Toshiji Mikawa – Radio Code cd reissueSound, for the airwaves by the airwaves.
RADIO CODE exists to give away power. Get it while it's hot. Scorching hot. This message, delivered via blackbox electronics, will self destruct in fifty-one minutes and fifty-eight seconds. Crack the code, spy the heart of Incapacitants, pierced, piercing, pallo, cloaked in fuzzloads of erratz AM distortion. Mikawa before The Mikawa- or at least before the person of Kosakai was commissioned to partner in the Mikawa-orchestrated dissemination of blackbox electronics.
And yes, behind all that erratz AM distortion, quite the scorcher here lurks. Vibrating fuzz-loads, layers of them, buzzing with frazzled-raw energies, sizzling, slathering, foaming at the mouth. It feels controlled, contrived even, a sickened sense of logos emergent from the blackest boxed contrivance. The man with the plan draws out the mania, slowly teasing convergences, contingencies, attentions inexorably drawn into overlapping patterns of gritty gray sheen, grainy ambient glitters winking in the darkly frozen scathe-scape.
Hold on, back up, did someone say
ambient?
Well why not? Consider the electro-singed digitalia of more recent Incaps extraction, or some of Mikawa's latter-day solo work- the futzy-buttzy drillage on the latter half of
I, Noise. Among the more electrified synergies, a tip of the hat to Merzbow's
Pornoise, whiffs of the more synthetically engaged Euro detachment rounding out the bouquet. Sprinkle: a pinch of morose Shift dis-restfulness, a dash of good man J Duncan, crackling hard in blackest drone-pitch, and you're just about there. (How's that for name dropping?)
Now, keep in mind this is still Mikawa (aka the name to end all names). No set of synthetically engaged amplitude modulation would be complete without a nice bit of ear-drilling squeal-nasties, however cloaked in fuzzed up- futzed up- electro-storm. Electro-storm acclimated to the brittle freeze of ground-up crinkle textures, miniature AM blurts repeatedly bleating throughout the storm, ending hard on crumbling avalanche of degraded, lower end, sphinct-grind.
Keep in mind, too, that the material is already otherwise released, under the guise of Incapacitants. (Which we have learned more recently via the good graces of the
Pariah Tapes boxset). Properly said: Radio Code (1988)
is Incapacitants
Pallo 1 (1985), tape the 1st on the
Project Pallo '85 set, with Side A repping "Jaapsoc" and Side B "Leprosy" and "Manic-Depressive". Such pearls are in fact dropped by good man J Duncan hisself on the radio broadcast in question. So why even bother? Good question. But a question soon left after a brief A/Bing of the two (Radio Code and Pallo 1). Where Pallo 1 is, simply, purest amped-up harsh of the scorching Incaps persuasion, Radio Code is carefully filtered, like a fine wine, the scorchingest perversions extracted in favor of more, um, ambient incursion. Perhaps as owing itself to the long degraded recording medium but who really cares. Results are what matter and ambient is as ambient does.
Keep in mind I use the word ambient in passing. As in, relative to the pure earhole-drilling HARSH of Incaps proper, practically every other goddamn thing ever recorded is ambient. But just wait- JUST WAIT- till you hit the utterly brilliant ten-minute mark of Side B. The fevered ambient organ overlap, the inevitable harsher electro-scorch convergence. Like, fu-uuuu. Just, fiiine.
Before that though, a certain degree of HARSH to contend with. And by harsh, I mean, sincerely straining my desire to continue listening. Just this ridiculous repeating dog-yapping sample. Or what could be manipulated vocal. To imitate that incessant dog. Dog-yapping-cum-manipulated vocal alarm siren. Over and over and over. And over. It is, frankly, irritating as fuck. Like, let's park our collective ass next to badly neglected dog pound while earholes carefully audition new piece of pure broken-electronic surge-fizzle. For optimum results may I highly recommend playing this for your neighbors at maximum volume at 3:30 in the fucking morning. Like, holy fucking shit this is harsh.
Yap! Yap! Yap! Yap! Like who in their right mind could listen to this shit. (Aside from your irritating neighbors. Fuck them, and that yapping pooch.) Then at the above-mentioned ten minute mark, the brilliance. Short-lived, but brilliant. The shift into high gear, literally and figuratively. The ridiculous, brilliantly, brutal repetitive doggy-yap enters into upper ended alarm phase, pace well and accelerated (and just fairly distracting from any possibility of enjoyment). There are moments. When the yapping slows or briefly stops. And the underlying electro-futz current duly steps up. It is at these moments, however brief, that one can appreciate the multiform layers in play. And in which one repeatedly switches, in rapid eye-blinks, back and forth between the old dahmer-genius equation.
In the closing minutes, as the sound appears to get more erratic and out of control, one might swear as to detect hints of "Live", the closing live track from
Feedback Of NMS. These moments of utter brilliance are few and far between but are sufficient in suggesting to this perv that awesomeness has potentially descended, if for but a sublime, abbreviated, instant.
Digest spew:T. FUCKING Mikawa!
