Last few:
Watercoloured Well – Arsonist's Rebirthday Audition
Watercoloured Well is, I suppose, onetime gathering of musicians in Germany, that happened after the night of performances in 2011 and ended up in a little experimental jam session. Eight musicians, hangover and Himalayan food. Result of this mix - almost one hour of improvised record that causes dual feelings. At least for me. I'm sorry to say but the names of musicians who took part in this record, don't ring me a bell, but for the sake of protocol they were Barbara Rössler, Brandstifter, Daniel Voigt, Dirk HülsTrunk, Johannes Lauxen, Mr. Ebu, Ronnie Oliveras, Tanja Roolfs. Most of them are artists, performers, poets and similar bohemia. Well, I look quite carefully and with additional reserve of skepticism to such records of gatherings/parties/weed smokings. More than often they are a rather interesting sonic product for persons who took part in the record and their close friends only. Let's admit, no matter how spiritual, brilliant etc. the session would sound; it can hardly match mature studio record. No matter if it matured in the mind of creator after he saw the kitten shit on the street or after torturing the modular synth for 2 years. This album is really decent and one of the best of such improvisational records that I remember at the moment. In places it reminds me of Bjerga/Iversen, in places it is really nice ambient of Himalayan food inspired tribal. But there are places where it's just messing around with instruments that you can see around far too often and that reminds me of disgusting smell of boutique shops, cute cafes etc. I like the beginning of this disc - tribal rhythms, weird percussions, slowly appearing new instruments and their rather dynamic change, slowly developing into a really nice ambient texture. But in the fourth track "Cosmic Kisses" the irritating part of the album starts. It's quite difficult for me to describe this by portraying sounds, but the odd feeling hover in the air. Later on the reading of the poetry starts somewhere under the layer of instruments and the form of the track turns towards more experimental one. But I can't find anything interesting in it. The album returns to more pleasant sounds in the last track, especially going towards the end. Instruments slowly go more and more silent and the session nicely ends with silence. Maybe it's the contrast of my own mood and this release that does not allow me to review it objectively. But I never said I would be objective. Who will like this CD? People that has something to do with academic art. It also fits as a background for some installation of performance and overall I can imagine it was a nice and cozy meeting of congenials. And Arsonist's Rebirthday Audition is the documentation of it.
-----
Lasse Marhaug / John Wiese – Country And Western
I'm not sure if I can call these two guys legends, but by the number of their releases, good quality percentage of them and overall dedication to noise, I think at the very least I can call them noise supermen. Why I'm saying this? Lasse Marhaug apart from his approximately 30 bands and projects, fact that his name cannot be dissociated from the Scandinavian noise scene, and the countless number of albums, he is also director of a label and publishes excellent noise magazine "Personal Best". John Wiese achievements in this context is somewhat smaller - "only" more than 100 releases, 10 or so projects (like Smegma, Sissy Spacek etc.), label that released this CD and perhaps more activity that I'm not aware of. This disc with playing time of more than 40 minutes was recorded in 2008, in the studio with a nice name "The Best Studio in Oslo". Sonic information is not surprising in its quality. There are only a few people who, despite of the vast amount of releases, are still capable of doing them good. In this disc, quite a lot of various noise fans will find something they like - cut-up, junk, "plain harsh noise", experimental - you mention it. First tracks are quite short blasts of noise, dispelling drowsiness at 6am. After the short and harsh intro we enter the sounds of effected wires, springs etc. I've lost the number of how many sounds layers are put one on another, but you will most likely not hear a repetitive moment or sound through the whole track. It's like this duo would be standing by the huge conveyor selecting, mixing, taking and putting back colorful sound details thus forming the weird collage. Sound integrity is interrupted after 3 tracks and by the name "Piano Death", it is quite easy to understand that we are going to join the flirt with piano strings. The longest track in the album Jenny And The Vortex is even more intense psychotic sound collage. The word "motherfucker", jazz melody and distorted feedback fits in one second and then it is followed by another one with the piece of symphony, Japanese folk song and blast of low frequencies. I hope the impression is quite clear. And I'm slowly starting to ejaculate when I get to listening to the rest of the album. I guess as some rock'n'roll fans loves C-E-G-A-B chords, some people in noise are fanboys of metal junk. Rip Torn is a fantastic start for the side B (the tracklist on CD consists of A and B sides). It is brutal, primitive and in your face metal destruction, winding of wires and clanging of chains slowly drowning in the sea of distortion. The second track in B side just prolongs the orgasm. Can you create a bad noise track when you have low rumbles, changed by shrieking feedbacks, decorated with gut ripping mids and when thick wall suddenly transforms into chaotic madness and later returns back into form of monumental statics? No. What can I say for the final words? The first part of the album consists more of experiments and madness, while the second one - of brutality and joy. Those who are interested in revealing secrets, can also try and discover the meaning under the album and song titles. This is one very tendentious review, I know it, but it's not so often that I finally get to review truly high quality, interesting and almost perfect album. I'm planning to discontinue my communication with people who had never listened to this gem.
------
Lackthrow - Release
To review the two disc compilation of 13 years of work in 54 tracks is not a simple task, but anyways... Title Lackthrow is absolutely new to me though it seems that this project is alive and creating for more than 15 years. While exploring his discography that consists of 12 albums (I guess there are more of them though), it's not difficult to see bursts of activity and then years of silence, then few releases in a year and then pause of silence once again and so on. It's natural that despite of what are the reasons behind the interruptions in creating/releasing your works, the changes in taste, thinking, means, priorities etc. appear. That's why in these two discs the variety of musical styles is present - from cybergrind to almost HNW, from cut-up noise to power electronics. Release is packed in copper paper (it was on sell-out or it's simply a new turn in aesthetics of Existest Establishment?), covered in tar. Two discs and A3 posters with tracklists and texts are found inside. Though the variety in sounds and styles is very wide, my ear mostly catches moments when the music leans towards harsh noise without too much experiments; or power electronics. Cybergrind and other digital experiments with sound are not too interesting for me. But I'm glad that there are quite a lot of plain harsh noise tracks in this compilation and they are quite strong, pleasant to listen to and not too original. But as I've said many times - harsh noise must not be innovative or exclusive for it to be a good listening experience. If it doesn't disturb me with weird sound passages towards nonsense, if it is not flat and thin in sound - it's great, isn't it? And this is the exact situation with the tracks that are compiled in these two discs. From time to time I hear some weirder mastering or mixing tricks, but mostly primitive and decent harsh noise dominates. After several power electronics tracks, somewhere in the back of my head, the name Leeche with his Navicon Torture Technologies, appeared. After reading texts, I had to congratulate myself with having this feeling - texts are highly emotional, mainly concentrated towards the relationship between him and her or overall dramatic romance etc. Anyways, Lackthrow has a long way to go to reach the qualities of NTT and all in all more structured tracks of Lackthrow have a tendency to become boring after some time. The presentation of the vocal is rather rude, but the number of PE influenced tracks is not that big that one could get a strong impression and opinion about it. Anyways, I enjoyed harsh noise more. Though there is not too much to enjoy in this album (perhaps it's the overload of information for me), but I'm thankful for a possibility to acknowledge myself with this USA noiser. Unfortunately after looking his releases of the last 5 years, I see that Lackthrow focuses on digital production only. So whoever is interested in this project, this release is a great cause to contact Existest Establishment and purchase this copper release with the strong title "Release".
