Review in Vital Weekly:
I have massive problems with this release. To start, Throat are a rock band from Turku, Finland, yes 'rock band' and released a rock limited edition pink vinyl, of 100 copies on Svart Records in 2018, 'Bareback', where "the band plunge head first into unprotected encounters with musical elements".
A problem as I'm obviously used to reviewing noise and not the encounters with noise as 'effect', as musical 'effect'... And this re-release is not Throat, but the album's tracks remixed twice by various 'noisy artists', Government Alpha, Himukalt, Deison, Black Leather Jesus, Sshe Retina Stimulants, Vanhala, Heat Signature, Like Weeds, Linekraft, Lasse Marhaug, Concrete Mascara, Erratix, Niku Daruma, Kazuma Kubota, Jarl, Keränen... listening to Bareback now, yes its a fairly typical rock album of the drums, guitar, songs in heavy vocals kind of thing interspersed with what is perhaps more 'noisy' links, the remix was prompted by these influences. So having listened to the 'plodding' heavyish rock music now the remix. 16 tracks in the order of the 'artists' given above. The first three the vocals and origins in rock are clear, just some processing, the BLJ more abstract but still ending with recognizable rock artefacts. Apart from distortion general techniques include slowing down tracks or speeding them up (Vanhala), looping and adding reverb. The signature of rock music, heavy guitar vocals and drumming is very difficult to re-interpret without remnants appearing, perhaps nothing wrong with that? The overall effect is reminiscent of listening to rock on short wave radio with the 'processing' being all natural. I'm also reminded of this,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBOanPoEek4, Merzbow's take on Silent Night, where I think general obliteration occurs, as can be seen here
http://www.jliat.com/merzsn.JPG, this is Nick Collins brilliant analysis of the piece. Such a destruction is at first sight not so easy, if it is asked at all, but for purists of noise, nothing but destruction will do, noise is not, for them, just some musical effect. The history of noise as musical effect goes way back, even before the 1812, there is a literalish storm in the Pastoral Symphony. But then given the digital domain such destruction is possible by simply randomizing the bits, whiteish noise is the result. However, this 'noise' would still carry the ghost of the original data in the image of the ratio of zeros to ones would remain unaltered, though it might be possible using something like Cantor's diagonal trick (to create an uncountable Real number) on this data to create a new track which is absolutely different. But then this too might be just a negative image. That for me at least is interesting, and attempts at truly controlled chaos, which if doomed to failure might have theological and philosophical consequences, that is the philosophical 'substance' is indestructible, and music then is merely the arrangement of indestructible substance, i.e. noise. (jliat)
