See bottom of this post for digest commentary.Jaakko Vanhala – Cuts Of GraceI remember the day this was unofficially announced like it was
nineteen days four hours and thirty minutes ago. I'd spent the better part of fifteen minutes scouring the net for any mention of new Vanhala, fervently praying for a sign, growing increasingly depressed with every desperate click of the mouse. The best discogs could offer was a minor credit for "voice" in a twenty minute piece tagged Ambient, Experimental, Drone. And though the man was clearly active in a range of sound-making capacities, like, where was the industry standard namesake, the solo work, the decisive, graceful, severing of the head of the competition and the, decidedly less graceful, shitting down of its neck? Then the announcement. Whoa. My dear pervs. I... I just... I was so excited, I almost spilled my beer.
I thought it might be fun to get the name-dropping out of the way first. Ferial Confine and
The Full Use of Nothing. TNB, with and without Organum. Tiechens/Merzbow/PGR
Grav, a name I do tend drop a fair bit, but this time I
really mean it, okay? I could go on, but perhaps a picture emerges, and it while that picture is certainly noisy, and at times HARSH, it doesn't quite qualify as harshnoise. Yup. There it is. Fuck this lame Vanhala shit. NEXT!
Look, you know words like "killer" and "masterwork" are going to drop at some point, but just... chill. Relax them weary bones. Sink, slow and easy, into DENSEly composed industrial-strength hell-hole. Hell howl. Whorls of orgiastic whole-brain consumption, drawing the un-harshhead deeper, deeper, plunging straight into full and bodied, bloodied, mass of metal, scrap, junk, scrape, screech, shriek, clank, clunk, groan. All delivered via sinkholes, sinkhowls, of determinedly draining brood, thick with dirge-laden atmosphere.
It is the atmosphere- dirge-laden, brooding- that really sets off the chief elements in play, namely the high-energy piles of metal-junk so cleanly, carefully, captured. There are a lot of them, and they rage around at quite the clip, seldom satisfied with just one or two places in the acoustic scope. A descriptor like SPASTIC could be dropped, but settling through the atmos as texture more than inviting of dis-rangement of equilibrium. This one's all about the equilibrium. Un-spastic equilibrium. Oh shit, another name's about the drop: Michael Ellingford. Just as far as the twin concerns of loud-in-the-earhole
unharsh, and the preoccupation with studied composition and pacing. Also, the precision and economy, necessarily demanded of the 3", serves the material well, the vision that much more singular, penetrating, refined. In the dialect of the spastic, all butt-driller no butt-filler.
The inaugural slicings of "Pain Enigma" evince a patience and confidence culled from the intervening years of refinement. Rapid-panned clusters of full-spectrum metal-junk penetration, deep cuts coming in fits of fevered slashing derangement,. But coming at controlled intervals, spaced with increments of crinkled rumble, so as to allow the 'holes their space acclimate to the brutal, incisive, drilling, stepping back, slamming down, hard, with near-percussive flare and heft. Fevered slashing arrangement. The raw material is almost crystalline in its contours, tasty morsels of exquisitely razored delectables readily inviting of close interrogation. Fevered slashing engagement.
"Phosphorous Nostalgia" ditches the bespectacled airs and jumps straight into boiling cauldrons of full-flavored flesh-razored fantasy. Layers upon layers, savagely slashed open, torn clean off, twisting and curling in a flushed, reverb-hued, fantasia before dry fits of fevered slashing escort attentions below the surface, strains of mechanized flesh-metal abattoir shrieking overhead. Trapped now in the brutal, tightly-constrictive, belly of the sado-beast, "Iris Star" seems an ironic title. Plea for escape or tortured dementia of mind so far gone as to seek salvation through suffering within? Dragging psych-oscillations lurk along edges, snaking through all-consuming metal-on-metal claustrophobia, rising in confrontation as squealing rust-blades seethe in piqued indignation, bring things to a screeching halt, then plunge pointy-end-first into the next bout of repetitive machine-flesh horror, bits of choked vocal distortions spurting across bloodied pan.
"Blood Arcanum" and a first flirtation with the gibbering realms of the spastic. Or at least, the lesser-hinged realms of the schizophrenic. Fevered slashing debasement of the fringes, very raw and filth flecked, curdling inward going for the kill, trading the dense punishments previously expounded for straight-ahead screwdrivers-stabbing-through-aural-cavities assault... for a little while. Then it gets schizo. Some recapitulation of the controlled dis-position of Pain Enigma, but drawing out the uneven breaks in thoughtful, reverberant strains, threat of drone almost escaping the heavy-handed, metal bashed dis-possession.
"Sword Of Death" truly is the coup de grâce, in every way and meaning. Eight minutes and sixteen seconds of tightly regulated metal-machine-gone-haywire chaos. And control. Electronic alarm bleats out the warning just before some nameless horror precipitates hammering on the thick iron door. Then the semi-distorted stabbings of metal screech, squealing drill, whining saw, upping the tensions as bleat hits solid state, door buckling amid localized avalanche of collapsing metals. And suddenly, Death is here, infernal choir announcing the dramatic entrance, dark light bathing the scene. The orgy of half-mechanized junk-frenzy reaches a screeching crescendo of thunderous clang-bang, scorched-raw whang. The sound is monstrous, it is everywhere. And... at this moment I'm surprised to drop yet another name- Dissecting Table! At least, in the play of massed cacophonous metals against choral drone. The better moments of DT will do that sometimes. Why not drop the latter, more DT-influenced Linekraft in there while I'm at it. Just for fun. Here, with mighty clank and clonk, the cacophony loses some of its fire, some of it thunder, the drone loses its choral airs, acquires a more dreary, industry-gilded, sheen. Now to the final frenzied escalation, dense cacophony of raging junk beginning slow ascent to clusterfuck finale, the door ripped clean off it hinges, the clanking shrieking nightmare surging through, blood red promise entering phase of singular screeching scorchout,
And the blade drops.
Digest spew:
Jaakko Vanhala – Cuts Of GraceJust to get a couple naggling descriptors out of the way. Killer. Masterwork. There, said it. Dense masses of slowly encroaching metal-on-metal claustrophobia, with huge gaping spaces, avenues, some of them faintly echoing, into which to sink attentions along for the ride. This is, literally, insanely good. As in- the total focused insanity required to successfully deliver this caliber is frankly rather disturbing. I am disturbed, dis-possessed, dis-positioned, but, like, in a good way. I hesitate to call this harshnoise classic cause it probably only sneaks in on a technicality. Noise, sure, gotcha. But music. Good, HARSH, DENSE, un-SPASTIC, with loads of that sodding HARMONICANESS sucking up the undertones. Suck it up, fuckers.
