PLAYLIST with COMMENTS/REVIEWS

Started by GEWALTMONOPOL, December 15, 2009, 09:30:59 PM

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Andrew McIntosh

Norwegian noisechap's Sindre Bjerga's "Half Moon, Half Wasted" release, from 2005, is a nice little bit of low fidelity, blown-out, dirty sounding and distorted electronic drone (I'm assuming a synthesiser but could be wrong), that is pretty nicely minimal but oscillates a little bit on side two then stops half-way to do some kind of feedback-ish hissing and swelling (sounds like a bit of short-wave radio, maybe), and much the same sort of thing on side one. Extreme hard panning to both sides. There's also this squiggling distorted stuff over it that sounds like an issue with the leads used to record but was left in anyway. Has an atmosphere not entirely unlike Chop Shop. He's very graciously allowed a long unused weblog to host an upload of it, and checking, it seems to still be working.

https://sindrebjerga.wordpress.com/sounds/
Shikata ga nai.

Soloman Tump

METGUMBNERBONE 'Anthropological Field Recordings For The Dispossessed' 2CD
I ordered this from Old Cafe Europa as well as a couple of other items.  I was going by the sales pitch on their website rather than any previous knowledge of the group - improvisation and novel recording locations is something I am interested in.  The first CD starts with a loud male scream and a vast natural reverb trail - excellent.

[will continue writing later....]

Andrew McIntosh

Does anyone else remember, or even know more about, Danger Hilton, the Swedish Power/Death Electronics project that based itself on Rastafarianism? They did a download only (there may have been physical versions, I don't know) release, "Smoke Over Ethiopia, Fire In Israel", which I've only just gotten around to giving a proper listen to. It's a nice little release. More interesting than entertaining, but has its moments. Reasonably short pieces that sample a lot from reggae and movies featuring Rastas, varying between semi-harsh and atmospheric. Puts a bit of emphasis on delay for obvious reasons, and looping samples. Plenty of feedback, samples and so on turned up enough to feed back. Funny how it works - maybe reggae types need to borrow a bit from PE. Two longer pieces, "Health Dub", which loops a basic sounding reggae beat with feedback and distortion, and "Freedom of Spirit, Freedom from S", more drone based with trad. PE shouted vocals (although set back in the mix). I suppose there's some connection with Green Army Fraction since they did a split (didn't the chap from GAF go to India to become a sadu or something?). Whatever the case, this seems halfway between a "joke" project and something a bit more serious, but whatever the intentions, it's an interesting little bit of experimentation to me.
Shikata ga nai.

burdizzo

Hah! Yes, a friend of mine gave me a disc he'd burned of this a few months ago. Your description of it is pretty spot-on, though I'd say the overriding amateur feel and the samples would put it more firmly in the "joke" camp for me. I'd be way more interested in hearing the split w/ GAF, since that was clearly a project with serious intent - and far better music, to boot. Not that some of the GAF titles on "Black Power" wouldn't raise a wry smile, but it seems that Danger Hilton's are obviously for laughs!
I must say, I do miss GAF. Loved the music and the attitude. I had heard he went to India, all right, but apparently he went back to Sweden and had a daughter. This was ages ago I heard this. Also was supposed to be having a new CD on L. White a few years ago, but nothing surfaced, sadly.

Bloated Slutbag

#7789
See bottom of this post for digest commentary.

TEF / Scathing - split
Dadadrumming strikes again with more TEF! This time squaring off against not-unworthy newharsher Scorching. Or Searing. Or Scalding. One of those damn descriptors whereby implications as to certain much-prized earhole incinerating temperaments are duly measured. Definitely on the upper end of the Harsh Scale first postulated in 1963 by Dr Scorchyerheadoff. According to the doctor, The measurements of the peak harshness and spectral brutality distribution of a high-brutality, short-duration sphinct-rupturing discharge source indicate a peak harshness of 54,000 °Fucked to 68,000 °Fucked over the wavelength region from 450 nm to 300 nm (republished in Professor Blumpy's "Tinpot Shit-Pails Hurled All Over The Room, Ripping Holes In Filthed-Out Distortion Walls, vol 52"). It's all a bit technical really, but the point is, the shit is hot. Both sides of it, the one nicely complementing the other, the inner ear follicle thingies necessarily guaranteed their never-to-be-recouped incinerations.

Scathing- that was it!- kicks things off with five untitled ditties, separation of which seems at first formality, but which works out advantageously as the side rounds out. The first thing I did when the sounds hit was check discogs for some pictures of the project in action. Live, very much looks to be your straight-up pedal-driven harsh. On this recording, however, almost unquestionably the sort of digitally sourced abrasions also to be found in earlier Worth and some of the other acts appearing on the Lead Lozenges label. The said representation is here much more "pure" in its hole-smoking convictions, though, seldom straying from straight-for-the-jugular whitewashed blisternment, rapid-fire dynamics at some reduced remove, all inevitably in thrall to the Scorchyerheadoff Principle (ibid). Honestly, as to whether the digital sourcings are real or imagined, it's hard to tell, and when the shit is this shit-hot, it's even harder to care.

Untitled, first through third: subsurface busy-ness rushing haphazard from one spectral coordinate to the next. Go deep and gorge on exquisite sub-spastic detail, tensions twisting on a wild ride, plunging down bewildering disarray of collapsible rabbit-holes, spine herked jerked and snapped in fevered dimentia, never settled for more than the most fleeting of intervals, repeatedly cut-off, zipped, zapped, hacked. Rabbit-hole-ous interruptus. Pull back now and indulge the char-blackened high-end, whitesheeted scathewalls subsuming the particulars in purplefaced ferocity, blueballed nut-strangle, redzoned oblivion.

Toward the end, probably the fourth Untitled, and a distinctly filthier wallowing in blown-out distortions, the whitesheeted scathewalls suddenly in fierce competition with fractured textural dynamics. Here a bit of a reprieve from the merciless 'hole smoking, but also occasioning opportunity to take in the punchy spikes of mangled underbrush chopping up the unsightly scathescape, the sources even less certain than previously postulated and the perfect counterbalance to set the scene for TEF.

TEF, of course, is TEF. And if that doesn't scan, well, your 'holes are in desperate need of some serious edumucatin'. That edumucatin' comes fast and hard as only TEF TEFs. Exacting precision and focus, meticulous, obsessive. Obsessively compulsive disorders viciously hacked and splattered across the full frequency spectrum, dynamic spasms exploding in violently unhinged de-rangements, on the knife-edge of the most precarious balancing act...yet delivered with an elegance, grace, artistry and attention to detail second to none.

I wanted to use the word "hyperspastic" but actually this is one rough motherfucker, heavier, dirtier, smellier than the full length Framework previously issued on Dadadrumming. Part of this I readily concede could simply be format-dictated projection on my part. But. What I'm hearing, or projecting, is something more in line with the split 7-inch on White Centipede, where the more hyper of the spastics takes a back seat to the arid landscapes occasioned fragments of percussive thumpa-thumpa, acoustic-metal-smacking-heavily-down-on-acoustic-metal, and raspberried psychedelic twizzle-snort.

The shit, is, as ever, completely out of its fucking gourd. But still, at least by TEF standards, the sense of being invited to stick around, explore some of the territory, get a right gander on this here vicious shriek-attack slamming down from the upper-right, that there bled-out bludger thump ripping along the lower left, or the epileptic feeding frenzy ripping throughout the channel pan, dislocated spasms ripping appendages out of socket, rendering perspective well and annihilated. A nice little round of synth-driven psychedelic thump-loop, a legit pretense at coherence, rapidly lr'd scrap-bash ripping through the teeniest of dead calm respites, eyes rapidly blinking in the blissed surging sss-pastic exposure.

FUCK! Every time I think I got a handle on things and am sure to complete a sentence intact here come the insane hyper-spastic incisions, the outlying proto-ripper-bilge abortions, the frenetic herkily-jerkily splick-splack shudder, the Total SPRACKER-jurg-HUCKA-kerLUNK-swebber-flershsxperk, to to... Total Earhole... To render the narrator a spastic fucking mess. Total Earhole Fuckfrenz-

TEF, is TEF.


Digest spew
TEF is TEF. This time counterbalanced out by newish chap who sure knows his scathe-wash. His scorch-wash. That principally upper-ended earhole-drilling excess of non-relenting persuasion. His HARSH. These two projects deserve each other, one seldom straying from straight-for-the-jugular whitewashed blisternment, one surprisingly rough, and filthy, in deferral to more hand-crafted non-spastics. Total Earhole Fuckfrenzy meets exquisite sub-spastic negotiations of the most intricate of collapsible rabbit holes. Rabbit-holous interruptus.
Someone weaker than you should beat you and brag
And take you for a drag

Theodore

Earlier this morning - Bob Marinelli / Outermost CS on Distorted Vision : Oh, Marinelli starts and it has sounds i dont like at all, dont have the vocabulary to fully describe them but think the sound glass does when you clean the windows, it goes with them for around 7 minutes and then it totaly changes to a more 'clasic' harsh noise form, till the end. Yes, that's what i wanted to listen, perfect ! Track ends abruptly, leaving me want more like the last part and i ask why the first 7 minutes ? - Outermost, white noise like, not a lot happening, i have listened him much better, i was expecting some crazyness.

Continue with Lasse Marhaug - Feed Feel CS on Bawler : Tape is a C40, a small part of it is included in his Tapes CD set anthology, dont remember which. Hm, it is similar style / sound like the Outermost though more 'electric' , maybe 'richer' too. I am thinking i probably am in mood for destructive, physical, mercyless noise but i say fuck it i ll listen this. Lay back, closing my eyes, it's hypnotic, and sounds better when you dont pay attention to it. Just before the end it lifts me up, like saying dont sleep, flip sides. B-Side same, but now i have a feeling it goes somewhere, there is something to come. I follow, i wait some minutes ... No, it doesnt go anywhere, lay back again, maybe i need sleep, awake whole night. But soon ... heavier, faster, full ! Lows, pace, and it goes, giving more ! Fuck me ! The beast woke up ! I knew it !

Both tapes so and so.
"ἀθάνατοι θνητοί, θνητοὶ ἀθάνατοι, ζῶντες τὸν ἐκείνων θάνατον, τὸν δὲ ἐκείνων βίον τεθνεῶτες"

Major Carew


CLINIC OF TORTURE "Rohrstockliebe" tape box

The project has been hit and miss for me (of the releases i've heard that is) but i'm always interested in it due to the soundtrack type approach, but with a harsher edge.

A side is very much as COT describes : Ripping & distorted, very much in the red.

B side sounds like Klaus Schulze going through feedback assisted cock & ball torture and / or a Sherman Filterbank.

Very good all in all. Artwork isn't as in your face / immediate & striking as previous COT releases and leaves your eyes having to do some work which I quite liked. Nice neat envelope tape box.Highly recommended.

Andrew McIntosh

Listening to the split cassette release of Club Moral and Etat Brut (which is just titled "Club Moral Stocklist 002" on the Archive.org page I downloaded the files from), released originally in 1981, although the version of "Eating Limbs" apparently was made in 1979 - it's hard to imagine a more stripped down, rawer and more minimalist version of electronic nearly-music. Club Moral's basic formal is some kind of synthesised rhythm track or sequenced track (using an EDP Wasp), with a few constantly, almost dementedly, repeated words sufficient as lyrics. Most tracks are short, except for "If You're Looking for Trouble", which just takes the same formula and extends it over seven minutes.

Etat Brut, at the least, sounds like using more than just two tracks of the four track, and combines different sound elements, although mostly, again, synthesised rhythm pieces with tapes of incongruent material or just more synthesised blurts. Or, just grubby synthesised tones and pulses ("Machine" 4), or just tape loop collage ("Machine" 5). Whatever the sound source, it's minimal and raw.

Makes me want to declare "fuck off nowadays Industrial!".
Shikata ga nai.

Yrjö-Koskinen

#7793
SEKTION B - When Democracy is no longer enough CD
This 2017 full length should first and foremost be described as the deutschest of deutch-PE imaginable. Much like expert carvers of hieroglyphics in Ancient Egypt, though, Sektion B have always managed to produce a very distinct style of their own, even without even once stepping outside the boundaries of the "typical" features of the culture to which they belong. The vocals, the heavy monophonic synthesizer basses and the noise all have their particular characteristics, and taken together they are usually impossible to mistake for anything else than Sektion B. The most conspicuous thing, which I know to be a turn-off to some, is the contrast between chaotic synth/noise bursts overlayed with multiple vocal tracks on the one hand, and a very clean and lap-topish production on the other. Many tracks are constructed in a way which could well be old school Genocide Organ, or even something like Terror/Degeneration era Grunt, but the production is wholly different. I don't know the analog/digital proportions as far as the sound sources go, but it's clear that there's been a whole lot of professional grade EQing and mastering work going on. Samples and vocals are clearly audible even in the most massive shitstorm, each sound layer is detectable with little to no phase cancellation.

I am generally into underproduced stuff, at least when it comes to noise, PE and (to some degree) black metal. Most other forms of music, I've learned over the years, usually benefit from a deliberate production: a dirty rock or hip hop track is almost always better off faking the filth and lofi rather than simply embracing it. Because of this, it would seem likely that I would balk at Sektion B's utterly German insistence on proper propduction, on a proper CD. That isn't the case, though. This is actually extremely vibrant, violent and atmospheric. The comparative cleanliness and clarity works to the advantage of the recording, and I can't really explain why, except that all the mixing and mastering has been done by someone who "gets" the genre and has managed to make it work. It should also be added that the attention to detail isn't limited to the production, since the tracks are very complex and well constructed as well. You may begin listening to this as a slab of power electronics, but in the end there is much to be gained from focused listening and analysis, because there's a lot to be discovered. This is a great album, I've been through it several times, and I will keep revisiting it.
"Alkoholi ei ratkaise ongelmia, mutta eipä kyllä vittu maitokaan"

Ahvenanmaalla Puhutaan Suomea

NaturalOrthodoxy

Grunt - Sacrosanct Imperium

Having some post-birthday dolla resulted in a rare splurge on tapes and zines- and this was among them. This has been one of my favourite Grunt works since its release, so I'm glad to finally have it on tape in all its analog glory. This is exemplary industrial PE, emphasis on the industrial. The second track's awesome bouncing synth loop, overlaid with junk metal and feedback is something I could listen to forever. A great example of a track where easily identifiable sounds lead you to be in awe of how effectively the most simple components can be employed.
This totally differs to the B-side, my favourite part of which is a repeated sound that I have no fucking clue what it is. It sounds almost like a Wacky Races cartoon skidding sound effect, like Dastardly and Muttley's car coming to a screeching halt before a hitherto unseen cliff and sheer drop. There seems to also be some excellent flange/phase feedback done with a panache that's second only to Con-Dom.
You've all heard this tape, but it inspires enthusiasm with every listen.

White Medal - Jorviking

There is something laid back about the drumming and riffing in White Medal that I find nowhere else in black metal. This isn't to say it's at all lethargic or lacking in intensity, rather there is a feel of genuine musicianship, but without overly technical virtuosity ruining the Tolkienesque brutality of it all. It's comparable only to Black Sabbath at their most doomy- an energetic ease of hand that means that the songs never feel stiff or rigid in the way a lot of black metal of this sort can do.
Speaking of songs, these are masterfully constructed jams. The penultimate track has all the momentum of a 90s alt-rock banger, with a riff that could honestly have been lifted from one of the gloomier Dinosaur Jr songs. All this without ever compromising the atmosphere of dark times on the desolate moors Yorkshire.

Andrew McIntosh

#7795
The Italian label Pece put out an unusual release called "Trashbag Sessions" (it's first release in fact), which is nearly half an hour of the sound of what must be plastic trash bags being scrunched, slowly but consistently. Fair bit of tape hiss on it. It's a very nice release. Relaxing. Minimal. Pointless. What I mean by that is, there doesn't seem to be any attempt to convey anything much than what the sound actually is, which is enough.

There were a few other releases from anonymous artists (probably just whoever was/is doing Pece) - "Ashes", which sounds like a slowed down field recording; "Feeling Closed In", which is (EDIT) a lengthy, saturated electric drone with some very distant drum kit hitting, more an Industrial feel; "Soundtrack for DSH", which doesn't really sound much like anything except a low hum with some kind of barely audible banging in the background; and "Post Suicidal Mood", which is barely audible electronic sounds. All smothered in tape hiss. I wonder if the tape hiss was dubbed on. In any case, it's all great, mind-numbing material. The label's Bandcamp, alas, doesn't have these releases any more, but it does have two releases of what sound like, at first listen, more conventional, synth-orientated Italian Death Industrial, which is also always a good idea, but I miss the more pointless sounding work.
Shikata ga nai.

FreakAnimalFinland

Quote from: NaturalOrthodoxy on March 13, 2020, 02:05:51 PM
Grunt - Sacrosanct Imperium
This totally differs to the B-side, my favourite part of which is a repeated sound that I have no fucking clue what it is. It sounds almost like a Wacky Races cartoon skidding sound effect, like Dastardly and Muttley's car coming to a screeching halt before a hitherto unseen cliff and sheer drop.

Not to spoil the mystery, but it is manipulated choir/orchestra loop, similar to the 1st track on A-side. You can hear the orchestra brass section and the high pitched female choirs wailing.

A lot of Grunt for last 5 years or so, is loop pedal, walkman tape manipulations, MS-20 modulations of those sounds. Often 1-2 pedals. Gear is often utterly minimal even if there is seemingly quite complex sounds. Most often studio-live recording with one added overdub sound.

New album was completed last year. It is not very far from this tape, I'd say. Still considering how to do the covers.
E-mail: fanimal +a+ cfprod,com
MAGAZINE: http://www.special-interests.net
LABEL / DISTRIBUTION: FREAK ANIMAL http://www.nhfastore.net

Andrew McIntosh

Either/Or's "Somnia Rising" is three tracks of feedback manipulated into long drone pieces, very nicely done. The longest piece, "Invocation, Now", introduces, halfway through, some drum-kit percussion and a tad bit of following it on what I think is guitar, which gives the piece a somewhat Krautrock-via-DoomDrone feel. The layers of feedback drone are snarly, but surlily, with elements rising and falling again. One could get needlessly poetic describing this, but it does have something of a ritualistic feel about it (hence, I suppose, the title). Imagine taking the drugged-out experiments of feedback layering of far-out rock bands to the exclusion of all the other crap, the acoustic guitars and lyrics about bullshit and all the rest, just having menacing drones and higher pitched tones that mutate slowly.

The next piece, "I Am, I Command, As One..." is nearly as long and made with the same methods. Effects like flanger, phaser and delay, a bit more blare-y distortion maybe, digital looping of bits of sound, all give the piece a bit more of a noisier feel but still the same idea. It's well recorded, I get the impression it's live jam work but there could have been some editing later on. There is, unfortunately, a touch of guitar noodling at the start of this track, but it doesn't last long. A few spoken vocals mid-way through. This track is more obviously guitar driven.

The last piece, "Open Circle", is shorter and more drone orientated, like the first track, and a bit calmer (a bit more edited with the panning, too). Bit of bongos at the end to remind listeners this is hippy stuff. This release sounds best when it's concentrating on psychedelic drones and least (to me) when it's fluffing around with jam-band moves.
Shikata ga nai.

Ashmonger

Kjostad - Glacial Lake (CD, New Forces): First Kjostad release I have, but I like this very much, reminds me a bit of some stuff like Kam Hassah or Mercury Hall perhaps in that it is Noise, even harsh at times, but it relies much on atmosphere, in this case of natural sounds, birds etc. The metal and noise sounds themselves are very good, good recording quality, far from lo-fi, but with enough crudeness in them.

Mikerdeath

Cerebral Rot New EP
https://cerebralrot.bandcamp.com/releases

good death metal the way i like to hear it.

Fetid - Steeping Corporeal Mess LP
https://listen.20buckspin.com/album/steeping-corporeal-mess

good death metal the way I like to hear it.