Mania / Hal Hutchinson – Wreckage
Now this is what I call atmosphere. The atmosphere of decay, mechanical decay. Decayed, decaying, decrepit, decomposing. The broken-down, enfeebled, protestations of poor, abused machine, sickened, as in SICKENED-to-DEATH of being raged against. But broken-down, enfeebled protestations are all it will ever manage, the poor, abused machine utterly beyond salvage. Atmos. Filth-flavored, gutter atmos. Where have I heard this before? It would have to have been in "Tahta Tarla", that pervection of atmos submitted under the combined perv-visions of Giancarlo Toniutti and Andrew Chalk. But, whereas Toniutti n pal allow their collab to meander a fair bit, as one might expect of them, Mr Mania and friend Hutchinson get right into it. Right into it, m'boyo! So yes, still that familiar stench, of corpse being dragged around disused drainage tunnel. But these boys have their shirts off. Waist-deep in filth, plowing on through. A dramatic pause: to flex. Yes, this is a muscular sound, heavy, thunderous, even, made more so by completely eschewing the barest hint of fuzzed-out, flatulent, feedback. Mania kicks it off with a solo joint, heaving large slabs of precision-cut metals into a nicely composed arrangement of scrapped clunk 'n drag. Surprisingly, um, nice. A perversion that obviously came at some cost and at no detriment to the filth-filled fundament. Ignition initiates the essential Mania-Hutchinson flavor, that of tar-blackened, bass-heavy, agitation through which assorted junks are lugged, hurled, and, occasionally, dropped- onto unprotected toes. The inevitable howls of agony ensue, buried somewhat, but lending proceedings a marked miserablist taint. Things culminate quickly in the definitive "Beyond Salvage", scrapped junks of the shitey-est of viscosity, ripped, rough-hewn fidelity underscored by the sudden incursion of a greased-up, rippled, oscillation and the faintest hints of agonized howling, growing more monstrous, almost manic, before decisively shutting the fuck up at 4:35. And. And that's all you deserve! And what you deserve is your shit-medicine in the most compacted of allotments. At least, until the rather epic "Warhead", wherein all stops are broken out. Slow growth of filth-drowned slog, metal slabs stumbling around the channel pan. Enter miserablist oscillations. Determined frequency overbilge threatens to suffocate the dank, echoed, machinations in slow, sinking, sludge-hole. Grind to a halt, and cleanly scrapped crank 'n clank signals the closing movement, loading capacities to the brim before a grim cycling ambience escorts a play of crunch and screech to conclusion. Almost as an afterthought, Hutchinson unloads the self-explanatory "Factory Of Metalsound (Corrosive+Treatment)": extended orchestration of wonderfully dense scrapheap molestation, a neverending, ever-collapsing, textured field of fractured heave and toss. Vivenza must wank himself silly over this shit.
Encephalophonic – Regressed Progress
According to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 13th edition, "Encephalophonic" is an adjective referring to the "studied and careful composition of fucking harsh noise"*. More specifically, Encephalo is a deservedly rising star by virtue of Commitment. Commitment to all the things that matter. For starters, spasticity. This is the shit that has spasticisms all over the place. For seconders, harshness. An ever ready assortment of scrap-metal sources scours this point home with excruciating precision. And for thirders, well I'm coming to that. First, "Growing Paranoia", a mostly muted entry into the perverted probings of The Bonini: laying out uneasy synthwave atmos, tension ratchets up in slow sweeps and whispered washes. There is an aggression here, bubbling just below the surface, never really allowed to break through. We know we are just being fucked with and thus simply wait expectantly for the inevitable shooting of the wack. Cue title track. Looped knob-bobbing hastens the outpouring of pinpricked l-r panned incision, stop-pause knee-jerk, well-aimed butt-stab. A constant back-n-forth between the bobbing slobber and just plain... slobber. This shit refuses to sit still and verges on fucking irritating. The worst (best!) kind of fucking irritating, natch. Okay, then. Spastics, check. "In & Out Of Reality" is when things really begin to pick up. When the manipulation of sound palette is so overdone as to verge on pornographic. When I decide that The Encephalo is The Shit. Concentrated knife action. Sudden ultra-brief shrieking vocal spasm. Heaving, hacking fits. A slowing of pace. Screaming rippus interruptus. Collapsing metals. Pulling and tugging from one extreme to the next, angling in from this that and every whichever. Spastics, double check! Next, out come the scrapped junk sources, most apropos of "Scars Collection". Rabid slashing fit ensues, frequently settling on a near-percussive regularity, the hacking occasionally opening up to wider acoustic detail. Okay, for fucksake Bonini, I get it. I've had enough! And so we would seem to conclude our first half, making way for "MaximumHeadPressure", which is, of course, exactly that. Heavily distorted pressures snuffing out all surfaces air, vapors escaping in a reverberant hiss... for the first thirty seconds anyway. Then it's more of the same. Distorto-spasti, wacky-jacky, blasting through the fray. Buried again under masses of heavy-handed crunch overload. The "dialog", as such, is great- particularly satisfying when metallic junkpunches slam through, and through. Jump ahead one track to the climactic "Self Destructive Behavior". Here the acoustic iron-filing armada is out in all force, but so too are all the other elements, each competing, in turn, for attention. Agitated synthetic epilepsy. Glittering glass shards. Frequencies seemingly burnt to a crisp, stereos in stuttered decline- exploding back to a perfect, steely, glint. Slow throb out, to make way for extended docu-clip of sweet little girl explaining why she sticks pins in baby brother's privates, the answer unnecessary but provided anyway, thus to cycle, viciously, to the raw, didactic, extremity of closer "Product Of Violence", and HOW DO YOU LIKE THEM APPLES? Regressed Progress indeed. A very well-composed piece of work, start to finish. This is the thirder, abovementioned, whereby a work may satisfy both in individual chunks and in whole. HOW DO YOU LIKE THEM APPLES?
*pending approval
Kazumoto Endo & Kazuma Kubota – Switches And Knobs
Endo: Heed my words, dear Kubota, heed them to the bloody letter.
Kubota: Yes, master.
Endo: I am to grasp my Knob and twiddle. Harrd. You are then to grasp yours.
Kubota: May I twiddle it?
Endo: Silence! I am to grasp my Knob. Harrd. You are to grasp yours. We are both, indeed, to twiddle our respective Knobs. Harrderr. And then, we Switch!
Kubota: How will I know when it is time to Switch?
Endo: On the eve of the Soup, when the Facial One approaches spasmodic genuflection, we, decisively, Switch Him Off! Do not, and let me make this absolutely clear, do not allow the bladdered vulgarian to disturb. Not a "bloody hell", nor a "fuckin' 'ell", nor, indeed, a fully extended "Yeah!"
Kubota: Yes, master.
Endo: And Kubota?
Kubota: Master?
Endo: None of that ambient crap.
Kubota: Yes, master.
Though billed as Endo/Kubota collab, I couldn't help but notice that, on the cover, Endo is grasping that familiar spring-loaded-washboard-thingy, AKA his Killer Bug. Perhaps he's sanded off the KB label, who knows? In any case, what we get are two long collab tracks, one live, the other live-in-studio. The "studio" track comes first, but I start with the live. Let's hear what these guys are really made of. Given the range of sound material the two gents have covered over the years one could expect nearly anything. But given the inevitable deferral of Kubota to Master Endo, the net makings are entirely Buggered. Thus reigns: spasticity. An unending volley of ultra-sharp metallic cutting. Plenty of dead-air, or what would have been dead air had it not been filled with audience chatter and the impromptu vocal ejaculations of one Kenneth Sanderson. Hold on. "Audience chatter"? How in the hell could anyone hold a conversation with this insane racket going on? These are highly skilled conversationalists to say the least. One wager is we're in fact hearing a slapped-over sampling of post-performance chit-chat. Plus seeming giggles at Sanderson's well-timed, never-quite-complete, interspersals, re-
"bloody 'e-"SCREE-CRASH-STAMMER-SPLURGE!;
"fucki-" KA-CHUNG!SHMEEZEESHMEEZEE-PLONG!;
and "Yea-"KRRRING-PSHAW-FLECKAFLLLJJJ!
Eighteen minutes of this shit, which is probably a few minutes too many. The Facial ejaculate actually renders Le Merde especially fresh, and off-kilter, and suggests such glorious possibility had the duo enlisted a vocalist proper. ("Proper" as in, utterly fucking deranged, of course.) Thus interest may be aroused even during the intervals where it sounds as though our duo is literally grasping at knobs. Not that anyone (least of all Sanderson) cares. Per the better species of live Buggery, our audience finds its lingering doubts clobbered to death under the repeated HACK-STABSTAB-SLASH barrage, lending proceedings a very percussive flavoring. In the semi-coherent words of the Facial One, "Fuck yeah! YEAH! Fuckin' ell! Yeah. Fuckin'.YEAH!" etc.
ENTER THE STUDIO
Endo: Now then, dearest Kubota, can you tell me: what was lacking from our live performance?
Kubota: Umm... ambient crap?
Endo: <THWACK!> SILENCE, BOY!
Kubota: ....?
Endo: !
Kubota: .
Endo: Very good, my quick young study. Now: BEND OVER.
Thus reigns, again, the prime Bugger. More so, even, as the silence, otherwise occupied in the live track, marks in the studio its deafening absence. And yes, these are studio compositions, but clearly the live-in-one-or-two-takes variety. Composed on the fly, as it were. Aquatic ambience? Hell no. Edits, ditto. If Kubota is to be present in this performance, it is largely in spirit. Still I would say a performance most spirited. When deferral to the master apparent falls by the wayside, the pace hets up, the friction almost tangible, successive carvings competing for an attention ever-more-thinly-sliced. At a critical juncture, the attention just about gives up for good and starts to parse. And why not? Each resounding razored expurgence, each ultra-brief spasticism, could itself constitute a single track. Over the full twenty-six minute course one might divide attention into one-thousand-and-one delectable little spazz-outs, the wide-gaping puckers reminiscent in the tasting of Sixteen Different Flavors Of Ass, as properly widened, say, by the earliest of "Metal Dildo" Buggery. Ignore any sense of progression. Enjoy the – again- very percussive shredding of deceased air particles. The violent texture of an attention hacked to bits. The deeply penetrating wham-bam-thankyou-sir-can-I-please-have-some-more. Singular sadistic sodomization of the singularly deserving earhole.
