STIMBOX

[FreakAnimalFinland]

Today been listening to STIMBOX "Crush". Solid punishment from 1997. I think that this band probably received some non-music releated dislike back in the day, and that combined to some later days lazer-noise cdr's what wasn't in its popularity at certain time, have made band band less appreciated than it could be.

I'm not sure has he been around for 10 years now? At least doesn't seem to have releases. However, if you ask me, actually his 90's material would certainly qualify as material to reissue. Crush is multi-layered, highly electric - but no way "lazer noise". It utilizes electronics, tapes, junk metal, guitar, etc. and everything melts into saturated highly fast moving harsh noise.

It basically has all the finest points of 90's american noise. Tasty crunch, as opposed to flat distortion. The speed, as opposed to stillness of hwn. Clear direction, instead of aimless jumping around or too much stutterloops and cuts. While it is strong and firm, it has the handmade and "unedited" feel to it. Things happen all the time on several level of the song, displaying spontaneous noise energy - but also skill to handle it.

Should probably dig deeper to the 90's Stimbox works in near future! Definitely recommend people too. Doesn't seem to be much of his old stuff uploaded.. Stimbox site and harshnoise.com is gone long ago.

[Mikerdeath]

Some old comments are still floating around the internet from some drama long ago.

Harsh noise website is still up and running, what a relic it is.
http://www.noisemp3.com/

My favorite stimbox recording in this style described above is the "Power Dump" tape on Labrynth

Tried contacting him in 2014 it was not a fruitful endeavor.

[Zeno Marx]

I'd like to think hindsight is going to treat Stimbox and his label well.  I think it needs a little more time, though.  In ten years, when people are digging around US noise for lesser known treasures, Stimbox will be in that chest of goodies.  Recycled, Caveat Emptor, and Morphonic Resonance are all good quality.

[Baglady]

Powerrr Dump is great, yeah. Has that spaced out acid-trip-gone-bad vibe also heard in his track on the Americanoise compilation. Great stuff, and it's failry cheap when it shows up for sale.

[PTM Jim]

Pretty underrated. Probably because of more personal conflicts with others more so that anything.  CDrs leave a bad taste in peoples' mouths as being garbage, but it doesn't mean the material on them is also garbage. Quite the contrary with Stimbox.
Some favorites are Morphic Resonance, Crush, Collab with RHY Yau, Caveat Emptor, Split with Xome.

[Potier]

Definitely great psychedelic approach to noise. All the drama on one of the old message boards kinda really changed noise up a bit - Stimbox was one of the artist that just disappeared after that. Unfortunate for sure.

Well known old video - thought it wouldn't hurt to share it again:

https://youtu.be/4rD-HUz4d7U

[Zeno Marx]

Definitely great psychedelic approach to noise. All the drama on one of the old message boards kinda really changed noise up a bit - Stimbox was one of the artist that just disappeared after that. Unfortunate for sure.

Bullying isn't just for children (unless you acknowledge adults never cease being children).

[Bloated Slutbag]

Caveat Emptor is one I quite liked at the time. Very live in-your-face full throttle full body, with nice wide open feel of room acoustics. The full bodied character of Stimbox overall is one I generally enjoy.  The Crush tape is another in which this really comes through, with maybe a bit more Macro-influenced crunch.

I recall that Oliveira was bemused that someone kept insisting on describing the work as "ambient" ... but I'd at least have to concede "psychedelic". The Shining Path takes this psych-ambient sheen to an exceedingly severe peak while the collab with Abfall could injects the echoing space with more rocket-flavored roar.

There were two collabs with RHY Yau, one on Yau's label and one on Oliveira's. Both are good, the latter is favorite, actually among my favorite pieces of noise of the time. Huge burly canyons of sound.

[Zeno Marx]

Would love to hear those Yau tapes.  Suspect all that would have been on CDR eventually.  Unfortunate that it didn't happen.

[Bloated Slutbag]

Don't have the two Yau collabs handy but a while back some dickhead posted some comments on an old blog:

Stimbox+Yau - :stim:yau:/:yau:box: C60 (HLAS)
"Part 1 in a two-part collaboration".Released around the time of the Mo*te masterpiece, "Life in a Peaceful New World" (HLAS), this beautifully dense foray into the harsh harmonic resonances of amplified spring, string, voice and buzz, offers everything you ever wanted in a harsh, industrial-strength drone, and does for the field everything Mo*te did for ultraharsh ambient-flavored noise. A Stimbox world ascending, Yau hanging on the edges. Slowly developing, enveloping crystal shards sleet across the perimeter of a roiling central inferno. Truly gargantuan depths moon and moan within glittering, skittering crooks and crannies. Feedback slides from clean sheen back into dreamy dust-choked caverns, submerged reverberations scraping metallic screeching luster delving diving deeper deeper still the whirlpool pull sucks the noisebrain into thunderous angelic hell, somehow growing larger larger, blotting out everything, more, the name, not, nothing, drone...

NoiseGrade: A
Harshness: 6.4
Density: 8.6
Rawness: 7.3
Craftsmanship: 7.4
Spasticity: 6.4
Harmonicaness: 9.8


:RHY:Yau:Stimbox: - Tactile C60 (Auscultare)
"Collaboration Part II"Following the release of Part 1 on HLAS, this Yau/Stimbox collaboration sees much more Yau in the structural unfolding and articulation. If liner notes ring true, Stimbox supplies only "sound source" this time around, making it less the pure collaboration featured in Part 1, and more the Yau-pulated Stimbox reworking. Yau jumps in lozenge first, hacking and weezing at an ill-tempered bludgeon which gradually works its way into a solid spluttering, grumbling mess. If Stimbox enters the picture at all, then, it is in a much reduced capacity, gasping and sputtering against Yau`s unforgiving tonsils and tongue-work. Hogtied, branded, dragged kicking and screaming through razor`d sphincter-flesh and whirlwind ass-swipe, frenetic chainsaw wheezing splices into stop-action fidelity and badly burnt tape-head... winking out and off before the raging besquashed Stimpy behemouth is allowed but a floppy few playful plugs against a calmly controlled acoustic ding-a-ling and savage oral choking.

NoiseGrade: A
Harshness: 6.2
Density: 7.1
Rawness: 7.2
Craftsmanship: 8.8
Spasticity: 9.3
Harmonicaness: 3.1 

Note that the dickhead gives the HLAS release high scores in the areas of Density and Harmonicaness, whatever that means, while the Aucultare release scores big in Craftsmanship and Spasticity. (Phrases like "sheet metal bumbiscuit" abound so you have been warned.)

http://harshnoise.blogspot.jp/2005/10/rhy-yau.html

[Zeno Marx]

Am I imagining things that Recycled is maybe a bit darkish and quasi-death-industrial?  I've been listening to a lot of death-industrial, and I'm not sure I'm hearing things clearly.  Nevertheless, this is a good disc, and I wish I owned more Stimbox now.

[Strangecross]

I recently sold all my recycled tapes except stimbox. maybe its because I used to listen to it tripping, but that tape is really incredible. its very dark, but not in a death industrial way, super unique HN. its is repetitive waves of reverberated nastiness.

[CMSFoundation]

Am I imagining things that Recycled is maybe a bit darkish and quasi-death-industrial?  I've been listening to a lot of death-industrial, and I'm not sure I'm hearing things clearly.  Nevertheless, this is a good disc, and I wish I owned more Stimbox now.

As coincidence would have it, this thread popped up just as I scored a copy of the "FORCE FEEDback" tape (Extraction Records), which sounds very death-industrial to me. I don't know if it's an effect box or not (a zube-tube is credited, and those can make vocal-ish sounds, so maybe it's that), but there's a recurring raspy voice-sound that makes me think of exactly the sound you're talking about. It's very dark and reverberating and a bit psychedelic without being overly blissful about it. Since the three tracks are about interruptions of the standard food cycle (track 1, "Binge," track 2, "Purge," track 3, "Feeding Tubes"), the implied vocalizations make sense.  

[Zeno Marx]

Am I imagining things that Recycled is maybe a bit darkish and quasi-death-industrial?  I've been listening to a lot of death-industrial, and I'm not sure I'm hearing things clearly.  Nevertheless, this is a good disc, and I wish I owned more Stimbox now.

As coincidence would have it, this thread popped up just as I scored a copy of the "FORCE FEEDback" tape (Extraction Records), which sounds very death-industrial to me. I don't know if it's an effect box or not (a zube-tube is credited, and those can make vocal-ish sounds, so maybe it's that), but there's a recurring raspy voice-sound that makes me think of exactly the sound you're talking about. It's very dark and reverberating and a bit psychedelic without being overly blissful about it. Since the three tracks are about interruptions of the standard food cycle (track 1, "Binge," track 2, "Purge," track 3, "Feeding Tubes"), the implied vocalizations make sense.  

I'll keep my eye out for a rip of that.  I'm definitely interested in hearing it.

[Lazrs3]

All I have is one Obscurica release by him, I liked it.
https://www.discogs.com/Stimbox-12-01-2005/release/593086