Pretty sure I posted the shit to follow onto this forum, but possibly not. I know there was a more properly complete and edited version posted to one or another board but f'cked if I can recollect where. Anyhow, here's I think the original un-cleaned-up oldie. Please do take with requisite massive grain of salt.
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You`ve seen it all before. And should you continue reading (you fool!) you`ll see it all again. Another attempted overview of the inimitable PURE series. Here, for my own amusement, I`ve decided to subject the series to a "report card" format. No apologies for the blatant harshhead slant. Interestingly, the "A+" category contains the greatest number of entries.
A+
Zone Nord. Nearest existing sonic equivalent to getting buried alive. By a very cruel and sadistic "supreme being", naturally. This is probably what most "power electronics" units want to sound like but can`t because they`re concentrating too much on scooping out the flimsy crux of the matter rather than the rock solid sludge of the bunghole. Monstrous masses of pure, grinding grit apply a firm inexorable squeezing pressure and proceed to wring the piss-shit out of all living sensibility, though by the time the cd`s run its course you`ll begin to doubt there ever was such a thing.
naj. Picks up where The New Blockaders left off, though rather more skillfully mixed and micromanaged. Clever and painstaking analysis of the complex interplay of broken down millworks machinery, carefully ripped and shredded into its component parts. Slowly building cluster of quaking trashcan hysteria. Seemingly muffled perfunctory bellows invaded by a rabid rodent host, clambering in maddened droves through clattering clutter of scraping steel turbulence.
Chop Shop plays Emil Beaulieau. Bung-disemboweling study in controlled chaos. Bleak gnarled deeply atmospheric industrial-strength crevices filled with dirty scuzzy brittle cracked crumbling granite blocks and decaying crystallized rust-shards. Fragmented froth of chainsaw'd chunky nonfi overload careens haphazard through smothered carefully composed dental-drilled cavities. Hint of hurtful harshness threatens at every interval to puncture the dirge-ground consistency, only occasionally breaking through and forcing the earholes to itch out of habit.
Knurl. One of the earliest Knurl recordings, still ranks up there with the very best. Twisted splinters of serrated steel scrape away at frayed raw nerves, crudely shredding the brain with all the surgical precision of drunken glassblower trio with the hiccups. Massive grating dialog between the tortured soul of mad Hittite pulling at fishhook caught in the sphincter and an enraged warthog with tusked snout caught in a mangled but mobile combine harvester. Guaranteed to shave a good few years off the auricular expiration date.
RHY Yau. Guided tour through dissociative mindrot of tourette's sufferer who`s been going a bit too heavy on the shrooms. Kill or cure? Yau offers the following recipe. Plug in tape recorder, press record. Strip subject naked. Poke with electrodes. Nipple clamp car battery. Toss into tub. Turn on water. Insert tire iron via anal passage. Jam lengthy string of interconnected microphones deep, deep into bowels, throat first. Add large supply of glass shavings, rusted nail clippers, long strips of extra-sticky plastic wrap. Liberally ply with laxatives. Painstakingly extract mic`d assortment, all the while beating subject stupid with baseball bat stuck with large bent nail. Take tape recorder, dump down toilet and flush, mics and all. You`re getting there. Wackass lozeznge denture spittle dribbling shrieking howls of incandescent nasal spray. Sheer delight.
Japanese Torture Comedy Hour. JTCH really made a splash with this one, leaping from complete obscurity to noise superheroes in a single bound. Lightning charged hyper-spastic lazer-zip whip action. A supercharged orchestral arrangement of knife-sharpened razorburn. Hyper-kinetic high-end discharge, tipping hats to Monde Bruits and his DOD-ly assortment. Mostly flawless execution with near-Thirdorganesque attention to precision and detail. A harshnoise classic.
Masonna. Kind of collection, I suppose, of "greatest snippets", plus newer shit of an unvaried but dynamically delirious kidney. The snippets work rather well in sequence. The new shit offers straight up over-the-top brutality. Overall, I prefer this to the quite palatable Ejaculation Generator (Alchemy), and though the material is rather more simplistic, it is much more immediate and unforgiving for that. More raw, more unrelenting. Very little breathing room. Orgasmically sublime. Keep those frantic gasps coming fast and furious.
Pain Jerk. Two words. Fucking. Harsh. Absolutely beautiful. Words quite fail. Pain Jerk not yet at the top of his game, already delivering quite finely honed razorsharp earscorch. The puritannical earblow phase, before he got into the loop-flavored acoustic percussives and rhythmic transitional divergence. Before he got "musical". More focus on flat-out ear damage, with most of the dynamic interplay surging below the massive screeching surface. Crank that shit. Blot out the world.
A
Phaeton Derniere Danse & Le Syndicat. Huge variety and hugely entertaining masses of diverse and dynamic material converge in an unwholesome orgy of pure sonic fuckery. Disorienting in the surreal extreme. Candyfloss whiskeytrail slides slick and salacious, sucking sickeningly sampled acoustic flashes into a glittering glimmering rainbow of rumbling clinkity clanked construction and demolition, psychedelic swirls simultaneously invading and abandoning rubberized shite fetish, chicken-suited spacemonkeys clambering for crippled crankshaft.
PBK / Hands To / AMK. Closely compacted collaged collection constituted entirely of gamelan spring action motorbike ripcord pachinko turbine squeegee drainspout roulette tibetan squeezebox metal machine sewage duck-call funnel bear-trap guillotine spoked muffler regurgitant sax styrofoam penile vacuumepipe seashore weasel fornication. Mostly mellow. And yet. Conscientiously cantankerous flip flops consistently erode all semblance of prospective chillout promiscuity. The other eleven tracks are pretty good too.
Rend. Spacious flowing ambient pools funneling carefully tweaked abrasive scour, heavy on the reverb. Squeaky clean psychedelic sweeps swirl and glide while wet whitewashed whispers waver and warble to a calm and freeflowing scathe. Pristine high end peaks tremble and erupt. Low end gaseous cleansing agents billow around muted electrified shrieking, fading in and out, echoing from on high, and down again to the bubbling bumblasted base. Quite ingenious excrecution.
Macronympha / Evil Moisture. High-powered ping-pong trash compaction. Spliced crumpled crippled snippets boisterously bouncing from lubricated left brain extremity to barbecued tranny holocaust. Tentacled mechanical monstrosity with fingers and pincers in, like, way too many meatpies, clenching orifices getting a coldly calculated workout. Much more Moisture than Macro, then, perverse play of competing harshhole sensibilities flapping around slapping eachother su-su-stupid.
A-
Akala. Beautifully mixed, textured soundscrapes developing in lazy fits and lurches. Lengthy meditations which seem longer than the actual 70-minute track time suggests. These are all sounds I have encountered before, around warehousing districts or the guts of ancient oil freighters, painstakingly layered and reworked to present a grim, guttural vision of urban deterioration, acquiring mass and pressure as rasping seismic generators are leisurely pulverized beyond recognition.
Incapacitants. The wrath of several drunken thunder gods concentrated and amplified beyond redzone raging nightmare. Blissful tinnitus-inducing blisterscorch, boring with unrelenting pressure into badly damaged earholes. Not by any stretch the harshest nor best the Beatles of noise have unleashed, but still quite satisfying concentration of multi-faceted earscorch dynamics, simultaneously shifting in near-imperceptible increments over an ever widening range of raging inhuman inhumane torment.
666 volt battery noise. Swansong of this fine ultraharsh ultravoltage obsessive and easily his finest work on record. Evocative of early Pain Jerk, and every bit as punishing. Severely situated blistering pissout reflected in ultrafast seething ferocity. Doesn`t let up for an instant. And if it did, we don't like to talk about it aiight. Razorblade rotors whirl with furious abandon through slaughterhouses packed with an entire menagerie of fresh and exciting fleshmetal possibility.
Deathpile. Not the biggest power electronics fan here, but if you`re going to do it you might as well do it right, which is what has here been done. Powerfully dense looping thunderous flow. Each track a well-constructed if uneventful exploration of specific feedback laden sonic terrain, analog treadmills grinding slowly over the deservedly damaged brains of demented boiler-room bludgeoned, beefcacked n sputtering, flaccid-cocked arsedrool.
B+
Dead Body Love. DBL has always had his heart in the right place. His commitment to pure uncomplicated low end harsh overbilge has always been reassuring. This particular release is actually structured into a fairly "musical" format, something I`ve come to expect from one Goverment Alpha and few but others. Starts out with some edgy rhythmical bludgeon before exploding on track two into a more carefully developed study in concentrated earblow. A dialog between thick sludge-encrusted crunch and quite fucking harsh scorching attack, in which textures and brutality are more hinted at than actually present, kind of an inverse of the method favored by Incapacitants in their "As Loud As Possible" release. Fidelity and frequency ground down into utterly mangled jerk and shudder. Surprisingly decent.
Merzbow Loves Emil Beaulieau. Grab bag stash of randomly assorted tricks and treats. Sloppily slaughtered metal junk spew burbling bouncy electronic squiggles squeaks and creaks. Lots of attention grabbing hop-scotch spurts across heavily mined field of mortified low fidelity flatulence. Can`t put my finger on it, and probably wouldn`t want to given the devastating and disgusting depths to which the unhinged smeltering medley has been so rudely subjected.
MSBR. Steam-powered earthquake locomotion crushing thy head with heavy-handed glee. Incisive brainpan nailgun stabs pierce the rumbling fabric at random intervals, dislodging the attention long enough to get a few good headbutts in for good measure. Hisses chug and chaff at thick-skinned churn and burn. A glowering glassy-eyed grim reaper revs up an angelic armada of turbocharged combine harvesters and runs roughshod over bombed-out tarfields choked with anal mist.
Aube. About as harsh as Mr Design Theory is inclined to get. Air-raid fallout mirage and jeering conche-shell catcall. Mirrored loops expand and implode, cycling and swimming around constantly winging whine. Feedback traces drone and shiver, careening in careful tandem across busy buzzing alarm jitter, triggering unsubtle shithawk squawk, erratic, bad-tempered steam whistle, and forcibly friendly static braindrill.
B
K2. About as quiet as the Junk Metal Molester is inclined to get. Not quite as hyperactive and hurried as usual, and suffers for it. Each unevenly spliced interval of alternately acoustic and feedback-laden rustshred is given a little more time to run its course. Gong show bell bash and screeching rusted metal tension hacking at bone-dry sewage tunnels and oil barrel avalanche. Plenty of random fragmentation going on in there to keep you on edge and guessing for the duration.
Soldnergeist. Nicely composed almost darkambient sample-heavy analog grate, harsher melodramatic peaks and valleys scouring the surface with considerably more edge and impact than, say, Spur 2 - the comparably quiet "major label" debut on Artware. Nice salve for the earholes in between extended sessions with the louder PURE submissions. Rhythmic drilling skulks in the background, grows bored with the pussyfooting, catapults up front, swims and bores through bleating butchered goatherd. Steel scaffolds rapidly dismantled too late for the oncoming tsunami riptide, steel asphyxiation squelching your pathetic pleas for mercy.
Violent Onsen Geisha. "Sorry! sorry! sorry! PLese iGNORE THIS." Remind me next time to heed these warnings. The Japanese Residents with more cut-up scum novelty than you can throw a diseased rodent at. Moments of genuine spasmodic ingenuity undercut by still more idiotic moments of pure diddling. Mood music for ADD sufferers, a mish-mash souffle of broken record jizzscree and Fisher Price crate-scratch. A tad more engaged in properly assaulting the aural cavities than other VOG offerings released around the same time. I confess to having laughed out loud at more than a few intervals, but I`m easy that way.
B-
Fab.44. Competitive piles of low-end oscillation interspersed with looped extract of constipated yeti trying to force out synaptic crap. Oversexed Bin Laden impersonator drags grated aluminum siding through chunky dirtmounds full of ossified cadavers and grubby rhino clusterhump. Small hippos piddle on overloaded resistors, vomiting rhythmic prickfriction and lubricated cornsocket spunkfest.
Ramleh - Vol III. Easily the most worthwhile Ramleh on the PURE series. Rather a lot more development and conscientious arrangement of persistently pleasing perversions, as though the angry young men have settled down to a bit of more focused sullen loathing. Not that settled, though. Chaffing rust-clad pistons smashed through with badly mauled grindstone granulation. Abused and clogged circular saws wracked with infuriated bitterness and earbleed seething. No end to the savage screaming fits either.
C+
Emil Beaulieau - Kill The All-Noise Japanese Artists. I`m rating this purely on novelty value. The source material`s good. Someone had to do it. And that someone would obligingly have had to be Emil Beaulieau. Some nice screaming loops of courtesy of that great Japanese band Boring Boring Boring Boring Boring Boring Boring Boring Boring, not to mention intense flatulent belches and sandblasts from Merz Bow-Wow-Wow, and of course the reedy psychedelic whining of Nerd, did much to restore my faith in the field.
C
DMDM. Documents the gradual decay of apathetic industrial-strength machinery in various low key permutations. Slow-paced and deliberate mechanized grumbling and grinding, with mostly cosmetic development creeping through the grumpy, cratered surface. Disaffected grunts and sniffles grub in murky thumping burntout silo frieze. Groping mandibles crank the woolly cobwebs of bumbling frankensteinian procrastination. Possible grower that has yet to grow in these ill-educated holes.
Ramleh - Vol I. Worth having mostly for archival value, the shit dates back to 82/83 and sounds it. Rolling reverberant feedback underscores demented, distorted, utterly incoherent, vocal shrieking fits, of which the only words I can make out are "fistfuck". This gets repeated quite a lot, notably on the subtly titled "Fistfuck". Yup, that about sums it up. Raw, roughly hewn spewage slops out of broken fiberglass bilgepipes as tormented wriggling piglets dance and hurl.
Ramleh - Vol II. Not noticeably distinguishable from Vol I, though I kinda dig the plastic bubblepipe lazer fight featured on a track here titled "Koprolagnia". A bit more variation than Vol I, with politically pointed samples, whittled bass slumping, and distant shrieking fits sounding out from the bowels of underused milkcarton warehouses.
C-
Murder Corporation. Thick, dull, waterfall roar, all atmosphere, little substance. Airplane turbines cut in and out as squealing flocks of baby chicks are sluggishly smothered with fluffy pillows and bleak, muffled dirge. Bass-heavy dials turn thunderstorm avalanche into bubblebath mudscuffle, reducing the assembled mess into still less recognizable pith and pulp. Gurgling gopher raid, rushing over cliffs into deep, broiling pools of liquid polystyrene. Substance, in a word. Revisit warranted.
Cock ESP. Vying at times with Violent Onsen Geisha for status as the Residents of harshnoise, Cock ESP have their moments; and at least the shit`s legitimately harsh. Shit-smeared tincan sleeting tumbles into glass cylinders and fake Slurpie suckjob straw action. Waste paper baskets ripped crumpled chewn up spat out of overworked ostrich or otherwise elongated avian esophogi. Wretching wrenching quenching juicer convulsions amid peevishly protesting gearworks feedback yelp. Some "funny" samples too.
D+
K. Mizutani. I read in an interview once where Mizutani is apparently into presenting sound material in its intrinsic form. Which basically sums it up. Raw sound, of various stripes: first, thirty minutes of very intrinsic metal scraping, grinding away on concrete curbs. Next, the most hilarious free jazz piss-take on record. Interspersed with mostly dominant silence, a "dialog" of sorts: "bass" pluck, ass slap, tinpot ding. Ass slap, gravel crunch, tinpot ding. "Sax" squeal, "bass" pluck, tinpot ding. Etc. Third submission is actually palatable. Heavy duty heavy metal scraping, metal ringing tones, feedback, hum, water, nicely mixed and panned out into something I might actually listen to again someday.
These I don`t have, haven`t heard, and wouldn`t mind seeing some reviews of:
On the to-get list:
AMK.
Crawl Unit.
Emil Beaulieau - Memories.
Le Syndicat.
Putrefier.
Runzelstirn & Gurglestock.
Smell & Quim.
As yet undecided about:
Emil Beaulieau - Dedicated to Masami Akita.
Emil Beaulieau - Dedicated to Richard Rupenus.
Emil Beaulieau - Dedicated to Charlie Ward.
Big City Orchestra.
Consumer Electronics.
En Nihil.
The Haters.
Impact Test.
A.Licht/T.Shiraishi.
Thurston Moore.
Prick Decay.
Sudden Infant.
Tac.
Total.
