JAAKKO VANHALA "Here be lions" (freak animal, 2013) - Everyone on this board may have listen to it now and it got lot of praises. Yet, the album could deserve a dedicated thread because it could be the first piece of harshnoise of importance of the decade. I gave it a lot of time until now and it becomes more and more impressive each time I care for its sound world. It is one album that the geek part in me would love to see seriously studied and discuss in magazine. To say the least, it has a sense of spatialization that I'd never encountered before in harsh noise work and that is almost new; and on a textural matter, an amazing resilience that is unheard (especially on the original violence). It is extremely detailled, carefully edited and feels totally free and unpredictable. Just amazing. That shows how harsh noise can evolve and that there still is a lot to do.
Xome "fur" is another piece I am listening to, these days. Released on CDR in 2002 on Negatron Heavy Industry. It is very good pedal noise. Dynamic, playful and one of the more relentless work from Xome. You can hear that crisp digital mastering that was becoming the norm but it still works perfectly on that one. It makes me remember when flanger, chorus, unlimited digital delay effects were common on pedal noise and are now more or less banned. That particular release doesn't abuse it that much, though. I was looking for some news from the project and found that it has a bandcamp page where you can listen to the album as well as others released on his own label.
K2 "schizophereniak signal transduction" (solipsism, 1998 ?). It must have be one of the first album I have owned from the project and it really blew my mind at that time. Listening to it now, the digital textures mixed don't feel as cheap as I was afraid of (I quite dislike his recent outputs). I suppose it could be on the list of Jaakko Vanhala's influences for the editing performance. Still, the feeling is a world of differences.
