Elsewhere posted, some of them a bit back but I think not as yet here so
Tetsuo Furudate - Macbeth
About as baffling, bombastic and boldly overwrought as one might hope and expect. Now, I mean. Back then, at the time of first encounter, I'd have had little idear of what to expect. The only Furudate to which I'd previously exposed the earholes was a track on the Ne San compilation (Banned), which I distinctly remember as being the only comp submission that genuinely blew the proverbial goat.
So why in hells would I have bothered to pick this up? Take a look at the cast of characters on the cover, mofo. Reiko Azuma. Merzbow. Tatsuya Yoshida. Plus no-less-intriguing host of luminaries. It would seem clear, from the title, from the presentation, that, whatever that goat might demand, we're in for something...well, something.
Scene 1 stretches over 36-minutes, breaking into six distinct parts.
I, Third Witch, and a gloriously lifted sample from Macbeth, the 1947 film by Orson Welles.
II, Lady Macbeth, with Reiko Azuma on soprano vocal and Furudate on "sounds sampled from Penderecki's St Luke Passion". Hold on, "sampled"? This is just straight Penderecki, lifted in whole, no edits, no alterations. Not even sure where the Azuma comes in. But this anyway sets the tone for... Furudate's entire recording career. Not, presumably, as a master lifter of other people's work, but as one so gloriously up for The Epic. This thing is, yes, large, almost unwieldy, with enough cooks to do some gloriously disgusting things to the outcome. Among the myriad highs and lows, an abundance of glorious WTF.
Favorite has got to be the Merz, whose "Raw Material for Furudate" is exactly that. Can't blame Furudate for not trying to do anything with it. It's brief, but perfect, plonked smack dab in the middle, raw as fuck, and fucking quite perfectly with the program...assuming it's possible to fuck with a program so clearly expressed in the letters W, T and F. Macbeth, okay, but more I'd surmise as a point of departure into something completely other. Quote, "Existence of clear death, assertive, almost politic, growing without limits. Deprival of the meaning. Expression of the lack of understanding. Death of the trees."
For the most part this 70-minute epic represents in the not unambitious corner of symphonic ambient industrial, with extended percussive Yoshida wig-out in the earlier going, going out with a bang courtesy Koji Kida, laying down slow, majestic, ritual-percussive bombast, of the sort which would come to feature prominently over a good share of the Furudate discog. Definitely not blowing any goat today. Oh well.
Kazumoto Endo - While You Were Out
This is one whose every contour has been grafted onto the neural fibers, speaking not to the arsewhoopidness but to the aggregate: all contour, definition, contrast, writ pornographic. Nor to speak to requisite virtues in my preferred shit but as far as this shit the shit is unambiguously the shiiiiit. Largely compiled from that period when Endo was the standout on every compilation graced, ie immediately after Killer Bug went on extended hiatus. All Bugger no fugger.
Romance - quality assortment
Finally copped the 2007 Putrefier-Romance collab from a local seller, now self-stoking with some prime nostalgia [Ed. still, three months later sitting in to-listen pile...] Here's a project that shot up like a rocket, exploding over a scene already burgeoning with cut-up rrrrrippers jockeying for endocore supremacy. What sets the work apart is perhaps ironically where it cleaves most cleanly to the core- very sharp, kinetic blasts of metal-on-metal smash-bash-mc'crash, perfectly poised precision-guided furies angling against painstakingly plotted silent intervals so emphatically rrrripped into scorched earth oblivion. Even when not drilling into the harshzone, the quieter interludes are liberally dosed with muted TNB-grade acoustic clatter, as might befit a project that I believe would have hailed from Newcastle? Looks like the full-length (pictured, top-left) sadly fell through, though from what I gather all the tracks eventually found a home, some possibly re-titled, via a 4-cassette split on Harbinger (who would seem to have served a critical role as primary curator of the later work).
As far as the project disappearing, I recall from an interview that was something of an artistic choice, reflecting an aim less to be a project than simply to be, y'know, in there bangin' away. Didn't even know I'd more recently heard work involving the principal, via Halalchemists- a sorta all-star TNB tribute band...and a very good one!
ERG / MSBR / Das Synthetische Mischgewebe – Geosynclines
In the mood for some MSBR, I decided to pull this out, though it would have to belong more correctly to the multi-appendaged body of DSM. Well, they (DSM) got the final mix, and a not coincidentally greater share of their signature dis-placed dis-position to duly saturate the precipitate. Frenetic, playful, jump-cut 'n cutting, from mood to mood, though not in ways that seem particularly in-clined to drive you batty. Not for the most part. Not deliberately. Plenty of time allotted for concentrated exploration of each successive dis-vergence, perhaps at times to suggest a sort of Das Synthetische Mischgewebe presents ERG & MSBR.
I'd have to concede, I've got little in the way of ERG to compare any of this to, but at least from the collaborative works of two principals (MNortham & Jgrzinich), some of the more smoothly contoured in-clinations could find their due re-presentation. Thematically, at least, the geosynclinations of ERG would seem most at home in the precarious and fragile hearing of wind searching for form via enlightened splicing devices dis-locating the stultified body, covered with dust under a blazing sky, as it were.
To the question, whither MSBR? Probably lost and snoozing somewhere along one cline or another, and I suspect that's just the way crunchcrunchcrunchrunch he likes it.
T. Mikawa / John Wiese – Oblique No Strategy
Wiese channeling latent Incaps fanboy snuffalufagus into some proper Mikawa-Grade Scorch (tm). Mikawa in the foreground but I'd put all the strings and all the harsh in the hands of the chap in back. Fact is, there was nothing like this coming out of the Incaps camp, for days. For days none of them severely pitched puritannical blister-shriek squealies, none of them dis-hinged dental implements converging upon orgies of incisive cartilage-shredding sado-bliss.
Incaps never went away, nor did the HARSH, but at least as far as the studio was concerned- and for me all the real Mikawa n pal magic happens in the studio- certain of the less hinged brutalities were traded off for more plainly tech-specific derivations whose acoustic characteristics, while quite plainly interesting, were quite plainly, well, I wouldn't say plain, nor tamed, at least in polite company, but, perhaps, painted into a corner from which escape might only be hatched through a dis-progressive inverted yield curve distilling the full bodied primitivo force of earhole abrading quietus, drilling drilling drilling home to momma harsh. No risk no return amiright?
But this, this. This is, like, exactly what I'd have done in the same position. Exactly. Or tried to. Aimed to. Hoped to. This. This fuggin Wiese dude fuggin nailed it. The purest puritannical fanboy tribu-pooption par stenchalance.
Sniiiiiiiiiiiiiifffffffffffffffff. Whoo yes. Sniiiiiiiiiiiiiifffffffffffffffff-Sniiiiiiiiiiiiiifffffffffffffffff-inny-Sniiiiiiiiiiiiiifffffffffffffffff-Sniiiiiiiiiiiiiifffffffffffffffff. Yessir. Nothing oblique about it, reamed straight up the noise SHITTER.
Love me some ozones frying in the morning.
