meant to write only a few words, got a bit carried away. as usual.
Various– Hard Panning (The Ultimate Contemporary Cut-up Harsh Noise International Compilation)
It's taken a while, but it would seem that, here and now, as we start to close in on 2015, there are, on the face of the earth, enough legitimately talented noisesmiths in the earful of "Contemporary Cut-Up Harsh Noise" to fill a whole comp- a comp one is actually quite content to play through, several times. "All killer, no filler" in the lingo. Clearly a lot of thought entered the rather artful sequencing of tracks, each flowing almost imperceptibly into the next, managing to suggest an almost narrative progression.
Facial-san seems the appropriate choice to cut things off. No bullshit, straight to the point, rapid-fire, herky jerky, a condensed seemingly live-in-one-take immediacy that comes off as memorably as the day mom caught me "hard panning" in the toilet. I was combing my hair, okay! Having got that out of our system, established credentials as such, we are now free to get a bit artsy. Jake Vida certainly opens things up, artsy-wise, hurling flavorsome trashcan slabs into wide-bottomed flatulent junk fields, plenty of flesh, plenty of color, hinting at hidden depths yet to be plumbed. So the comp goes, gradually rolling out a sequence of submissions that acquires ever-greater depth, growing more flatulent, more expansive. And who better to grow that flatulent expansiveness than... TEF! The quintessential hard panner himself. What to say, TEF hard-pans the shit out of this one, so densely compacted in its highly articulate elaborations that several comps' worth of noise have surely whipped past by the end of the three-minute TEFfering. If anyone can top this, we have us one killer comp. Better: one Killer Bug! Endo to the plate. Not quite sure I hear TEF being topped as such, but suffice it to say- if mom had ever caught me doing Endo's "Uszkadozony Falownik" I probably wouldn't be here to tell you about it. Smells suspiciously like the killer bugwork submitted to the recent Endo-Bonini collabo, a tad shy on the scrapmetal sources informing that particular work, but similarly staked in dialog between leery feedback pine and repeated spasti-percussive bludgeon-scrunch. Endo understudy Kubota delivers more of his now near-signature pretty-aquatic-ambience against which the most precision-pointed of razored screech cuts into an otherwise lazy afternoon staring at smooth, stylized, deep-sea, undulation. At this juncture, our progressively expansive plunge into the bowels bottoms out with the studiously composed textural explorations of the ever impressive Jaako Vanhala. Vanhala favors a kind of dialog all his own, here between a very heavy, near-sluggish, undertow and a more aggressive, highly detailed, thunder-crunch. Maaa go all out, if a bit against the Hard Panning grain, devoid of both herky and of jerky, favoring a quite robust, smoothly oiled, psychedelic wanking throb sweeping through sludge-encrusted junk-tinged extremity.
And so ends what I would characterize as Hard Panning: 1st Movement, cycling back to the very Mess-y "straight to the point, rapid-fire, herky jerky" of PURGIST, administered with a surgeon-like precision, easily exceeding all expectation normally afforded such dubious praise. Facialworship never sounded this self-assured, a point most convincingly drilled home in the closing twenty seconds or so, like fuck me gently with a chainsaw. As Movement 2nd kicks into gear it is Deafault who serves the role of widening the sound field, all the work of one Michael J. Ellingford, and goddamn this is fiiine- deliberate, measured, harshblasts, shredding apart a darkened reverberant scrapbed to most dramatic effect. And then, and then... Jesus Wanking Christ, the most herkingest jerkingest, Ahlzagailzehfuckinziguh! Like how much motherfucking shit can one compress into a ninety-second fucking track? Total fire, corrosive flame-thrown multi-pronged attack from every which angle, blasting, bursting, explosive, HARRD. Ninety-seconds maybe, but much like the TEF you could swear that a much longer work has been rammed through the utterly smoked aural passages.
And then, without so much ado, wtf, cycling back again to the Mess-y conclusion of yet another Movement? Developer is about unsettled as they come, continuous hack n slash thwackery through every which re- and de-formation. The intent here, I think, is to come off as agitated and agitating as possible. If this is to be facialworship, then it is at the micro-level, continuous, unrelenting, aggravating; herk 'n jerk so frantic I think my helmet's about to snap off. In keeping with the progression outlined earlier, Mantichora immediately broadens the palette to offer the first proper play of analog drone, nicely slathered against reverberant, descending, dishevelment of scrapheap in continuous, calculated, collapse. Against such full-bodied, reverberant, breadth, Encephalophonic sounds downright undercoooked- or perhaps more plainly puritannical. A decisive volume boost does render this submission most piercing in its very narrow clamp, twist 'n squeal, certainly no complaints. K2, about as good as he's managed of late, continuous, inoffensive, feedback filtering, but by now our wonderfully narrative sense of progression is lost. No fear cause Lettera 22 trap attention in the dank, dungeon-like confines of a close-mic'd dirge-y industrial atmos for four fucking minutes before unleashing the most rip-roaring of beastly brevity. Certainly no herky, nor jerky, but fantastic finish, it does have to be said. Last but not least, an uncredited hidden track that chooses its singular moments to utterly RIP the shit out of the by now all but deceased earhole. Quite the unique little rippah, a practiced restraint delivering some seriously sick shit. Niice.
