there, particularly a great Dusted overview and the band's own detail-rich site - so instead of digesting all that and regurgitating it here, I can just tell you that I really dug their one-track, 52-minute live contribution to Digitalis's Bottled Smoke series (there's a new one on Digitalis too that looks like a must-have), and I even more dig (nice grammar) their new six-song CD-r Lizard in the Spring, on my pal Eric's promising new Upstate NY label Tape Drift.

On my first coupla listens this rec sounded kind of sun-baked and beatific, despite the hazy production that immediately gives everything a kind of eerie, dark-cave feel...but lately I've started to realize that (VxPxC) are a lot more sinister than I initially gave em credit for. Maybe insidious is a better descriptor - these songs tend to creep up on you. They're patient and even relaxed on the surface, but burning and grinding down below, with an impressively pointed aggression that really digs into your cranium like a bug laying eggs in your ear while you sleep. Even a track like "Sidewalk Melter," with its seemingly laconic vibraphone clinking, has a cutting undertow that eventually turns into a truly haunting dissonance, much the same way that the hymnal organ drone on "In Day's Light" morphs into a buzzing saw, and the nearly song-like strumming on "Praying for the Regurgitation" slowly collapses into a woozy, nightmarish warp.

Of course, there's other stuff on Lizard in the Spring that's just flat-out menacing, my favorite being the horror-show lurch "Summergirls" (linked below), whose murky hypnosis I can't quite put my finger on. There's parts that are pretty and parts that feel random and almost inhuman, but from about half way through all the way to the end (VxPxC) constructs a vertigo-inducing stretch of aural imbalance and disorientation that must be what nausea would sound like if it felt good. The title slays me too - something about this dense, dark, dripping bit of heavy atmosphere seems paradoxically summer-ish, like waves of humidity rising from the blacktop and camping out between your ears.

mp3:
~~(VxPxC) - "Summergirls" from Lizard in the Spring~~

NEW DRUNKS

2007-06-24T17:01:00.000-07:00

Our Cold 100 chart got electro-shocked back into health this week with a deluge of prime noise arriving via both physical and electronic means. I'd love to (and eventually will) excrete some words about the first three great psych/blurt releases on my buddy Eric's brand new Tape Drift label, or the excellent free-download live thing by Richmond behemoth Caustic Castle, or the seven-year-old drum and guitar damage of W!77!N6 (aka Willing), since all of those offer nicely varied takes on noise, drone, improv-rock, and all the oceans of gray that lie in between. But for some reason I found myself in the mood for some all-out, unrelenting capital-N Noise, and while the second track on Tape Drift's Century Plants CD certainly qualifies, the best candidate turns out to be the unexpected aural vomit of New Drunks, courtesy of a new New Jersey label with the fine hick-baiting name of Fuckallyall.

The nine tracks on Minus are all relatively standard noise fare, and I mean that as a compliment - all the blasts, scrapes, crashes, and annihlating aural assaults are nicely familiar, and consistently interesting even when they're not something you haven't heard before, which is true most of the time. Brian Wayne (the one guy behind New Drunks) was just a teenaged Alabama recluse when he concocted these multi-dubbed splatterings in the early 90's, recording only, uh, "acoustic" instruments (like forks, spoons, blenders, and fans) and then mixing the resulting tapes into overloaded infinity, without the aid of any effects or pedals. So I'd say you could forgive Brian for aping his heroes (Merzbow, Masonna, etc) since he was so young, except there's nothing here that needs forgiving - if you like constant sonic abrasion, the kind that shifts and darts like a hyperactive chimp yet has the unrelenting volume and dedication of a lumbering elephant, then I defy you to find anything to complain about on Minus.

I'd pick out some favorite tracks but really, they're all eerily on the same exact level of quality, filled with deep layers of crunching attack, impulsive semi-rhythmic blasts, distorted beyond-the-red audio maximization, and the kind of piled-high noise stacks that induce aural hallucinations. I've picked out "Meth Mouth" simply because it beats most of the others (by about 1%) in terms of uninterrupted, unleavened noise, and at five and a half minutes is just about the perfect length (I try not to bias myself against arbitrary stuff like track-lengths, but I'm just a sucker for short, succinct cuts of noise, something John Wiese is a particular master of, and something that New Drunks will hopefully continue to dole out more frequently now that Mr. Wayne is 15 years the wiser...)

mp3:
~~NEW DRUNKS - "Meth Mouth" from Minus~~

PETER B

2007-06-19T22:44:00.000-07:00

Apologies once again for the delay this week...and for a quick entry, but something's better than nothing, right? That philosophy certainly seems to apply to Peter Blasser (aka Peter B), a guy I know very little about but have been hearing about for years thanks to my various pals who are drooling afficionados of his homemade bent-circuit synths/oscillators/whatever you call them. I have no clue exactly how Peter makes his stuff or how one uses it, but I have definitely heard a lot of amazing noise come out of his unique implements when manipulated by high-level improvisers, and now thanks to Resipiscent I've gotten to hear what amazing noise comes out when the man himself is at the, uh, "controls."

Luteus is a 13-track album (plus excellent booklet w/photos of some of Mr. B's gadetry) that's oddly diverse - I expected wall-to-wall noise, but there are actual compositions here interspersed among the more abstract inventions, some of which even have repeated parts and vocals and all that kind of song type stuff. I'm not really sure what I think of those pieces - a couple, like "I'm your owl, what is your mystery" are pretty cool repetitive melodies in a way roughly reminiscent of the Books, weirdly enough - but I'll reserve judgement for now, cause the noise on Luteus is pretty great regardless. Most of it comes on tracks titled "Sin Satin S'Sudio," which according to the liner notes "is one of Nodemesnes' ancient ritual ceremonies etc. concerned with umbilical connection between temple-themed Din Datin Dudero random analog brain and T.T. Trano hierarchy ambrazier." I have less idea what that means than I do how to play one of Peter B's instruments, but I do understand that all the SSS tracks on here are filled with non-predictable sonic action that spurts, belches, growls, and annihilates all over the place.

The cool thing is how every track in this subset of pieces is so wide-ranging and exploratory - all of them have blasts of all-out noise and meditative sections of hum, often butted right up against each other. There's one called "Davie C. Jam" that really tosses noises up against the wall like balloons full of paint, slowly splattering each sound on top of the other (and has an ending oddly evocative of Mick Jagger's Invocation of My Demon Brother moog piece, which I'm a sucker for), but I'm finding myself more partial to "NON-ACTION #VII" (linked below), a really well-constructed path of warpy noise and firing din that sounds different every time I play it.

mp3:
~~PETER B - "Sin Satin S'Sudio: NON-ACTION #VII" from Luteus~~

RETRO NOISE MONTHLY (JUNE EDITION)

2007-06-10T19:35:00.000-07:00

Lately it seems I've been dropping Raymond Scott comparisons all over the place - I've done it here two times in the past few months, and I'm pretty sure I've tagged it on at least one Carlos Giffoni record somewhere - so I figured maybe I could get it out of my system by making a retro post on the man himself. If you've heard of Mr. S, chances are it's either through his stellar absurdo-jazz / cartoon-score work, or through his three volumes of legendarily bizarre, proto-techno family-help records known as Soothing Sounds For Baby. That's all excellent stuff, for sure, but it's meant that he generally is thought of as a kind of geeky electronics guy who managed to come up with some wacky sounds as a residue of his technological experiments (this is a guess - it's not like I've taken a survey or anything...)

Anyway whether or not that's true, I think it's safe to say that very few people think of R.S.'s work as noise. And I think it's kinda crucial to realize how prescient his stuff was in terms of treating every sound as worth exploring regardless of how "musical" it might be, and, even more importantly, in terms of how fun and funny noise can be. When I hear blurps and farts in Jessica Rylan's stuff or wheezes and honks in Giffoni's, well, I laugh, and I think a lot of non-believers in noise assume it's all supposed to be serious or scary or intimidating, which just couldn't be more wrong. Maybe I'm not really making my point too well - all I'm saying is that Raymond Scott's noise was both excitingly experimental and totally hilarious, and I think it makes him a pretty important touchstone for those of us who think the best noise has a lot of fucking moods, happiness and humor and absurdity and surrealness firmly among them.

Lots of the Scott stuff available is not really noisy enough to make that case, but luckily a few years back the fine archivists at Basta offered a glimpse into Scott's noisier tendencies by unearthing the many shades of sonic experimentalism he stirred up in his Manhattan Research, Inc. labs. If you haven't heard this stuff, I think you really need to - I bet it'll steer you to what I'm not so eloquently talking about above, if you don't agree already. I've posted 3 quick clips below, all excellent examples of Scott's ability to find humor and freedom in experimental noise - instead of always trying to harness melodies or punch lines out of his gadgetry, Scott sometimes let the transistors guide him, and the results were noisy, funny, and pretty much always spellbinding. I've purposely picked the ones that sound most like today's noise just to show how much of a prophet the guy was, but check out the whole thing and you'll find stuff that combines noise, structure, melody, and fucking advertising in a way that still really blows me away.

mp3s:
~~RAYMOND SCOTT - "Auto-Lite (Sta-Ful)," "Gmgm 1a," and "Take Me to Your Violin Teacher," all from Manhattan Research Inc.~~

SIGNAL QUINTET

2007-06-04T21:25:00.000-07:00

OK, so I know my concept of what constitutes a "week" is starting to drift a bit, but I'll realign my compass soon, I promise. At least this time around I have a semi-substantial amount to say about a daunting Euro-improv all-star ensemble known as the Signal Quintet. I'd read about Jason Kahn's graphical score "Timelines" a while back, and how he had put this five-piece together specifically for it, and then how they'd decided to stay together and do other stuff because, well, shit - the lineup is really too good to be stopped: Kahn, Tomas Korber, Gunter Muller, Christian Weber, and my particular fave, one-time Voice Crack genius Norbert Moslang. I'd read, but I hadn't heard, and luckily the kind folks (actually, Mr. Kahn, I believe) at Swiss label Cut sent us a copy, part of a two-fer package with Sean Meehan's latest (a nice duo effort with Ellen Fullman that I suggest you order, as long as yer ordering this one, right?)

The disc is called Yamaguchi, and it contains three exclt improv-noise environments recorded in Japan during a tour there last year. Now, not to be regionally prejudiced or anything, but since this is quite distinctly a European affair, one might - if one were as lazy and unfair as me - expect it to have a certain, uh, "reserve" often found in the improvised noise of that fine assemblage of countries. And the pieces here do have points that could be called "restrained" or even "mellow" (they also have points of fiery all-out noise most Americans would be lucky to match), but the catch is that even Signal Quintet's quietest moments have a tension, creepiness and just plain scarily thick atmosphere that makes the whole record seem as sinister as any all-out screech fest.

Now that all my stupid biases and even stupider surprises at said biases being overturned are outta the way, here's what Yamaguchi has: rumbling low tones, scratchy surfaces, pregnant negative spaces, thick slabs of dissonance, crunching distortions, and lots of other sounds one might not expect from percussion, synths, guitar, electronics, and good ol' contrabass. Each piece manages to sound both like an aggressive aural confrontation and a lulling, picture-less mood-film, often at the same time. I think the first of the rec's three untitled pieces mixes those semi-warring/semi-brotherly factions best, and is also the best at building its sounds into arcs that are natural and stunningly organic, as if the participants were following some kind of unspoken treasure map to get to an bottomless chest of sparkling sonic rewards. (My metaphors still need help - send any spare ones to the address on the right).

mp3:
~~SIGNAL QUINTET - (track one) from Yamaguchi~~

SEE IF THERE'S ANYTHING GOING ON...

2007-05-29T23:30:00.000-07:00

OK, we're not actually despairing here at Noiseweek, and not even lost anymore...just busy as hell and way too tired to post another half-assed entry. Instead, we're gonna take a week to recharge and promise to bring you something you'll like (and maybe will not even have heard of before) by next week...we can at least tell you that we made an official company appearance at a recent installment of the great Sightings tour that is still going on and that you must attend. The band is rejuvinated as hell and I have to say this is the best I've ever seen em...running all over the stage, w/Mr. Morgan's vocals way more out front and a combo of guitar screech, boweling bass rumble, and skull-slapping drumming that's really unparalleled right now (it didn't hurt that Mr. Axolotl opened with two short, sweet pieces of lightly-dusted drone). So for now, why not enjoy a Sightings out-take that didn't make it onto Fun From None (and buy a copy of that new Sightings DVD-R if you see em), and we'll see ya next week....

JESSICA RYLAN

2007-05-21T11:30:00.000-07:00

The Noiseweek Company Retreat has been extended indefinitely due to us not knowing how the hell to get out of wherever we are. We're compass-less, and the only thing we can tell about exactly where we might be is that there are trees here, and noise doesn't grow on them. Hence we have to beam out some digital smoke signals to make another quick post, and have had to search through our knapsacks and portable toilets to find something to spew about...we were gonna add some blather to the Air Conditioning fandom we've been hinting at lately, but that rec's been out a while, and all your friends already know about it, right? All your friends know about Jessica Rylan too - we've even blabbed about her before - but they may not know about Interior Designs, which has been out a few weeks at least, but somewhat ignored, maybe due to the incessant Important Records avalanche that seems to bury its own releases like fallen skiers who haven't even had time to stand up before other skiers land on top of them (sorry for that weak metaphor, we're tired).

Anyway, I've had minor quibbles with Jessica's records here and there (like the singing on the Ultra Eczema Can't LP), but for the most part I'm a true believer, and I'll happily defend each second of Interior Designs as the kind of Kool Aid everyone with an ounce of noise interest should be constantly chugging. Pretty much everything Jessica does well is done well here - the Raymond Scott-ish absurdist sound-effect belching (opener "Extroardinary" hits that Scott combo of surreal humor and well-considered science perfectly), the morse-code-ish / transmission-esque sort of Ham-radio art, filled with transistor squiggles and oscillator-speak ("Phantasia"), and the obligatory unexpected wild card (in this case, a really fascinating title-track that drops a trudging drum machine beat under a slightly-untuned acoustic chord strum/meditation that's kinda Jandekian and even D. Bailey-esque at times). Oh, and also the static-y loop/drone/wave thing, here done to near-perfection on "Timeless" (linked below), which uses a tactile cycle of gravelly noises to build a standing wave of sifting hum. Especially dig the way the climactic sound is both powerful and mellow, like the soothing cut of a butcher's knife through one's temporal lobes (we'll work on the metaphor issue once we're outta these woods, we promise...)

mp3:
~~JESSICA RYLAN: "Timeless" from Interior Designs~~

ZODIACS

2007-05-14T10:50:00.000-07:00

The Noiseweek staff is on an annual company retreat this week and though we remembered to water the plants, turn off the lights, and leave a copy of our Bible playing at max volume on the turntable, no one bothered to actually take care of this week's post. So we hafta do a quick one from the road, w/out even the ability to provide our loyals a full mp3 (will rectify that upon return to the HQ)...but luckily there are already some online samples up from a rec that's been tearing our ears out lately, namely the beautifully self-indulgent, unashamedly derivative lo-fi wah-damage of Zodiacs. Presumably a spinoff from Zodiac Mountain, this is a trio of relatively well-known alias-addicts sporting yet another set of wacky pseudonyms (I'll spare you the hilarity here, just check their Holy Mountain page for details), and cranking out aimeless overloaded psych-noise in the collapsed vein of, well, way too much stuff to list, but my tastes in the category run to HM gods Davis Redford Triad and the most poorly recorded Marble Sheep epics, and the Zodiacs hold up on that scale pretty well.

This type of stuff is pretty simple - guitar wank full of effects, backed either by nothing or a loping semi-bluesy, uh, "beat" - and, most essentially, recorded in a manner such that everything sounds like a big pile of distortion quicksand sure to suck even the smallest iota of clarity down into its man-eating muck. I'm a sucker for anything committed to tape in such a manner, but it especially works well for guitar wank, which only really clicks if it's folding in on itself, each note/sound/whatever being muffled and overlapping and catching communal fire like a California forest. Zodiacs have this all down perfectly - of the four tracks on Gone, two are more solemn, vaguely mellow meditations that still breath smoke and static, but two others - "Born Free" and "Get Off/Come Together" (the latter being covers maybe? I don't really wanna pay that much attention - close focus defeats the purpose of noise like this) - are pure fireballs of unfettered, unembarrassed pedal pushing - big red skies of rock/noise pud-pulling that reach the highs of that one great Marble Sheep record that rarely sits more than five feet from my stereo. All in all, Gone is a prime example of the kind of gunky dreck that, were it the literal mudpit that it sounds like, I'd happily drive a brand new car right into and accept it as my best possible grave.

mp3 (samples - see bottom right of page - full mp3 to come!):
ZODIACS - Gone

ALLIGATOR CRYSTAL MOTH

2007-05-06T14:05:00.000-07:00

Dunno if I've been craving order, or just that I've been listening to the first few Glenn Branca Symphonies repeatedly, but lately I've gravitated toward improvised noise that includes some semblance of acoustic drum beats and/or identifiable percussive rumble. Obviously that's a pretty vague description that can apply to tons of stuff, but it's the best way I can describe the thread that seems to bind some of my fave recent recs together, from the bombastic drum blasts on Mike Tamuburo's Ghosts of Marumbey to the rolling waves of beat on No Quarter's Burning Star Core slab I talked about last week to the crashing slobber on the dauntingly excellent Air Conditioning disc to even the splatter on the surprisingly aggressive Sunburned (no Hand of the Man anymore, for some reason) CD. Not that I don't still love a beat-less mess of abstract noise, but something about a drum pounding up through a pile of wreckage like a reanimating Terminator is really hitting my cranial sweet spot lately.

Now, by no means does everything on the perpelexingly-titled Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia, the Bottled Smoke entry by Alligator Crystal Moth, qualify as noise with a beat. In fact not much of it is "noise" in the strict sense at all, but rather hippified free-jams - really good hippified free-jams, but still, closer to the drum-circle rattlings of Sunburned back when they did have the HOTM trailing behind them, or maybe a less droney Pelt, or maybe even an abstracted version of Tower Recordings, than pure noise - good company to be in, no doubt. But, you know, it has lots of flutes and rattles and acoustic detunings and distant half-vocals and wisps of electric wah etc. And more power to it.

One track in the middle, though, aims directly for my brain-bullseye, and sticks an arrow right through that mental apple. The beautifully-titled "Climactic Waste" is dense, cavernous noise that employs of all kinds of insistent, bluntly bold percussion - hard doses of rhythmic cacophony behind its gauzey curtains of distortion of feedback drone. I'm particularly enamored of a section about 2:45 in, where the bassy wind of the noise gathers into a gale and the percussion rises up to ride the wave; the first time through it had me imaging an alternate-universe version of A Handful of Dust with Robbie Yeats drumming. Overall, it's an oddly mellow piece for how noisy it is, with tons of stuff going on but nothing feeling rushed or frantic, a neat middle point between raging agression and back-on-the-ground cloud-staring.

I'm kinda perplexed by how all this sound could be coming from a duo, but that confusion is lessened by the presence of Digitalis overlord Brad Rose (erecting sonic mountains here with Michael Donnelly), who's done enough different stuff that no sound he makes should surprise me or anyone else. If you haven't sent any cash his way lately...well, you can't buy this from him since it's part of a now-sold-out subscription series, but you can still buy a ticket to the festival this series is supporting, and/or snag the Foxglove CD-R these two behemoths made a while ago...so, do so...

mp3:
~~ALLIGATOR CRYSTAL MOTH - "Climactic Waste" from Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia~~

BURNING STAR CORE

2007-04-28T22:01:00.000-07:00

OK, so the vague Noiseweek mission is to find and spread noise that not every noisenik in the world has heard...but the higher directive is to, uh, "celebrate" great noise regardless of exposure level. And, well, I imagine there could be some odd individual out there who's found this blog but not found Burning Star Core (shit, I've even already written some about BXC, so it's kinda impossible), so this post is for that imaginary, paradoxical soul. Or maybe you've heard of BXC but you just haven't had time to be buried in C. Spencer Yeh's bottomless pit of brain-crushing sound - it happens. If so, there hasn't really been a better time to drop what you're doing and commit, as two super high-level BXC releases are in current circulation: the mostly Yeh-alone Blood Lightning 2007 (only the last track is full-band-ed) and the full-band-ed Operator Dead...Post Abandoned (full band meaning Sir Spence, Mike Shiflet, and Hair Cops Robert Beatty and Trevor Tremaine).

It might be oversimplistic to say these two recs represent BXC's current yin-yang, but it's kinda true: Blood Lightning 2007 lays out Spencer's one-man bag of tricks nicely - his weird, hypnotic array of violin rapings, mouth distentions, percussive slicings, electronic wallings, and general sense of semi-serious/semi-absurd/semi-wacky (that's right, 3 halves) sonic fuckery. I think I've said this about other people before, and if so I apologize, but in this mode BXC is kinda like the Raymond Scott of noise, more interested in trying out whatever sounds he can find (even if they seem superficially goofy or cheesy) rather than hiding everything behind some macho noise wall (not that he can't do that too, to exclt effect when he chooses). I think "Deaf Mute Spinning Resonator" is a nice example of this - the ping-ponging shit in the second half is so simultaneously hilarious and moving it makes me want to cry rainbow-colored tears.

Operator Dead...Post Abandoned, on the other fist, is the bigger, fractured-rock /noise-jam version of BXC, which slays just as mightily but leaves much different-looking scars. I think the key to the blood-spilling in this config is Tremaine's drumming, a combo of proto-free-jazz roll, trash-can/car-crash blather, and upside-down rock pound, which allows his three comrades to freely spray all over his sturdy canvas like monkeys throwing shit at zoo-cage glass. The result here is more psych-rock sounding than I mighta guessed, but the sense of sheer abandon puts it more in the league of the excellent Death Unit album, or, more historically, the Grey/Licht version of the Blue Humans and the searing ramble of the too-forgotten Lhasa Cement Plant. "The Emergency Networks Are Taking Over" is a little too unique to hang influences on though - the helium-injected soar it builds from eyes-closed, head-down playing is so organic and serendipitous it could only have happened once.

mp3:
~~BURNING STAR CORE - "Deaf Mute Spinning Resonator" from Blood Lightning 2007; "The Emergency Networks Are Taking Over" from Operator Dead...Post Abandoned~~

RETRO NOISE MONTHLY (APRIL EDITION)

2007-04-22T15:01:00.000-07:00

Hoped to do a true retro entry this week but lack of time is precluding it...so since there's some great new shit out lately from people I've blabbed about here in the past, here are some quick check-in's on previous Noiseweek heroes, which is kinda "retro," right?...

THE CUTEST PUPPY IN THE WORLD - Apotrope 2CD (New American Folk Hero)
I think this is the first long-form type thing from this duo since last year's Finfolk, and as much as I loved that one, this sprawling double disc is a huge improvement, a real massive hunk of unfettered sound explorations. Six tracks, three of them over a half-hour long, and all filled with an impressive array of moods and sounds - everything from ambience to noise to rattling improv to mechanical clanking to silence. Finfolk had some impressive variety too, but I think Apotrope flies higher because the variety is more organic and natural - everything bleeds, melts, and pours into everything else, making it a rare record that justifies long, uncut tracks. This stuff would really suffer if chopped up into smaller vignettes, because the transitions are even more fascinating than the excellent sounds those transisitons serve.

FRANCISCO MEIRINO & TIM OLIVE - Eagle Keys (Even Stilte)
Since I last spewed about Tim Olive, he's put together the great Supernatural Hot Rug And Not Used (and a great self-titled album) with Nisikawa Buhnsho, which I implore you to seek out if you haven't. This is his new project with computer/acoustics artist Francisco Meirino (aka "Phroq"?), and it's the standard kind of high-level, attentive improv that Olive has trademarked. Lots of minimal, reductionist bites of noise - rattling static, small whines, crunching blips - mixed with solid columns of heavy sound. As with SHRANU, I'm not sure who's doing what here, but I am sure that Olive knows how to coax smart shit out of his equipment and his colleagues, and Eagle Keys is perhaps the best example of one of his most unique talents - the ability to mix and match sounds so that nothing ever sticks around too long, but no contrivances or artificial shifts ever emerge.

POOR SCHOOL - Voor Niets In Zijn (Cut Hands)
I'm not sure what more I can say about my Montana free-rock heroes Poor School - I've splurted about them enough here and elsewhere that I might make the few people who will listen sick of hearing it all. My guess is that we'll all have to get used to it, though, cause whenever their proposed Ecstatic Peace release finally emerges, I gotta think it'll be hard for lots of other people not to be as droolingly smitten as me. The limited (edition of 61?) Voor Niets In Zijn is another great exhibit of these guys' ability to mix riffs with shattered rock rhythms and penchants for dissonance, blare, and outright noise, without ever abandoning the loping swing that glues it all together. This is pretty similar to the slightly greater Holy Master, but for some reason I smell more Japanese influence here, as in Fushitsusha, White Heaven, or even a stoned version of High Rise. Either way I bet these guys have reams of this stuff sitting around in their smoke-layered basements and I can't wait until it's all sent skyward for the rest of us to inhale.

(Since all of these recs feature too-long-to-post tracks and not that many of em (hence posting full tracks would be like giving half of each record away), I've made a clunky Noiseweek mix of excerpts from the three with 5 sec of silence between each - now go buy em all)...

mp3:
~~THE CUTEST PUPPY IN THE WORLD / FRANCISCO MEIRINO & TIM OLIVE / POOR SCHOOL - (mix of excerpts)~~

EMIL BEAULIEAU

2007-04-15T20:36:00.000-07:00

In the fog of my time away, I accumulated many great recs that have sat in sad piles, begging to be cracked open and played. Last week I finally heeded the cries of some Ecstatic Peace vinyl - mammoth sides from X.o.4, New Blockaders / Moore / O'Rourke, and Lambsbread - and they're all stunners, but the winner is Emil Beaulieau's Moonlight in Vermont. It's been so long since I checked in on Mr. B or anything RRR-related that I inexplicably thought his identity as RRR prez Ron Lessard was still a secret (was it ever?), but since about 200 sites mentioning it pop up via Google in seconds, I guess not. So, Emil=Ron, and also Emil=a noise lifer who's done enough amazing work on record and in his live, pink-shirt-and-tie guise to earn his own self-appointed mantle of "America's Greatest Noise." His sheer longevity would be enough to enshrine him, but the work has always been top shelf too.

Such is the case with Moonlight In Vermont, which I'd love to say ranks among his best stuff if I could legitimately claim to have a decent handle on his catalogue. But KFW sez so, and I don't think you want to argue with that. Apparently this album has floated around as a CD-R since 2004, and was slated to get a Hanson matrix number at some point, but instead it's Emil's Ecstatic Peace debut, complete with one-of-a-kind Emil-made covers - you can see 272 of them here. Mine (see image above) is an excellent magik-markered defacing of an album of John F. Kennedy speeches (see orignal to the right). Individual covers are always a great idea, but even cooler w/this rec because Emil certainly put as much care and craft into Moonlight in Vermont's array of sounds and sequences as he did into each of the 300 covers.

There's nothing world-changingly new about what Emil's doing here, but that's kinda what makes it great - it's just pure, workman-like noise, way less concerned with being different than being thick, detailed, textured, interesting, and basically unbeatable. Each of the eight tracks pulls a subset of sounds from Emil's array of searing strikes, depth-charge bombings, sandpaper tears, high-end screeches, and more, then lines them up into shapes and patterns that sometimes attack, sometimes drift, sometimes bounce, sometimes even swell. If you wanna get classical about it, there's both a Non tint to Emil's rhythmic cutting, and a Merzbow smell to the burning tone of the noise, but I also hear some of what Carlos Giffoni's been doing lately, at least in terms of arrangement and sequencing. It's the way both CG and EB structure their noises into vaguely song-like skeletons without getting montonous or predictable, and still hang onto the essential abrasion and urgency of their noises. Those are pretty standard comparisons, but hopefully that's less about my lack of imagination than it is about Emil's ability to make great shit out of pretty familiar sounds.

The track below is a good, succinct example: traces of feedback and distortion spin around each other in smoky rings, until a surreal sub-beat emerges through the natural waves of Emil's brain-shaking discharges. I especially dig how this track (and others on the rec) can start to sound like a locked groove, an infinite loop of the same simple noise, yet just pay a little more attention and you can hear Emil's subtle variances and organic modifications adding density and color without calling attention to themselves, like an image photocopied over and over until its repetitive shapes slowly blur into abstraction.

mp3:
~~EMIL BEAULIEAU - (side one, track four) from Moonlight in Vermont~~

16 BITCH PILE UP

2007-04-07T21:29:00.000-07:00

Got a thick package of new PacRec stuff this week, and amongst all the saliva-inducing titles (see the Cold 100 to yr right), the thing I least expected to dig was the first non-CDr CD from 16 Bitch Pile Up. I'm not sure why my expectations were low - my only previous exposure had been their set at 2005's Noise Against Fascism, and they weren't even that bad, just a bit bland compared to head-flipping sets from Double Leopards, Flaherty/Corsano, Monotract, etc. There's only so many hours in my waning days, though, so I stupidly let that one show keep me from checking them out further (which kinda took effort, considering there are over 30 releases listed in the discography included in this CD).

Anyway, maybe I'm not so surprised that Bury Me Deep is good, as much as I'm surprised how varied-ly good it is. There's a really smacking range of sounds, volume levels, moods, environments, and so on in the nine tracks here, so much so that I keep getting taken aback each time I skip around. When I saw them 16 Bitch Pile Up were a 5-piece, and now I guess they're a trio, but the beauty is you can't really tell how many minds, instruments, edits, re-mixes, or whatever went into this - everything has a dense and careful craft that coulda come from any amount of brains, as long as they were all large.

Now that I jostle my memory stick a bit, I remember thinking that live they sounded more like a project than a band, but on record that turns out to be a plus. There's a cool sense of lab-like experimentation happening here, the kind of hypnotically-reserved calm that comes from allowing sounds to mix, mutate, simmer, and ferment. Sometimes the result is heavy drone, sometimes it's random clatter, sometimes it's repetitive minimalism - only one time (the deadly "Into the Air") is it harsh noise, and the rainbow of sonics that precedes that makes the impending assault insanely apt.

What makes Bury Me Deep doubly impressive is that it actually tells a story. Lay out the song titles in a row and you get a simple kiddie-horror tale, but the songs themselves have some narrative going on too. Some pedestrian parallels are clear - "Something Poked Up" has a Tell-Tale Heart-like pulse, etc - but on a deeper level, the noises, atmospheres, and sonic constructions here are laid out in arcs that rise and fall, with changes and momentums that turn like well-conceived plot points.

The best example of that deep craft is "The Brown Soil" (linked below), a slow-burning stretch of popping electronics and moaning drone that wouldn't feel completely out of place on a Fennesz record or even a Kranky compilation - the difference being that 16 Bitch Pile Up adds an underlying, insistent sense of menace. Their noise may rise and drift like clouds, but we're talking dark clouds crackling with bruised lightning, like black blood squirting from corpse veins. It makes the ketchup-laden crime-scene photos in the packaging all the more appropriate - fake blood on the outside, real human brain drippings on the inside.

mp3:
~~16 BITCH PILE UP - "The Brown Soil" from Bury Me Deep~~

POG

2007-04-01T13:38:00.000-07:00

Thanks to adrenaline provided by last week's No Fun Winter Ends Destruction at the sadly death-bedded Tonic (as well as some nice enouragement from several in attendance, thanks), Noiseweek is officially attempting re-animation. The biggest challenge at our bunkered, cereal-strewn HQ is clearing time to seek out not-so-known noise, so please keep/start sending stuff and we'll do our best to make this a weekly (or at least bi-monthly) concern again. Many thanks to everyone who asked.

Our return was also inspired by a gift from the tireless Albany stronghold known as FlippedOut Records. We had already been enjoying the last Burnt Hills missive (watch for tons more where that came from via Qbico, Ruby Red, Lotus Sound, etc), so we were pretty stoked to rip open the first sonic stab by Pog, a.k.a. Paula of Burnt Hills. Mitote is 66 minutes of muffled, hiss-laden scare-sonics, the kind my brain seems pre-wired to soak up. I'm just a sucker for anything unclear, and Pog's ghostly rattlings, creep-infested clangings, and nightmarish drippings are all prime murk. The closest referent I can conjure is the Handful of Dust stuff that involves strings of any manner, but even those cloudy classics are clearer than Pog's haze-locked mix; everything here is so cloaked in sonic distance that it's weirdly anyonymous, as if the sounds were stuck in some limbo, lost to drift through the air like fog hanging over their maker's grave. I seriously have felt some of these tracks pass through me like spectres, which probably says more about my current need for medication than about Pog, but I'm coherent enough to know that Mitote should freeze anyone susceptible to the pleasures of mental paralysis.

My favorite example of Pog's nerve-stiffening is "Remember" (linked below). It takes a wispy, vaguely-backwards loop of violin-bending (reminiscent of Axolotl or even Tony Conrad if one of his shorter tracks was hacked up and rearranged), and rides it out into a warped horizon of softening focus and increasing blur. Like a lot of Mitote, it uses a simple idea to create a complex atmosphere, providing a ripe context for your own aural hallucinations. Those less inclined to paint their own nightmares might see nothing, but that's kinda the genius of Pog - her stuff is sneaky enough to slip past the guards into the synapses of those of us whose receptors crave it.

mp3:
~~POG - "Remember" from Mitote~~