part of the Knife Culture review (SI 8):
Bleachboys does wonderful textures of lo-fi physical sounds and drones.
Judith Hamann crafts amazing string improvisation. Multi-layered violin string abuse belongs to some of the best I've come across!
James Rushford & Joe Talia provide some of the darkest - yet most likely acoustic drone! Didgeridoo, bow cymbals, metal objects and such usual instruments most likely here, yet it works like dream and intensity grows almost into levels of noise.
Kristan M. Roberts is treating field recordings and rough electronics to become cascading layers of beautiful noises. Some micro-sound crackles and ultra boosted crispiness may not always be advantage, but works out here perfectly.
Steve Law takes the goofy experimental and digital processing into extremes. Thinking of Evil Moisture or some moments of Sudden Infant, but with clarity of digital technology.
Sean Baxter crafts metal objects in artistic and delicate manner. Far from filthy harshness. With such approach revealing the immense potential of frequencies and subtle sound elements.
Aux Assembly relies on simple, yet somehow suffocating guitar ambience. It's ethereal, but lacking all the cheesy Aidan Baker style multi-effect showcasing.
Default Jamerson manages to capture essence of spacey drones, more in tradition of vintage electronic music than contemporary dopy jams.
Screwtape is probably on harsher noise band who manages to deliver top notch piece on this comp. Heavy, multilayered, at the same time harsh overall impression, yet soothing undercurrent!
When talking about Sweden or Denmark "peaking", it doesn't mean just harsh noise or PE, but also in those scene a lot of different approaches are combined. From rugged post-punk to raw bm to tape manipulation, industrial and noise. Yet instead of artificially fitting things together, they ACTUALLY co-exists within very narrow range and fit in together. Certainly it means only fraction of "bm" or "punk", which appears to be kind of "outsider" stuff compared to main current of such styles.
So when talking Australia peaking, I don't mean just PE or harsh noise, but like mentioned above, also drone, improv, field recordings, etc. If Terra Sancta is mentioned, one should not forget ISOMER (known from Tesco release) and his later project in collaboration with Ebola Disco guy: Bordel Militaire (cd out on Neuropa label).
I think situation is similar in many countries. They have vast field of activity going on, but perhaps missing someone (or something) who will pull it together to appear almost as movement, not just unrelated guys with their hobbies. Have label, venue, festival, magazine, something what allows things to become more than it is.
I must say I have been quite isolated within small fraction of genre. While internationally, my interests are wide, domestically it has been hard to team up with artsy or academic. I have been toying around with idea, what would be Finnish experimental fest like, if it gathers anything from Grunt to Hetero Skeleton, from Bizarre Uproar to Grey Park, from Keränen to Vainio, from Reijo Pami to Arktau Eos... Either chaos nobody likes, or simply brilliant.
