PLAYLIST with COMMENTS/REVIEWS

[Manhog_84]

Mass Hysteria (CD, Freak Animal 2025)

Multiple top-tier Finnish sound artist providing source sounds, compiled into one continuous avalanche of noise. It flows very naturally, varying from crunchier to high-pitched. Recommend, but maybe I hoped something more intense? I need to give it a few more spins.

Special mention for the great selection of cover images. The front photo features carved figures by Ossi Somma. The artist has a sculpture park in Nokia. I haven't visited it yet, but planning to do that next summer. The back and inner covers, I could be wrong, but they look very much like an art installation that I saw outside the Sara Hildén Art Museum years ago. It's in Tampere and not that far from Nokia. A tram filled with human figures. It was grey and slushy winter day, and it looked very eerie from the outside. Like a train full of corpses...

[k.p.g]

TAC - Back To, Not Front (Tribe Tapes)
I am not the most knowledgeable on the work of TAC, but what I have heard is great.  You can add this release to that list.  As the label put it, this release is not just some cobbled collections of odds 'n ends, but rather a piecing of forgotten material that contains the flow and power of a real album.  Feel like that is pretty much the case, no need to praise it much there.
What I do have to praise though is the sound palette itself.  Again, not being the biggest TAC fanatic, I found myself amazed by how little I was able to comprehend here.  Messing around with tapes, turntables and field recordings should feel easier to pick out, but outside of the last track (which I am pretty sure is just the artist walking around town or something), I found most of the runtime having me say "how is he doing that?"  I hear looping cardboard, broken radiators, domestic bliss.  It's all very good. 

Jeph Jerman - Keep the Drum (Concussion Solos) (New Forces, reissue)
Found myself falling asleep to this clang 'n clatter the other night.  You would think a record comprised of banging on pipes and bones would make for more of a daytime listen.  At a low enough volume though, it makes for a pretty nice ambiance!

Atrophist - The Happiest Country on Earth (Tribe Tapes)
Now this is a record I have been waiting to publicly discuss.  Max gave me a copy a while back to listen, and first time around I thought "wow, this is some really great stuff."  Now over this weekend, it received 3 plays in the CD player.  And I come back around to it thinking "it gets better every time!" 
To break it down, we can simply start at the artwork.  It's very pleasant on the eyes; tons of bright colors at play.  I especially look at the disc art and smile.  Reminds me of one family photo I used to see hung up around the house of me and my sibling as children in Germany.  I think it has to do with similar color palette. 
Now on the end of sound, this disc opens up with some chatter between a few unknown voices before it launches into this very crude brand of harsh noise.  Rarely is there a moment of bliss to be had, but this is also not your Merzbow brand of harsh noise.  It's far cruder, very lo-fi and very patient in its movement.  Sometimes, certain squeals/tones remain unbroken for several minutes on end.  Tension does not lead to anxiety, but rather a trance state.  When they do break, I take a big sigh and say "YES."
Excellent stuff; highest recommendation.

[impulse manslaughter]

Twice is Not Enough by Whitehouse never made an impact on me as it's less noisy, chaotic and violent than some of the other classics. I've been listening to it repeatedly over the last 2 days though and the creepy, minimalistic atmosphere is certainly growing on me. Up next; Quality Time and Mummy & Daddy.

[groesk]

Macronympha - Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (1995)
a big disappointment after checking out Intensive Care. harsh noise with the muffler maxed out, reducing it to pretty trivial white noise. 40 minutes of this with few moments that make me check in mentally.

Government Alpha - Alphaville (1999)
engaging harsh noise with enough ideas thrown around to be worth it. there's a good handful of stank face moments where the bitcrushed noise and/or pitch shifting combines to be absolutely crushing.

Excruciation/Cystgurgle/Cardiomyopathy/Cancrum Oris - Asian Pathological Vomit Gorepremacy (2019)
a 4-way split of east asia's gorenoise titans. the best ones on the split are Cystgurgle (obviously) and Cancrum Oris. I especially love it when the bass pops out of nowhere and adds a lot of heaviness. worth your time if you're interested in gorenoise.

Frenuloplasty - Frenuloplasty (2022)
a cool idea that shoots itself in the foot. harsh noise and gorenoise is a sick genre combo, but it starts padding out the last 10 minutes with gross samples that serve no purpose. so close, yet so far.

[urall]

Atrophist - The Happiest Country on Earth (Tribe Tapes)
Now this is a record I have been waiting to publicly discuss.  Max gave me a copy a while back to listen, and first time around I thought "wow, this is some really great stuff."  Now over this weekend, it received 3 plays in the CD player.  And I come back around to it thinking "it gets better every time!" 
To break it down, we can simply start at the artwork.  It's very pleasant on the eyes; tons of bright colors at play.  I especially look at the disc art and smile.  Reminds me of one family photo I used to see hung up around the house of me and my sibling as children in Germany.  I think it has to do with similar color palette. 
Now on the end of sound, this disc opens up with some chatter between a few unknown voices before it launches into this very crude brand of harsh noise.  Rarely is there a moment of bliss to be had, but this is also not your Merzbow brand of harsh noise.  It's far cruder, very lo-fi and very patient in its movement.  Sometimes, certain squeals/tones remain unbroken for several minutes on end.  Tension does not lead to anxiety, but rather a trance state.  When they do break, I take a big sigh and say "YES."
Excellent stuff; highest recommendation.

"Hammer-Smashed Faeces" is imol already song title of the year.

[FreakAnimalFinland]

There is this approach of tongue in cheek references to both underground music culture, but also popular culture. Plus perhaps also noise culture classics. When I got the ROTAT stuff with song "Raveheart", it is so simple and stupid, it pure magic. Just bursted in laughter WTF!? Raveheart!?  There are some of Finn noise acts who are pretty known for this type of thing, word play, subtle translation jokes, and so on... Moozzhead, Keränen/Testicle Hazard, Rotat..

[k.p.g]

Lovers - The Carnal Mind / Synthesized and Retuned (Music Lovers Group)
Very lowkey project that has some sort of Dead Gods tie to it.  By far some of the best noise to hold up from that scene's heyday.  It's pretty harsh, pretty crude and pretty odd at points; tons of crunching mic abuse with the subtle synth squeals and feedback begging for air.  It's not reinventing the wheel but rather presenting one of the finer models of wheel that noise can offer.  Since digging this out of my boxes in the last year, it has been one of the most revisited pieces in my collection around this house.  I have to make time soon to give the Small Mercies disc a try, as it's the only other release they did.
I wrote the email that is listed on this cassette a while back to inquire about the future of Lovers, and was asked what my mailing address was.  Nothing ever did turn up, and now that mailing address is no longer mine.  I can only hope they have something kicking around, as stuff like this is just too good to be done after such a short lifespan.

[groesk]

Melómana Distorsión - La triste existencia del ser
now this is some weird stuff. i hear some 90's idm influences here, dark ambient there, and a hint of death metal. no matter what happens on this album, it always feels dark and menacing. honestly, tieing opposite ideas together like that deserves my respect. I can hear gutturals and black metal rasps that are reverbed to hell and low in the mix at times. It feels like you're walking through a dark noir city at night. most of it is quite beat driven with the drums, which i really like. it does feel bloated at 19 tracks and one hour.

La triste existencia del ser

[k.p.g]

Spyked Fossils - Strangled Pairs (American Tapes)
Andrew Nolan - Museum Etiquette (Absurd Exposition)
Circle - Muurahaiset (Satatuhatta)
Shredded Nerve - Performer Death I (Dead Gods)
Shredded Nerve - Performer Death II (Dead Gods)

While I was feeling like total, rundown crap last night, I decided it would be a great time to maybe reorganize some of the tapes in my collection again.   It's a good exercise in pairing things down, as you begin to see where your tastes lie over time.  What tapes hold up better than you thought?  What stuff reveals new sides of itself that you did not appreciate the first time?  What records are you ready to just let go of?

In the first category, Circle & Spyked Fossils are the most appropriate.  Both releases had some great atmospheres that I had forgotten.  Found myself reacting pretty viscerally to their presence.

Andrew Nolan cassette was a pleasant surprise!  I thought maybe my interest in the guy's work had dwindled as tastes change, but this is very solid field recording/industrial work!  Plenty of pulsating rhythms to lock in with.  It stays in the collection.

Shredded Nerve tapes, while certainly having some moments I could really sink my teeth into, were overall not his best efforts.  Performer Death I holds up together than the second installment, but I think Justin had made releases of a similar style that I will keep in my collection over this one.  I think maybe this is some of the final Shredded Nerve material I was regularly keeping up with as well.  I still have yet to check out the last disc on Total Black.  Maybe that will be an assignment for this weekend...

[Fistfuck Masonanie]

Keith Rowe/Toshimaru Nakamura - Weather Sky (Erstwhile)

An immensely important album to me, and I think the experimental scene as a whole, at the start of the 2000s. Belonging more to the Electro-acoustic Improvisation genre of the time. However, I think there is a lot of crossover appeal to noise here.

Toshimaru's contribution specifically on the no-input mixing board is particularly harsh. Not in regard to volume, but in the sheer intensity and clarity of the feedback frequencies he creates.

Extremely clean, precise, and cutting.

These old Rowe and Nakamura albums had propped back up in my thoughts recently, and I'm not exactly sure why, but I think I'm going to spend some time revisiting.

[SSRI]

Straight Arm Salute - Pelkkää vihaa CD
NS power electronics industrial. Straightforward and crude. What this loses in finesse is made up more than enough by its sheer sincerity and brutality. Not for the weak.

V/A - Beyond CD
Grunt is on fine form in their two-man line up here. Lengthy track with excellent sounds and vocals and good variation in structure. Power electronics prog song and this is no joke. Bizarre Uproar starts with cymbals and bass noise and slowly builds up. Not my favourite BU material overall but by the end gets massive and enjoyable.
I've never got much out of Deathkey and Caligula031 for some reason. I've found Deathkey to be more about the image than good noise. But here it works fine. Especially their second track Hammering Deatharm Of Swastika has nice mechanical industrial rhythms and strong vocals in addition to fantastic title. While I like Wertham a lot, I haven't got into C031 that much, which is weird because it's basically the same. These tracks are very good, though, especially the second one Caligula Omnia Vinxit. I'll have to give Caligula's other releases another chance.

[k.p.g]

Kyle Flanagan - Highway to Hell (New Forces)
Properly "hellish" harsh noise.  Had been quite some time since I last heard this one, and I think when I did, it was on a really bad tape player.  I can hear a lot more of the interplay between various layers of scrap metal destruction play out much better this time around.  Great morning tape, wasting no time at just 20 minutes in length.

Biscuit Eastman - The Old Guard (Tribe Tapes)
No one loves harsh noise quite like this dog.  No one does harsh noise quite like this dog; a generational talent.  Finding a fine line between pure sonic aggression and the inner peace of naptime.  Excellent.

[k.p.g]

Max Julian Eastman - Inside Christmas Factory (Tribe Tapes)
This disc is a very interesting one.  It sits in a liminal zone where it isn't your run of the mill, "structured" harsh noise.  Not to say Max has ever been "composing" much, but ummm... hmm...  I guess I should rephrase that. 
It isn't coming down on you the way a typical harsh noise record does.  It's not tons of high end/low end dynamics, no fields of distortion, no fist-pumping to be had.  Instead, we are greeted with 3 "sketches" of various midrange field recordings and amplified voice/turntable, culminating in a 4th track that is actually "Inside Christmas Factory."  It makes for an interesting journey!  Voicemails you hear as the basis of track 1 will eventually return by the end of track 4, making things feel like you've done a full lap around your high school track.  Familiar sights start to signal time passing in a funny and confusing way.
Other highlights of the record are sounds that I would say Max has more of a hands-on involvement in; metal, voice, turntable.  A lot of these components are more "textural" features to the voicemails that guide you through, almost like backdrops to some twisted sitcom.  A locked groove on a turntable will present itself, but not vary much once presented.  It's the in-between of wait music and dead air.  Metal objects are struck occasionally, but I honestly would think some of these are part of the phone calls going on if you had not told me they weren't.  Perhaps it is his voice that plays the most interesting role, with moans and cackles mutating in the background of the dialogues exchanged.  It's as if the choruses of Greek plays were infected with rabies.  Nice.
An interesting disc that I am sure I will replay some more for a fuller grasp.  But to call this your standard harsh noise disc?  Probably not apt.  It's somewhat more akin to your modern Greek comedy on compact disc.

Emil Beaulieau - For Those About to Rock, We Salute You (Chocolate Monk)
RRRon must have put whatever tape recorder captured this in an entirely separate room from where he was jamming.  This is lo-fi as all hell!  Or wait... maybe it was the dubbing job of Chocolate Monk.  Can't say, I am not really familiar with the tape era of this label.  Anyways, Side A of this is pretty unmoving, just sounding like one locked groove for 7 minutes.  Side B proves to be more engaging, but not by much.  Funny stuff.

[prelapsus]

Got a few of the new Wrath releases in the post yesterday. Gonna take a while to get through them all, but Rats Noirs- Bienvenue Aux Enemis de L'Europe goes ridiculously hard. I picked this up because it was the only one of the recent Wrath batch at Black Psychosis that had a little recommendation in the description and boy am I glad I did. This is pure hatred and bile communicated through noise. The song titles will give you enough of an idea of what the songs are about if you didn't pick it up already from the album title. Vocals are pretty sparing on the A side and used more frequently later, mostly unintelligible, distorted screams over grinding, blown out power electronics. This release has a a decent low-end crunch to it and occasional junk metal-ish sounds can be heard in amongst the chaos. Even though it's unrelenting, there is a lot of textural variety in the sounds. Sometimes it's very juddery, other times ripping walls of feedback and noise. It won't win any awards for subtlety or innovation but I would strongly recommend for fans of hard and nasty PE. I hesitate to say it's harder and nastier than anything I've heard recently because I am always conscious of how much I haven't heard, but it really is.

There is this approach of tongue in cheek references to both underground music culture, but also popular culture. Plus perhaps also noise culture classics. When I got the ROTAT stuff with song "Raveheart", it is so simple and stupid, it pure magic. Just bursted in laughter WTF!? Raveheart!?  There are some of Finn noise acts who are pretty known for this type of thing, word play, subtle translation jokes, and so on... Moozzhead, Keränen/Testicle Hazard, Rotat..

A recent example of this: The Borat sample which opens the Rats Noirs tape: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV_BpRNA36c

[Minus1]

As I type: The Rita - O.C.D. Shin.

4x15min tracks. 2021. Phage.

This is quite different from a lot of Rita that I have. There's a lot of dynamic. Churning, gurgling, twisting. I was going to place this in the HNW thread. But this wall is moving about all over the place.

(Apparently this is 1998 material, re-released.)

I like this description:

"For the fan who expects massive, abrasive textures like recent years The Rita releases, this isn't any of that. This is searing washes of white noise, crude distortion, feedback and a fair share of 90's crunch and crumble. As the previous Ominous/Phage reissue, this isn't your usual The Rita. But I'm telling you, you need it." - Ominous Recordings.