See bottom of this post for digest commentary.Kazumoto Endo – KeiyoKazumoto Endo often comes across as a noise technician. At least, to these 'holes. Less the artist, more the tinkerer, mechanic, demonstrator of gear-of-the-moment in action. Of late this seems more true than ever, though perhaps it has always been the case. (See the earlier Killer Bug incarnation and the spring-loaded washboard thingy that seemed to accompany the good chap everywhere he went, aka the Killer Bug.) But where masterworks like
While You Were Out and
Brick & Mortar are quite obsessively wrought, with meticulous attention to the teeniest minutiae, the more recent work- everything since
Quattro Pulsanti Bomba- is more straight-forward, live, in-your-face. RAW. What you see,
sometimes right on the damn cover, is what you get. At least, to these 'holes.
There is no question, at least to these 'holes, that the more minimalist incarnation can provide for quite spectacular comp or 7inch appearances. To the question, does this translate in equally spectacular measure over a full-length course? Well, let me counter with a question for you: how harsh do you like it? Or, in the dialect of the spastic: how MOTHERFUCKING HARSH do you MOTHERFUCKING like it? Well okay then. Guess you've answered your own question. MOTHERFUCKER! I think my job here is done.
At least to these 'holes, the stripped down approach has a way of focusing attention. In fact, as the attention will begin to glean, there are plenty of details, that is to say, minutiae, to be prized open and obsessed over.
And lots.
Of dead.
Air.
There are even a few beat-like pulsing intervals, though the effect is far from anything like booty-shakin'. Slow repetitive pulses that will, again, serve mainly to focus attention. If not on the minutiae then upon the fact that your earholes are, very methodically, getting fucking ripped apart. Methodical. Another word worthy of emphasis. The method is careful, calculated. Much un-like Brick & Mortar- that other champion of the dead air- the spastic inclinations demur to a dry, poe-faced demeanor. No sense of precarious balance, no rapidly panned hyper-spasmic gesticulation- in fact, no panning whatsoever- no suggestion that at any moment things are to go flying off the handle. It feels like we're in a laboratory. Clinical. Sterile. White gloves setting to work a vintage set of cutting tools, carefully extracting shreds of audio essence with a clinically detached bemusement that occasionally worries but frankly works. The results are not exactly of the precision-crafted persuasion. Rather rough, brutal. Possibly even that wee bit sadistic, face hidden behind surgical mask but intensity of gaze suggestive of thin lips with edges turned very-slightly upward.
Grey Skies slams into to the 'holes with a well-spaced series of irregular, percussive, scrap-blasts. Sharp, tangy, metallic, edges chafed and frazzled, piling rust-covered decay-streams one on top of the other, acquiring abbreviated degrees of density, warbling through whiny, modulated, feedback stretches, before cutting out in dead silence. Then starting up again. At the more intense intervals, the percussive scrap-blasts come in rapid succession, like the man is hacking in frustrated urgency at a stubbornly indestructible piece of metal junk. At other intervals the man holds back and lets the occasionally overlapping streams of whining, whingeing and moaning run their course.
As the first series of percussive scrap-blasts announces the title track, it becomes apparent that pretty much the whole album is going to sound like this. Grey, grey skies. Rather dour, downcast, grim, consistent with the like-colored images of heavy industry gracing the cover. Here, however, there is more. More movement, more variation, more shit. More silence. And much more of what I will dub the saving grace of the album: tension. Tension delivered through pitch-perfect timing and tone. Pitch black opening, the aforesaid whinge and whine making way for bass-pitched test tones, pitched in counterpoint to hacking scrap-fits that actually do get pretty hairy, or HARSH, in their more frustrated intervals. At the first minute, the first introduction of slow, rhythmic, metal hammering, a recurrent motif. Very...industrial. Very live. The perfect contrast to the hairier moments of screechy, scrap-textured, wig-out. And make no mistake, the shit does, for all its dour poe-faced-ness, wig out. Wigging out in calmly controlled bursts, never close to flying off the handle, the grip tight, choking. And just that wee bit sadistic.
That's two tracks done and I'd say this boy done shot his wad.
Go Clamming concentrates most of its attention in the upper registers, but otherwise does not deviate from the essence as established. Perhaps a dab more in the way of full-loaded electronics rounding out the percussive bursts. Also a more crystalline arc to the piece, breaking into distinct electro-predicated rhythmic movements, tension slowly spiraling into the necessarily brutal-iste denouement.
Banzu drops glitchy clipped-tronics into machine-like shriek-stutter, cycling bass oscillations establishing a palpable narrative structure to ripped and ragged metallic screech-bleed, closing with dull repetitive thump in stark contrast to the 'hole damage being done.
High Tide concentrates its early energies on the delectably sexed-up titillations of scantily-clad, scrappily-clothed, junk-acoustics, dainty squeals and screeches stretching obscenely to accommodate their undeniably crude, lecherous, 'hole-drilling excess. Fucking good. Two minutes and in drops the album's first straight-ahead beat-pulse, metronomic, dry, driving severe snatches of incisive dental scree to a bit of head-nodding, Brick & Mortar, throwback.
Shiosai reclines in whine-soaked ambient sheen of what could be bowed, rust-covered, metals. Which only serves to accentuate the unvarnished brutality of the scrap-edged blasts that rip, alternately ragged and piercing, through the reverberant haze. At their upper edges, the junk-scraps seem to glisten, to salivate, to even, say it,
grin with undeniably sadistic delight, the harsh lusts well and convincingly slaked, the 'holes well and truly traumatized, the technician in eternal struggle with his undeniable art. At least, to this sodhole.
Digest spew:Since the dropping of
Quattro Pulsanti Bomba, Endo has been steadily tightening up his decidedly minimalist concerns. Tightening tightening tightening... tight. Real tight. Tense. All the HARSH you can consume, so, yes, automatic boOOOIiing. But the essential boOOOIinng here is delivered, not so much in the harsh- which, I freely admit, is all I need- but in the tightness. In the tension. Well regulated, studiously composed attention to pace, period, interval, interplay of succession of elements from one moment to the next. It may worth noting that, after a long string of collabs, splits and compilation appearances, this is his first full-length to be issued in the apparent minimalist mold. (Leaving out the recent Killer Bug lp!) So to say, a statement. What to say, statement received.
