Mo*Te / Encephalophonic– Broken Stone Glass / Spastic Emotions
For a project so short-lived, or at least, so unproductive, Mo*Te is certainly versatile. From the minimal, understated, even grim, murmuring creep of Needle Freak (with Government Alpha), to the wacked-out, barely describable, epic, tribal-ambience-or-something, of MeltingPlasticHeadCore (with Crack Fierce), to the sheer brutal awesomeness of Rest Stop Entrapment (with Humectant Interruption) and Life In A Peaceful New World (with, possibly, Stimbox). Certainly unpredictable. And almost as certainly, every time, killer. I'm not quite sure what it is that so readily renders the killer possibilities. But thirty seconds into "Broken Glass Steel", the Mo*Te side of this split, and I'm immediately reminded of my very first sexual experience: the abovementioned and still sexually charged Life In A Peaceful New World. This latter tape is easily enough described: layers of deep, rumbling, almost ambient, envelopment, through which quite harsh intensities attack with consistently pointed exactitude, cycling into stratospheric heights that approach veritable psychedelic permutation. Now, nearly twenty years later, what do we get? Layers of ambient envelopment through which harsher intensities build with persistent, if not exactly pointed, rigor, cycling through a reliably earthed minimalism that could, from a distance, suggest the possibility of psychedelic permutation. Perhaps here we may identify one area that occasionally sets Mo*Te on the road to killer- the expanded role he allows the more ambient flavors to play, occasionally to the detriment of harsh noise proper. The ambient flavors here played cycle from near drone-harmonization to an increasingly recognizable rhythmic throb, but all the while the Harsh Proper seethes, principally in the background. Matter of fact, there is no foreground. These are, plainly speaking, some well-grounded sonics. Okay then, let's flip this boy over, I crave me some Encephalo. Hmm. "Spastic Emotions". Pregnant pause. Slow snowball into this well-intentioned slobber-fest. Slow in the Encephalo sense of the word- at least half a second or so. Then things get plain ugly. Dude seems to be chucking shit all over the place. Tinpot shit-pails hurled all over the room, ripping holes in filthed-out distortion walls. Pull back, wait, metal spokes hammered at irregular intervals. Full-force all-cylinders KA-BLOW! Hard-right zing. Crinkle. Stop. Crinkle-snuffle. If the intent is to achieve a maximum of listener dis-orientation, then I would call this success. "Spastic Emotions". Repetitive rumpty pumpty, stop-pause, lurch. Shudder. Sricka-cracka-crunk. Distinct slowing of pace. Classic Encephalo, you might suspect. But then things get interesting. Through the relative calm a tingly little electro-crackle sizzles into the field, farting, fizzing, agitating. This is it, this is fucking it! you shriek with triumph, here comes that megafrasticspastic assault... and then- thumpa-thumpa-thump. Bass out, end. Talk about anticlimatic. Not your classic Encephalo, and one I'm probably going to have to play back several times before I get my few remaining befuddled braincells around it. Frazzled, that's the word I'm looking for. "Spastic Emotions". No idea whatsoever.
Kazumoto Endo / Encephalophonic– Quattro Pulsanti Bomba / 終身性的虐待
Perhaps Endo has always been a bit of a gear fetishist. Back when he was performing as Killer Bug he would literally "play" his signature springloaded-washboard-thingy, AKA Killer Bug. The Killer Bug – the gear - as performer, Kazumoto Endo - the man - as the, um, low-paid techie? When the name changed to Kazumoto Endo, the Killer Bug left the stage to be replaced by... laptop. And, it ought to be said, a significantly diminished stage presence, to go with a significantly diminished interest in earhole destruction. Not a lot of recorded output released in the laptop period, and when he would return to the stage in all-analog mode it was as... Killer Bug, with Killer Bug center stage. (Subequent performances as Kazumoto Endo would feature something rather Killer Bug-esque but we'll ignore that for the moment.) Now here comes Endo or should we say, here comes Quattro Pulsanti Bomba. A straight-ahead piece of gear responsible for a straight-ahead piece of work. With the four pulsanti in action, this is as frantic as anything released via the cut-up workings of the earlier Endo; but without apparent studio editing/trickery, this is much more rough, unrefined, rugged. Ragged-edged. I could very much imagine Endo delivering the exact performance here recorded live, on stage: the man, the gear, the new legend to be born? Well, I suppose it depends on what your expectations are of your Endo at this, um, stage. Yes, the edges certainly, are ragged, which is, of course, great! But persuasiveness comes via the very raw materials proffered: blistering sharp, bristling fury. Never has Endo sounded this brutally harsh. And never, not since Killer Bug, has dead air been so violently cleared. Straight-ahead blast, exploding momentarily across channel pan, crinkling into near null-fidelity... very hard to offer a play-by-play without sounding like a fucking spastic. Still I'd hesitate to call this random: each abbreviated event feeds directly into the next, the barest hint of subtle manipulation betraying a tell-tale care, and control. Erratic, certainly, as erratic as fidelity proper is shredded, with heavily percussive cut-up-ish textures achieving a kind of constantly unsettled, er, shreddus interruptus. A bit of a strain; re-strained, even. Net impact: as frenetic as one might hope, if not all that fast-paced, and never straying far from the essential quattro-layered attack, fenced in, finally, by a consistency quite well-defined. In any whathaveyou, those unpersuaded by the Endo mixwork gracing the recent full-length Bonini-Endo collab, to which this is to be regarded as a prelude, will not be won over by the raggedy Quattro-textures on tap, and may I therefore direct the sagacious seeker of sustained sonic-sensual satisfaction to the satiation to be derived on the flip-side, courtesy Encephalophonic. Encephalo hits immediately, hard, with tightly focused fits of metal-pronged stabbing. Buttloads of painstakingly edited fragments compressed into the most fleeting of spasms. This was just in case you thought the Endo side wasn't spastic enough. Very little deviation from the subject at hand: that of acoustic junk sources punched in stuttered, arrhythmic, fashion to splat out a net, crunch-filtered, epilepsy. Repetitive, crunch-filtered, epilepsy. Sounds like someone's been listening to way too much Pain Jerk, staring at Retrogress-ive album covers, and has somehow drawn all the wrong (right!) conclusions. Repetitive, crunch filtered, epilepsy. Muttering to himself in frenzied self-reassurance: "Sounds For Buttphone. Sounds For Buttphone! G-G-G-Gomi-s-s-s-sss-ssan had the right idea, the right idea.. ye-ess – CUM ALERT! - but never quite realized, NO!, his true, his true, his TRUE potential. The fu- the fu- the FOOL! Yes, yes, it's okay my little piss angel, yesss, you know you want it..." Ahem. Pardon me there. May I say something? I mean, look mate, the shit does not necessarily have to sound like this, okay? Not necessarily. But how can one assign blame when the vision is so purely, so convincingly, staked? Repetitive, crunch-filtered, epilepsy. No doubts at all, I am a convert. Hook me up to my Electronomicon and be done with it. FUCK! Massed junk armada: unload. Smash in. Smash through. Smash. Smash-smash-smash. This was in case you thought the Endo side wasn't percussive enough. A thousand shards of scintillating textural rrriiiiip.
Encephalophonic– Alone
Geez, this boy is fucked. Fucked raw. Raw. That's the fucking word, you fuck. Wonderfully blown-out sonics from A to B. A to Z. Whatever, you fuck. It's three in the goddamn morning, the earholes are absolutely mangled and here I am flipping over again, and again, you fuck. I did say raw, right? But I could have been letting the essence get to me. The stench. Encephalo has certainly expanded his sound. Or upped the gear. These are surprisingly full-bodied workings-through of fantastically flavorsome fudge-punchies. And surprisingly bereft of the more spastic inclinations of yore. Y'know, like, way back in, what was it, 2013? Yeah, those were the days, lemme tell ya. In them days, Encephalo was more noted for, well, how shall I put this? YOUR MOTHER SUCKS COCKS IN HELL! Now, he seems to have settled down to a more focused brutishness. SOUNDS FOR BUTTPHONE! For the moment, anyway. Side Peace-Signing Asian Kid starts with the familiar looped stuttering, slams into the familiar acoustic hacklery, dips into the familiar pincer grip, then rasps in fits and starts through unhealthy hawking splurt. Then he breaks out his surgical utensils and gets down to a pointed, business-like, needlepoint seethe. Come to think of it, this was just about as spastic as ever, but perhaps the clarity of elements set in motion renders a different species of perversion. Less agitating to push the shit out, more plain grim. Side Pierced Chick With Handsaw In Mouth is perhaps the more settled, thus to be second. Thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk. Ground-up propeller fizzle. A seemingly undercooked shit-bed acquires a threatening quality by successive increments. You'd think we were going to launch into the wacked-out Encecphalo we know and crave. And we do- almost. The knives are out! A few glinting spasmodic incisions threaten to rip the fabric apart before heavier densities roll into view, start to encircle the periphery, come into focus, then to escort proceedings to an impeccably subdued denouement. Nicely crafted bit of faux drama there, really had me going, think I'll flip over for more Peace-Signing Asian Kid.
