Listening new AHLZDEVELOPER CD (phage tapes) and it sparked to think about successful collaboration.
There are many occasions, when collaboration appears in my ears much more of social interaction, than fruitful creative process.
I mean the releases, where you can simply sum the collaboration 1+1=2. When listening new SICKNESS / BASTARD NOISE collaboration LP, this was my first impression. Not that it would be bad at all. It was just that it seemed as is BN would throw in the tricks they are known of, and Sickness would do his more recent things. Meaning longer brooding dark droning material and few moments of fast cut up harshness erupting. But it doesn't seem as if they would *really* affect eachother. Each artist does what they are known of doing and elements combined into one piece. Of course this may be simply my impression, not reality. My gut feeling still thinks that Sickness does the "sickness elements" and BN does the "BN elements". My assumption would have been that Sickness could have gone further by dissecting BN material or processing vocal performance or BN gone further by fully immersing into source sounds from Sickness? This was good album. Not a disappointment, but just something what felt like almost exactly what could be expected. Even if it is well put together and indeed stands out in comparision to "usual albums".
What else could be expected from AHLZDEVELOPER than harsh noise cut up? Isn't this just the same 1+1=2? Well, it seems entirely different scenario, since starting point is very different from bands above. First of all, CD is not really album per se, but reissue of two tapes and couple compilation tracks. Each track being one making material based on other guys source sounds. Restless cut up harsh noise may be what one expects - and gets. But it seems that method of processing each others sounds in this case is exactly the key to success. Perhaps also that originally these were short tapes and tracks. One would use editing skills and compress the vast (?) sources into energetic blast of noise, which may represent artists own style quite a lot, but offer alternative harsh-noise-sound-spectrum compared to their solo works.
So it works. Works very well. Even if you'd have bunch of material from both guys, it adds another dimension to their work and makes CD well worth having.
Favorite collaborations, where collaboration enhances material greatly?
