Quote from: k.p.g on October 09, 2025, 10:28:08 PMPerfected Grave Vault - Wilderness & Industry (New Forces)
Completing my run of the 3 brand new tapes from New Forces just as Stefan decides to drop some discs on us. Great timing. It should be no secret that this duo is great; their compilation disc on Oxen was phenomenal. This one continues the trend of gross harsh noise. Plenty of contact electrifying power to boot, but I tend to prefer the moments of odd percussion and minimal sputter where the tape hiss overtakes the signal. It makes for a lovely creep. Great work to be had here.
You got my interest with "gross harsh noise" and this seems really good indeed. Ugly, harsh, heavy, fast and loud stuff, and has a lot going on simultaneously in both channels. Hadn't heard of this name before but got to keep it in mind now.
The tape's on bandcamp for the other curious ones:
https://newforces.bandcamp.com/album/wilderness-industryCitalopram Shunyata / YANA - untitledCassette, 2025. Edition of 50 copies.
This split was recorded back in 2021 I think, but due to all sorts of mishaps its release was delayed until 2025. Well, luckily this type of harsh noise doesn't become dated that fast. Both projects offer about 20 minutes of material. The well-dubbed tape comes in a small plastic pouch with rough and colorful collage art on either side, and features no infos aside of the project names.
YANA from Finland is somewhere between harsh noise and industrial this time. Their side often feels quite bleak, but in the spirit of coming down on some substance rather than being depressed. It just seems hazy and nocturnal. The very rugged and rough distortion that's often prominent in the mix is broken and low-end heavy in a manner that should be very much to the taste of anyone into Amek-Maj. The recording has great dynamics, so although this blow-out rawness is allowed to take up a lot of space, there's still plenty of room on the spectrum for more quiet and subtle samples, field recordings, violently beaten yet often distand or heavily effected sounds of metals, and phasing buzz of unspecified electronics to move and operate in. Surprisingly there's one or two porn samples here too which is quite rare for YANA. Perhaps they were used in honor of the more porn- and perversion-focused split partner, heh. I think I have heard nearly everything YANA's published, and it's pretty much always good or great, and most often something different from any of their other recordings. This one is no exception.
I have been aware of Germany's Citalopram Shunyata for years but haven't really checked it out properly. Here, their side of harsh noise seems quite light-spirited, forward-moving and energetic, especially so in comparison to the gloomier vibes of YANA. It also has a more traditional feel of cassette saturation to its sound. It's not properly blown out or lo-fi by any means, but has that rugged charm tying the sounds together. Some likely VHS era porn samples are used, but very sparingly, with the actual noise remaining the main deal. The tracks vary their focus, letting the rumbling distortion, feedback, as well as the more watery electronics have their time in the spotlight, and the tracks move between and within these elements with a free spirit. I think it doesn't go quite far enough into any direction though, or at least I was waiting for it to become either sleazier, harsher, wilder, more energetic... just generally to go further into any or all of the directions. That said, this is still very good and I appreciate its restless liveliness. It just seems to give a promise that something stronger is to come. It also reminded me that I have the project's Moist Nobility CD that Dunkelheit Produktionen published in 2022, so I'll have to look into that one next.
