NEW RELEASES: Thirteen Hurts, Ataraxic Ataxia, Blood Rhythms, Arvo Zylo

[NO PART OF IT]

These are $7 postage paid in the USA, $12 ppd in Canada and Mexico, and $17 ppd rest of the world.  Paypal can be made to nopartofit at gmail dot com.

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https://soundcloud.com/nopartofit/ataraxic-ataxia-if-it-only-happens-once-it-may-as-well-have-never-happened

Reissued from a very limited CDr on Side of the Sun Recordings, more than half a decade ago, Ataraxic Ataxia is a duo of electronics and violin by Dominick Dufner and Nicole Pizzato.  Unlike many combos like this, there is a unique delivery of organic, true industrial noise mannerisms that only could have come from this configuration.  It is not simply the dialed in ambiance of strings.   The beauty and grit of this release is not only palpable, but also sort of regenerating and constantly transforming.  The rest is enshrouded in mystery.   Ataraxic Ataxia has done a recycled cassette on RRRECORDS and a few low profile releases, like an extremely limited 3 inch CDR that comes with a post card from the 30s, for instance.  Dufner's solo project, Sigulda, was absolutely thrilling at Neon Marshmallow Fest in 2010, using MINIMAL electronics.  This application with the expert use of string instruments by Nicole Pizzato is not to be missed.  49 minutes.




https://soundcloud.com/nopartofit/thirteen-hurts-uvb-76

Thirteen Hurts is a recording artist named Richard Adams who has performed at Denver Noise Fest a few times, as well as Norcal Noise Fest, and in one instance, he drove over 2,000 miles to play St. Petersburg Noise Fest.  At that time, he lived in a solar powered home in rural Colorado, 6 hours from any form of civilization.  I imagined him in some sort of geodesic dome listening to numbers stations and Coast To Coast AM with only the cold, dead air of winter, and hitherto useless power lines in the distance to accompany it.

      Thirteen Hurts live was also quite a surprise.  Whenever I see about 30 pedals sitting on a table, I always assume that there's going to be a great deal of muddy, buzzing garbage to endure, but not in this case.  Each time I saw this phenomena, there was such a level of control and focus,  also accompanied by a casual, playful demeanor, that it looked like that of a practiced, serious scientist, or maybe a "rocket surgeon" would be a better term.  The assurance that this person could fix a car or save a life while laughing, chatting, and gesticulating, came to mind.  The man was like a ninja with his pedals, building little ditties and then destroying them with epic blasts of clearly articulated,  yet cataclysmic, disastrous noise.

     It's only appropriate then, that NO PART OF IT is releasing UVB-76, an album inspired by a Russian shortwave radio signal whose origin has never been found, and whose communications have been poured over and analyzed for decades.  Naturally, much (actually about half, I'm told) of the source material is from radios, and certainly there will be some segments of this release that the kids will call "brutal!" and "sick!", but the depth and range of this release, like the two Thirteen Hurts CDs before them, is unprecedented.   The attention to detail is without comparison.  Each track is amounts to prime numbers.  At times, layers of heavily panned electric rhythms dance in and out of sync while what sounds like dying drip-drop synth burble cascades in and out of the picture.  At other times, it sounds like the sci-fi soundtrack to an animal stalking its prey, despite ominous, disruptive climate patterns.  Brooding, creeping static pulses punctuate swarms of oscillating ghost hiss.  Musique Concret glossolalia meets high-speed cut-up squealing robot ganglia.  With what seems like a minimal approach, "UVB-76" runs the gamut.  Each track is rich and unique, and any two tracks would compliment eachother as sides on a stellar 7 inch.    66 minutes in duration, and not a moment is wasted.




https://soundcloud.com/nopartofit/blood-rhythms-in-a-vacuum-alternate-version

  One day it dawned on me that tons of material over the last 15 years had sort of grown an organic cohesiveness to it that is suitable to be looked at together, both backward and forward.   In 2004, I had a dream about a child going through what could be said of a certain toad; that if you put a toad in a pot of water and slowly boil it, this toad would adapt and survive.  If you put a toad in an already boiling pot of water, it would die immediately.   In my dream, I saw a child suddenly being immersed in a similar fluid, causing him to grow up immediately.  When he did grow up so abruptly, the result was a person with writing all over his body and black tar coming out of his mouth.   Like the Empress in the tarot, this child lept forward from virginity to creativity.  I made this photo shoot happen with my friend and photographer, Iris B., and I never knew what I was going to do with it.  At one point, I thought it would be an exhibition of photography.   Eventually, though, it dawned on me to de-saturate and sort of purify the images and use it to frame this material.

This material, ranging from 2000-2015, represents a lot of things I sort of hoped would be on 7 inches or prestigious compilations, or they were criminally under-released, perhaps prematurely.  For instance, I went to a piano class at a local community college to learn just one song; "Viper's Drag" by Fats Waller.  My final exam was to be able to get through the first page of written music, and I did it, like a gallivanting jalopy and a horse-drawn carriage of maddening, youthful frustration.   My version, "Maggot's Drag (Notte Del Casu Marzu)" tells a short horror story of killer flying maggots.  It was meant for a "monster music" compilation I was curating, that was more or less sabotaged by a cover artist whom I paid in advance, who didn't deliver for over two years.  I got my money back after a fair amount of doin', but the steam I did not.

Also in the picture, is the audio for a performance I did with Right-Eye Rita on 06/06/2006, at a party I curated with  Betty DeVoe.  It  was a ritual performance called "The Stifling Air", supposedly based on some works by Jacques De Molay, Grandmaster of the Knights Templar in the 13th Century.  It included a custom made coffin and a nude model, and a king.  I always felt it needed to reside somewhere, but only now did it make sense to put it somewhere.  I could have produced the piece yesterday.

Some of my early performances exhibited a variant amount of sound structures, with me screaming the words "Remove All Doubt" over it until I felt like my vocal chords were bleeding.   Featured here is one such piece, some of my more musical work.

There is also a track, "Mention This", featuring the vocals of Atalee Judy, a woman who was a kind and passionate supporter and friend early on.  She'd given me a cassette of a'capella recordings, and I was inspired for weeks to create music to them.  In this case, prior to knowing anything really about experimental music, I made music that is still bizarre, even to me now.  Screeching synth-cellos and heavily effected broken glass, sampler percussion, among many other things, provided a back-drop for Judy's incredible voice.  I once played this track to a man who did sound engineering for radio plays, and he said I'd achieved sounds and dynamic stereo ranges that he wouldn't understand how to do.  Maybe he was just being nice.

Another track features Nikola Vasilic, where he and I did another piece for a Halloween compilation, with piano, organ, and lots of samples from horror movies.   Yet another track was made by me with harmonica, bass guitar, sampler, vocals, and masochistic microphone abuse.  I could go on and on.  There is a story to every piece, and it is a diverse listen for sure.  It is 60 minutes in duration, and I humbly suggest you give it  a try.




https://soundcloud.com/nopartofit/arvo-zylo-body-of-defective-memories-excerpt

This strange album was originally released on cassette by the very discriminate and taste-making Enemata Productions.   Then again, it was reissued on cassette two years later, in a black vinyl bag with three full color post cards, a page from a book in German that I'd found in an abandoned church, probably from the 19th century, and dirt from various places, namely, the notoriously haunted Bachelor's Grove Cemetery.  Naturally, the moisture caused the tape to rot, but even before that, I was getting eerie reports of tapes being "completely blank".  Even so, while the decay did lend a certain something to the experience, if not the physical detritus, it also limited the range of that experience.

This material is not for everyone.  I made it in a sitting of about 36 hours straight, at my friend's studio space, "Scab Labs", with mostly voice, an SS330 keyboard, a sampler, field recordings from a construction site, destroyed tapes, and a bunch of EVP that I'd recorded from Coast to Coast AM, in real time, the old fashioned way, for the most part.  For me, it brings to mind Giusto Pio's "Motore Immobile" at times, and at other times well, "autistic" is the only word I could use to describe it.  It could be haunting, it could be my soundtrack for the times I spent the night at the aforementioned Bachelor's Grove Cemetery, or it could be just an unusually precocious lo-fi dark-ambient album made by a somewhat high-strung person with not much of an ability to sit still long enough to be truly ambient.

It comes off as minimal, but there are sometimes an excessive amount of layers.  In the case of the title track, there were over 150 tracks used in various mixdown sessions.   I'd say this is best listened to in a solitary environment, preferably outside, and in the dark. Is it still possible to do that?  If not, a boiler room from a building built in the 20s or before would do.    Approximate running time is around 70 minutes.   

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[NO PART OF IT]

Review of Shadow Sea by Traumatic Static:

http://traumaticstaticwebzine.blogspot.com/2016/05/review-ataraxic-ataxia-shadow-sea-cd.html

ATARAXIC ATAXIA - SHADOW SEA - CD
NO PART OF IT
DARK AMBIENT/EXPERIMENTAL NOISE
PRO CDR IN A JEWEL CASE WITH INSERT.
ORIGINALLY RELEASED IN AN EDITION OF
23 COPIED BY SIDE OF THE SUN RECORDINGS
ATARAXIC ATAXIA IS:
DOMINICK DUFNER
NICOLE PIZZTO



I.) AU CLAURE DE LA LUNE / II.) WHITE BUFFALO (LIVE) /
III.) A MASOCHIST'S HEAVEN... / IV.) SHOTGUNS, PHRENOLOGY
AND A STEADY HAD / V.) IF IT ONLY HAPPENS ONCE IT MAY AS
WELL HAVE NEVER HAPPENED / VI.) ...SURELY MUST BE HELL:

Shadow Sea by Ataraxic Sea is an interesting release which focuses
more on a dreary classical ambient style. The duo Dominick Dufner
and Nicole Pizzato did a marvelous job creating a very interesting
mix of traditional string usage alongside noise/ambient equipment.
This release sees to create more of a neo-classical style with some
noise overlaps mixed together quite interestingly. From the beginning
of the release, the listener gets a sort of "orchestrated descent"
into madness. This album conveys a very brooding atmosphere; furthermore,
it can be very chilling and yet relaxing. Let us explore the overall release
in detail.

Au Claire De Le La Lune- Has a very interesting structure to it, instead
of starting with a huge thrash of intense drones, it eases into it
throughout the song.  It's sort of like a beautiful piece you'd hear
in the next modern day century horror flick starring some killer ghost.
No, you won't necessarily see much resemblance to an Atrax Morgue track
on this one, but in all honesty, it is a pretty damn eerie track to start
off with. I like the classical clashing of key notes thrusting its way into
the ominous scratchy static at the 1:45 mark. Yes, I say this was a calm release
to lay back and zone out to. White buffalo is a live track extending over 9 mins
of raw violin and noise thrown into the blender to the audience. I can easily say
this one is my favorite track on the release. This is where the Gothic undertones
seem to come into play because of the neoclassical experimentation. Since this is
a live track, one gets the raw piercing electronic masterpiece. A Masochist's
Heaven is actually pretty ironic because it is actually very peaceful. The work
is almost akin to something you'd hear on a Premature Ejaculation release but
except a bit grittier. Pretty strange minimalism infused with a low harsh sound
going on here but very refreshing. Now by the fourth track, one's attention is
caught immediately by the rhythmic start and progression of the loop that kicks
in throughout the song. In combination with the violins, the fourth track is
almost dance able as it slowly transcends into a sort of more beautiful chaotic
orchestra by the six-minute mark. The 5th and 6th tracks focuses more on an
immense morbid atmosphere as opposed to the previous tracks on the album.
Listening to the track "...surely must be hell" one can get the overwhelming
sense of dread washing over them because of the wonderful violin structure.
I must say, even the collaboration of screeching drones gives off a haunting
vibe; one could say it is like taking some darker version of Throbbing Gristle
or Einsturzende Neubauten and blending it with some pretty experimental sense
of depressing stuff. This track exudes a sort of dark cabaret vibe thanks to
the neoclassical elements going on.

I must say, this masterpiece surprised me and I listened
to it at least 3-4 times today to soak in the Gothic,
harsh ambiance. If you are into a different direction
of noise/ambient and enjoy the traditional usage of
classic string arrangements, give it a listen:

8/10

-DANTE-

www.nopartofit.blogspot.com/

[NO PART OF IT]

http://traumaticstaticwebzine.blogspot.com/2016/06/review-arvo-zylo-hello-walls-cd.html

Review of HELLO WALLS by Traumatic Static

I.) BODY OF DEFECTIVE MEMORIES:
"Hello Walls" was originally released on cassette by Enemata Productions
in 2008. Later re-issued on No Part Of It Records in 2010 on cassette in
a black latex bag filled with funerary soil. Finally we have a cd version
also re-re-issued via No Part Of It. This is an album I missed out on the
first two times around and one that I am extremely happy to own a physical
copy of now. ARVO ZYLO is a project that you never know what to expect from.
Past albums have presented everything from Harsh Noise, Extremely experimental
Industrial and Glitch, Sequencer experimentation and music closer to Electronica
and a dozen other sounds and styles that would take up far too much space to list
here. With "Hello Walls" my first thought was "Is this a Harsh Noise Wall style
release from ARVO ZYLO?!?!" Three long tracks with dark and dingy minimalist art
also added to that initial impression. Well it was wrong. What we actually have
here is a Minimal Harsh Noise masterpiece. "Body Of Defective Memories" opens
the album and drags us into a nearly thirty five minute sprawl of cavernous,
Sub-terrain exploration. A very slow build up leads us deeper down and further
in. Short bass movements cloaked in small traces of distortion are looped along
with a silent hum. Foggy atmospheres are invoked by a resonating cloud of long
stretched moaning sound. Crunching sounds like fragmented voices appear and vanish
until they become a frequent addition. Upon length we hear that they are wet and
sloshing sounds like that of foamy water licking the shoreline in repetition.
Additional Ambient tones begin to rise after some time. Tranquil reversed drones
that create a faint, But beautiful melody. Meditative and thought provoking. Over-
time these transform into ghostly choir like voices and high pitched distant ringing.
The vibrations made feel as if they bounce off of the walls of your skull endlessly.
Harsh bursts like steam billowing from some hidden schism in the center of the earth
come in phased loops crossing from one speaker to the next in cyclic motions. Secondary
textures begin to accompany this from somewhere far in the distance. The effect this has
on the listener is entrancing. More and more harsh sounds are added to this to form an
expansive and immersive listening experience. Eventually this winds down into a more
minimal and stripped down segment. Crunching rhythms are looped along a backdrop of
synth organs and choir-like tones. Curiouser and Curiouser, Further down the rabbit
hole we go. Again the rhythmic sections become more dominant and things begin to
warp once more. Deep melodic tones are heard in tiny intervals. Harmonic keys play
a spooky intermission like something you'd hear on a classic Scooby Doo cartoon.
The theme of something mysterious lurking in the shadows. Highly experimental and
very weird sounds become the main focus as the melody continues. Playful, Pitch-
shifted voices are heard coming from every direction like a gathering of mischievous
Ghouls, Goblins, Imps and entities. This slows down into a spiraling downward slope
until all is hissing and exhaling static and muffled inhuman vocal patterns. 

II.) HELLO WALLS:
(FEATURING GUEST VOCALS BY: INFECTIOUS REX/MORGAN MCDONALD/NIKOLA VASILIC) The following title track is much shorter at under nine minutes. A gathering
frenzy of sound is heard. Crowded rooms full of obscured and voices and deep
windswept textures. It sounds like there is a 1950's era party on the other side
of several walls. This is slowly drowned out and engulfed by the massive gathering
of a powerful storm brewing. High end Harsh Noise style feedback and signals begin
to make their presence known. High pitched frequencies of spacey sound. A large
vacuum expands and lets loose a cosmic storm. Ultra dense tones blend with distant
high pitched pulses creating what sounds like an interplanetary war. The audio
equivalent to something out of a 50's dime store Sci-Fi tabloid. Harsh Noise elements
come in a mangled array of scraping, Destructive force. Stretched out ambient drifts
are laid over top gently in haunting patterns. Sub-bass grows like to an earth shattering
quake. Loud, Rumbling and devouring. The guest vocals noted at in the album insert must
be very buried in the mix. I can hear traces of what sounds like voices but they are
too far gone to comprehend. Things become much quieter suddenly and softly sung female
vocals are heard barely above a whisper which concludes the piece.

III.) PHANTOM DECORUM:
The final track "Phantom Decorum" is slightly over thirty minutes long, Making this
quite a demanding listen. It begins close to where "Hello Walls" left off. Windswept
atmospheres wrap around and whip about as a gentle piano melody plays a slight-fully
mournful and contemplative tune. Blowing gusts and random field recordings of what
sounds like activity at a market or busy street are heard. The fumbling of objects
and children's laughter, Distant whistling, Car horns, Etc. Free-form organ playing
is heard at times. Resonating tones rise and fall and rise again to loud drones.
Random voices call out random words. Sound collage meets free-form experimentation.
Very different from anything else I've heard from ARVO ZYLO while also featuring
signature tones and things that bridge the gap between this and other releases making
it feel like part of a whole. Wet phasers contain strange otherworldly noises. Brakes
squeal. Children scream. And the main drone begins to invoke uncomfortable feelings.
Impending doom, Dread, Anxiety, The fear of something awful on it's way. Hammering
sounds make me imagine the citizens of a once quiet and peaceful town boarding their
homes shut in anticipation of a coming nightmare. The drone grows louder and brings
with it a more threatening and urgent feeling. The streets sound mostly deserted other
than clueless hooligans and trouble makers. A sense of panic is conjured by what has
become a very bleak soundscape. Bass tones flood distant streets as the previously
mentioned wet tones re-appear. More alien and violent this time...Whipping with deadly
strikes. What sounds like a steam engine screeching on distant tracks is heard as oscillating
bass tones mimic speeding vehicle engines. Weird synth/keyboard sounds and Industrial rhythms
begin. Power tools grind metal on metal. Things begin to take on a "Factory sound." Perhaps
preparation are being made for a coming terror? Clanging, Metallic piano keys play a playful
melody that sounds almost devious. Things are quieter now but things still don't feel "Safe."
Drones are still present sounding like some infinite infernal machine motor whirring for an
unknown, Sinister purpose. Things warp into another dimension. Alien voices take over the
remainder of the track. The End? Not quite. There is a hidden surprise at the end but I
won't spoil it for you.

A TRULY UNIQUE ALBUM. RECOMMENDED FOR FANS OF ENDOMETRIUM CUNTPLOW/BLOOD RHYTHMS/
NITE SHADEZ/UNCERTAIN/GHOST MINER/ETC:

7.5/10
-ABATTOIR-

nopartofit.blogspot.com
nopartofit.bandcamp.com

[NO PART OF IT]

Review from Vital Weekly of Arvo Zylo's "Hello Walls":  http://www.vitalweekly.net/1045.html

For his latest release, which was already recorded in 2008 (and which was released on cassette in 2008 by
Enemata, and again in 2010 by No Part Of It, also on cassette) he recorded staying awake for 36 hours at a friend's
studio using "mostly voice, an SS330 keyboard, a sampler, field recordings from a construction site, destroyed tapes,
and a bunch of EVP that I'd recorded from Coast to Coast AM, in real time, the old fashioned way, for the most part",
as he writes and interestingly also is the fact that he writes that at places in the title track there have been more than
150 tracks 'in various mix down sessions'; and yet at nine minutes this is the shortest piece; the other two are thirty
and thirty-five minutes. The music is very minimal on all three of these pieces and I think this is easily the best work
I heard from him so far. Everything is very drone like, and it sounds like he's using low-resolution samples and
sound effects, which are slowly moved around but throughout these pieces there is lot of variation with the material.
Always, so it seems, there is a new element dropping in and out of the mix, keep a constant flow of the music,
and which makes a truly fascinating listen, especially on the two longer pieces. The shorter title piece didn't cut it
for me, as it was simply a bit muddy, and a bit noisy, in terms of overlaying sound material. In the longer pieces
that seemed to be a bit less present and a bit more open, with organ like drones, a soaring voice sample and the
amplification of tin foil. All of that worked in a really great, almost hallucinating way. This is an excellent
release. (FdW)

[NO PART OF IT]

https://heathenharvest.org/2017/06/01/blood-rhythms-heuristics-maintains-mood-deep-imaginative-without-overselling/

Within underground culture, reliability can vary from venture to venture. No Part of It, Arvo Zylo's small imprint out of Chicago, is certainly among the more reliable independent organizations, issuing a stream of noisy, interesting, even downright weird music that always gives you every reason to take it seriously. No Part of It's 2016 CD-R by Blood Rhythms, Heuristics, is another point along that line, even as understated as the disc may be.



Heuristics is a collection of odds and ends from as far back as 2001. There are reissues of tracks from compilations here, along with one-offs for events and hyper-limited releases. ("'Mope' was created in 2002 and was originally featured on a CD-R limited to five copies," say the liner notes.)

As you may imagine, the result is a widely varied album touching on almost as many styles as there are tracks on the disc. Assessing the album as it presents itself—an unassuming roundup of historic moments in the life of this occasional project of Arvo Zylo and friends—allows the abrupt shifts in mood to become opportunities for pleasant surprise rather than annoyance. The versatility of this group is, obviously, a result of a lineup that changes at each iteration, retaining Zylo as the only consistent member. Loose ensembles such as Blood Rhythms have always existed, but they have never been common as keeping them alive requires as much talent for organization and management as it does an ability to recruit worthy musicians.


Arvo Zylo | Credit: Dana Day
Zylo exhibits much all-around talent on this release, as well as wide range. Even as the music changes from track to track, it remains mostly engaging with more than a few really fine moments. As it runs through the expected soundscapes and noise constructions, the album also reaches into the realms of vocal blues (as on "Mention This") and haunted-house theatricality ("Never Fuck in the Woods"). Aside from, possibly, "In a Vacuum (Alternate Version)," which is mostly tape rumble with some vocals mixed down deep enough to be almost inaudible, everything on this CD ought to be enjoyable to any noise fan.

The deceptively unassuming quality of the entire album is encapsulated also in its cover art. A black-and-white figure, covered in thick-lettered writing, is presented in a few different poses on the front, back and inside of the CD. As images, the art is not especially striking, but the CD's liner notes reveal that the art extends beyond the retinal. The pictures are "inspired by a dream about a child physically growing up in an instant, and the inherent side effects of such a transformation." The concept behind the cover art is deep and imaginative, but not oversold, just the same as the sonic work on this disc and Zylo's plentiful output, overall.

Track List:

01) In a Vacuum (Alternate Version)
02) Mention This
03) Outage
04) Mope
05) Never Fuck in the Woods
06) Maggot's Drag (Notte Del Casu Marzu)
07) Dismissal
08) Remove All Doubt (Part One)
09) Remove All Doubt (Part Two)
10) The Stifling Air

Written by: Matthew Carey
Label: No Part of It (United States) / None / Pro CD-R, Digital
Noise / Dark Ambient / Experimental