See bottom of this post for digest commentaryMo*Te / Worth – split c30 (Cipher)
Mo*Te / A Fail Association – split c20 (Dadadrumming)In November of last year, the person behind Cipher posted something that only recently caught my eye–
"Worth 'Blinder' LP, a worthy(!!) successor to top Japanese fare of the 90s a la Mo*Te." Caught my eye as in,
what in fucksname is he talking about? Is he fucking...all right, that's it. I'll show him. I'll spend the whole fucking week immersed in Worth and Mo*Te and nothing but! Yeah, that'll fucking learn him. (It was, as weeks go, pretty good.) Well now with
Worth &
Mo*Te trading sides of a svelte thirty minuter it seems the deal is even more thoroughly sealed, at least where the person behind Cipher is concerned.
Where Cipher the label is concerned it's always worth commenting on the packaging: picture perfect
homage to
top Japanese fare of the 90s a la Mo*Te / Cracksteel. Real history buff, this Cipher.
Brain Storm (Uncut-02, 1996) kicks off with Cracksteel's
Northern Brainstorm and follows on the flip with Mo*Te's
Southern Brainstorm. This time it's Mo*Te with
The East Brainstorm and the natural inclination to compare 'n contrast. Like, holy hell this Cracksteel is hot! But this sidetrack is getting a tad sidetracked, so just pardon me for a moment whilst I cue up the correct track.
Okay,
The Eastern Brainstorm. Like holy hell this
Mo*Te is hot! Listening to these Brainstorms, Southern and Eastern, I'm getting why it had to be Hebi Like A Snake– onetime Stimbox imprint– that would bring Mo*Te, via the seminal
Life In A Peaceful New World, to the broader attention of, at least, the (North) American harshnoise audience. Think searing harsh inundations with rich, warm, ambient psyche-overtones. The sort to which Stimbox would never have been averse, though if I recall correctly the man himself flat out rejected the ambient designation. If that is to be the case then perhaps it behooves me to point out that, once again, at no time will the name Hirsoshi Hasegawa come up. Nossir not once, not from me. I am, like, so done with name-checking Hasegawa. Fucking done with it! Oh, is my sidetrack getting sidetracked again? Must be the ozone going to the head. Well pardon me, time to stick the nose back in the Brainstorm business.
The Eastern Brainstorm: searing harsh electrified inundations with rich, warm, ambient psyche-overtones. More of the rich, warm, ambient psyche-overtones than they do on the Southern side, that's just how the Eastern Brainstorms roll! There are other related descriptors I will duly flop out, among them soft, sexy, sultry, wet whispered whitened washes of blue mood-ulations, glistening pink 'n purple in the hot, breathy, spaces. Deep down in the dark underbelly, undercurrents of slow throbbing wave action rhythmically drag attention out along elongated clusters of progressively glazed insinuations, simmering sparkles of crystalline pierce perfecting the picture of suave sophisticate reclining in cocoon-like hammock among lushly landscaped ecstasies of icy-smooth chill.
25 Unit 09 Day2 is hardly the one to mess with a winning formula, this time almost completely extracting all hint of harsh from the equation. Throbbed percolations of Brainstormesque electrified buzzings establish the perimeter, becalming massage therapies rising but mostly falling in continuous downward inclined susurration. An initial effort to thread the center with muscled blaze of whitehot scree quickly comes undone, sinews dissipating in steamy vapor trails. Just, chill. Immerse them harried nerves in zones of languid deceleration, static-charged fields of trembling bass-fuzzies, pleasingly smothering in their progressively weighty envelopments, softly sibilant exhalations expiring in the hazy distance. Now the throbbed percolations are channeling steadily from earhole to earhole, spiraling attention into blurred raspberries of tight-lipped asphyxiation.
Worth goes some distance in restoring, if not the harsh balance then certainly some degree of brute heft. Heavily distorted blurts of broken crunch particles immediately announce a more muscled attack, though these are not sustained but rather traded off with sharp searings of jugular-severing psyche-blaze, the dynamic contrast of elements set to contrary pacing that seems intended to throw focused listening off balance. At their rip-roaring fever peaks, the searings are plenty piercing, more than sufficient in completely undoing the mellowed manipulations of split-mate-san. Meanwhile, some ways in the background, more hushed backwash of arid acoustics suggests a certain depth in play. In many ways,
Bushcraft Bug-Out consciously complements its Japanese half, a more fevered answer to calmly ambient overtones living on the flip, content to live in the perfect moment of perfectly raging whiteout.
Women In Solipsis seems at first even more actively engaged in jugular removal, an impression that grows only more pronounced as the excited furies rage forth. There are even a few moments of processed vocal spastication ripping through the frenzy. In fact the full frenzy proper may be rooted in vocal-spastic, though the net expression outputs in dialog of continuously ruptured crumple-blurt. In the opening moments, crunched saturations rupture a wide bodied bounce of leisurely bopping bass belches. In come the whitened ascerbics and then the vocal spazz, and finally the essential gritty-edged blurt-scrunchings. The scrunchings cut in and out, stop paused in momentary stasis, sometimes driven to wall-like rumbling red, sometimes making way for more drilling bites and stabs. Never once does the pace relent, each pause but opportunity to freshen the aggravated assault on the aural cavities.
In his split with
A Fail Association,
Mo*Te continues to expound upon the gospel of cool and collected calm. So perhaps a good thing that AFA takes the flip, to ensure sound delivery of the brutal and filth-flavored nasty. This tape is not apparently officially being sold, but will spontaneously appear as a bonus when a certain lp is acquired from the source. So if you've got a problem with that, you know where you can take your idle complaint. Dadadrumming has been doing a lot of good of late, bringing prime cuts from the most Scathing of newscorchers through to the storied certainties of TEF, Stimbox and Richard Ramirez.
See? Not one single mention of Hiroshi Hasegawa. This is a shorty but a goody, in the classic mold of
assuage the 'holes on one side and blow the buggers out on the other.
With titles like
Hush And Harsh and
Chill Noise, it should be clear from where the 'hole assuaging is to be had. And no, just for the record, it's not Hiroshi Hasegawa.
Mo*Te commences ceremonies in classic and classy fashion, with Harsh. Deep, bass-bottomed, bludger, seared open via whitewashed sheets of psyche-tinged salivation. The elaboration, however, is rather dour, ascending along curvaceous slides of lightly frosted undulation, engines slowly revving in the gloom, trying to get the motor running, loose-fit propeller wobbling ineffectually against flaccid traction, belt hanging loose, flapping against the casing. In due course, a groove catches, steady whirring accumulations setting off the hushed harsh, aka breathless seashell howl, severely pitched spirals spinning through droning orbits of grim, synchronized, wheeze. On to the Chill Noise, a meditative study in deep pitched rumble-throb, measured judders cycling evenly against regular swells of low-end burble. This could be an exceedingly chilled Brainstorm, multi-layered, full in body, rich in fluffy analog quiver, fuzzed expirations casually ambling along the fringe, the deepest bass gurgling and turd burgling winking through tight apertures of slightly burnt sphinct-chambers. Definitely more Chill than Noise in this luxuriant sputtering sprawl, stretched out to the outer reaches of inner space.
A Fail Association reaches deep within himself, or deep within his past, to conjure up some brute flalutent uglies, retching and lurching through tightly compacted crunchpiles. Perhaps taking inspiration from the closing ditty on Mo*Te's
An Idle Complaint,
County Road 1485 presents a hot 2020 re-work of pre-AFA efforts going all the way back to 2002. The opening moments are given to sharply metallic tin-can crinkling, exploding suddenly into thickly aggressive burls of curdled overload. After the sweet earhole massage-work of split-mate-san, this is positively rough, much more active and punishing in its continuously interrupted blurts and surges. So hardly all crunch all the time. Plenty of jagged knifings shredding through the thick, at their peaks slicing into abbreviated chirps of feedback shriek, lightning pacing leaving the hard-jerked sensibility with little upon which to latch. At other moments dense rumble-loads bear down on the outlying rips, driving face-first through mounds of crumbling sludge. The shit en masse just flies by, in too short order over and done with, poor abused earholes begging for more punishment but in better need of assuagement. Mo*Te will be happy to oblige.
Digest spew:Mo*Te / Worth – split c30 (Cipher)Mo*Te storms the brain with searing electrified inundations rich with warm, ambient, psyche-overtones. Psyche smeared in soft, sexy, sultry, wet whispered whitened washes glistening in the hot, breathy, spaces. Ultimately the psyche is driven deep down into undercurrents of slow throbbing wave action, rhythmically dragging attention out along elongated, lushly landscaped, clusters of icy-smooth chill. Soon the static-charged percolations are trembling in softly sibilant bass-fuzzies, spiraling into blurred raspberries of tight-lipped asphyxia.
Worth answers the sultry brainstorms with heavily distorted blurts of broken crunch particles, trading off with jugular-severing psyche-blaze streaking, the dynamic contrast of elements set to contrary pacing that rewards focused listening with progressively warped sense of dis-balance. In come the vocal spastics, driving dialog of continuously ruptured crumple-blurt and more gritty-edged ascerbics, repeatedly frozen in momentary stasis, flattened in rumbling reds, ripped apart in whitened bites and stabs.
Mo*Te / A Fail Association – split c20 (Dadadrumming)Shorty but goody, in the classic mold of
assuage the 'holes on one side and blow the buggers out on the other.
Mo*Te ascends along curvaceous slides of lightly frosted undulation, engines slowly revving, loose-fit propeller wobbling ineffectually against flaccid traction, catching a groove of steady whirring accumulations, hushed harsh sending severely pitched spirals spinning through orbits of grim, synchronized, wheeze, then expiring in languid decelerations along the deepest bass fringe, gurgling through tight apertures, finally to release in luxuriant sputtering inner space sprawl.
A Fail Association explodes into thickly aggressive burls of curdled overload, continuously interrupted blurts and surges serving rough, lightning-paced, crunch-shred. Jagged knifings shred through the thick, abbreviated chirps of feedback shriek hard-jerked through dense rumble-loads, bearing down, hard, driving face-first through mounds of crumbling sludge.
