PLAYLIST with COMMENTS/REVIEWS

[CannibalRitual]

FLESHLICKER - Mondo Flesh 2xC30 - great HNW from this very diverse project. Amazing huge poser that came with it as well!

Been curious to check out that project as well! Thanks for just reminding me.

[W.K.]

Final Solution - Half/Dead 2018 cassette re-release by Der Bunker
Some bands have a mysterious yet intriguing aura around them. Maybe it's their incredible stories, hyped up write-ups or the overall nastiness that shines through their art. With FS, it's mostly the fascinating stories, and I can highly recommend their interview in the Nefarious Activities zine. I wonder how it was like to see them live, must have been a hell of a good time. So then you get excited and order the re-issue tape. Of course! Of course! Whitehouse-esqe minimal electronics with maniacal screams on top of it. Sometimes with engine sounds, sometimes only very minimal screeches and synth oscillations. And those screams! But when the tape was over, the only words form my mouth where a mere "meh". Some of the live recordings are okay and the screams are crazy, but I find the music quite lackluster and beyond those screams it's too minimal for me, not enough excitement.

[Bloated Slutbag]

See bottom of this post for digest commentary

Kazumoto Endo And Kaori Komura ‎– In The Cave
The work of Kazumoto Endo often strikes these earholes as sharply percussive. Sharp kinetic chops, explosive bursts, biting stabs, punching in and out with pointed, piercing, precision and poise. This is especially notable on the 2011 release Switches & Knobs, for which the preeminent Endoist talents of Kazuma Kubota are enlisted in the delivery of kinetic chop after explosive burst after biting stab, a twice-pronged powerhouse of pointy-headed piercing percussives. Tell you what though, I’ll do you one better. Howzabout enlisting the legit talents of a legit Samul nori percussionist in the name of one Kaori Komura. And then, like, just go bat-shit crazy with the sharp, kinetic chops, bursts, stabs, crashes, clangs, bangs, and whangs. Like, that would be rad.

No word on where these improv sessions took place‎– presumably a cave of some sort‎– but the sparsely collaged b/w photos there from are pretty goshdarn classy. What we get is a good eyeful of Ms Komura, done to the nines in trad Korean regalia, clearly having a blast with her four-part MO of traditional drums and gongs. Plus sexy poses of Endo’s arm working away at the familiar souped-up springed washboard thingy, aka the Killer Bug. Skilled improvisers, these, you can tell just by looking. But the earholes second the motion. These are the sorts that seem to know instinctively just when space is required‎– and given the percussive proposition in play that would be more often than not‎– and just when to pile on in frenzies of ecstatic fever-bliss.

Those of the harshheaded inclination are advised to do two things: turn it up, bring the noise. In giving the percussionist her cave space to really shine, Endo drops it down a notch, or at least shall we say, the two performers are in perfect balance. No shrieking blasts of all-out noise to mercilessly overwhelm and crush the percussion. In fact, turn it up to the requisite levels and the harshest moments are delivered by the gongs. And make no mistake, at the requisite levels, these gongs are are daaaaamn harsh. Excruciating reams of bright, piercing, metal-on-metal jiiiiiinnnng, sharp enough to cut holes in the damn cave walls. I go on cuz, y’see, the first few sessions with the disc I had it up pretty loud. Pretty loud. And, despite the inability of the Endo noise to really cut through, it was all pretty impressive stuff. But on instinctively cranking to ridonkulous levels the shit just...comes ALIVE. Huge spiky smorgasboards of brilliant texture, leaping out from all corners of the cave, filling the space with orgiastic blisses of teaming life– or better, suggestive of whole new spaces and worlds to inhabit, with sound, color, flavor, fury.

The opening bangs are delivered, as is appropriate, by the pleasingly tangy rasp of straight-up Samul nori, sharply struck gongs glinting brightly along softly glowing cave-walls, slowly undulating electro-rumbles emerging from the attack. A second, more robust drum’n’gong banging-fit is underscored by full-up flatulent burble and then attack the third precipitates a properly buggered stab of classic, palate-cleansing, killer shriekage. Pregnant pause. Deep breath now. Ready, steady, on my ma- blammity-slammity-ker-screech! Plenty of nicely measured breaks for air, or for regrouping of energies, in the moment availing of temporarily scorched ‘holes the opportunity to bask in the warm afterglow of furious heat. The tension in these moments is palpable, almost as though one is just daring the other to break the silence, a delicate dangerous dance, a contest of wills with no clear victor. (For what it's worth my money's on the one with the mona lisa smile. She seems to know something we don't.) The way and the how of the silences being navigated is where it all comes together, and falls apart, in aridly arrayed dis-arrray, as though the listener were tasked with scrying to divine the deafening nothings between the noise. And I’d get there, too, if someone would just cease with the unrelenting racket. Jeeez.

Aside from the silence and the screech, there are intervals too of more and less restrained tapping, bonking, ding-a-linging, sometimes brutally buggered to oblivion, other times freed to elaborate wild whims of whippity-whammed wiggout. All the while hastily goading the next ‘hole-destroying faux silence irradiator.  It's all very spare, one might surmise, but in comes searing feedback, analog scorch riding the tailwinds, hammering gong-peaks duly maxing the smoking intensities. This is, pretty much how it all plays out, ancient and storied bum-boo-biddidy bee-bop clangily-bangily, necessarily amplified to the nth needn’t I emphasize this enough indelicately wormholed through the presently spastic and frenzied ‘hole rupturing fury of the Prime Bugger himself.

And yes, by the by, the word spastic is plainly in play. I couldn't speak for Ms Komura but far as Endo the word would not generally have entered the lexicon at least since the studiously studio'd Brick & Mortar, replaced in the more recent improvised incarnation by vocabulary more owed to discipline and deliberation. A delicate dance of two performers in perfect balance, but riddled with jarring rips, jagged screeches, metal bashings, jing-ling bells, lightly tapped excursions, sharp bites of piercing feedback, plentiful pure-bred percussive pounding, a colorful study in dynamic contrast, more than sufficient to keep the attention perfectly off-balance, and perfectly engrossed from bang to clang to bung-screecher-scritch-screee-bingily-booby-booby-ker-blong.


Digest spew:
This, is a banger. A binger. A bonger. A killer bum-boo-biddidy bee-bop-buggering BLAST from the past, ancient and storied Korean percussions hammered through the prime bugged-out wormhole to a presently spastic and frenzied ‘hole rupturing fury. Turn it up, way up, bring the harsh, way harsh, at the requisite levels extracting from upper-edged gong-peaks excruciating reams of bright, piercing, metal-on-metal jiiiiiinnnng, sharp enough to cut holes in the damn cave walls. In the many and pregnant pauses, bask in the warm afterglow of furious heat. The tension is palpable, a delicate dangerous dance, a contest of wills with no clear victor. Scry in these cracks the divine deafening nothingness between the noise, then ride frenzied pile-ons to the prophesied ecstasies of scorched fever-bliss.

[Soloman Tump]

Raime - If Anywhere Was Here He Would Know Where We Are 12" + Hennail 12" + Quarter Turns Over A Living Line 2xLP - Blackest Ever Black 2010, 2011, 2012

interesting to see Raime mentioned here. I was quite disappointed with the album Quarter Turn but Hennail and If Anywhere are very good EPs. Agreed that it is hard to pinpoint their sound. I guess that's why Quarter Turn didn't live up to my expectations as it is very different to the EPs.  Demdike Stare / Andy Stott..... Damaged / distorted music. All good.

[FreakAnimalFinland]

Temple of Tiermes master tape
Was going through endless piles of assorted crap and found tape of long lost session of Temple Of Tiermes. Back in 1995 I was member in first version of T o T with J.Toivoinen. This odd ethno industrial track that can be heard being listened never made it any of releases. It included also another Unholy member as guest. I recall only one short track of this material - probably half an hour recording only made to widely available releases. It was 2nd track on this tape. Wall of harsh bass noise and guitar shredding. Tracks were all different and often challenging to listen to. Digitizing it and lets see if something makes it to public eventially... Sessions were quite nasty, and evolved into Jarkko being kicked out from his apartment for blasting earsplittering noise for extended periods of time. Human skull percussion sessions emptied piles of skull content to floors and various others occupational hazards happened during sessions.
So after some talk, turns out the very debut ToT tape will be reissued now with 30 mins of unheard material of the sessions.

V/A Extremeties tape
Cloama "tool wars" tape
Squamata tape on Trash Ritual
Compilation, very very good 80’s nastiness.
Then proceeding with some Finnish stuff. Planning for some online ”content” for SI podcast, going through rare or/and unreleased Finnish material. Stuff like Squamata tape here, is really good harsh noise, but I have like 60 mins on unreleased stuff of probably even better stuff. Cloama, this 1997 first tape is brilliant example how harsh noise existed over here already in the 90’s. Totally unlike later days Cloama.
There is tons of stuff in Finland, very few remember of know of, that could be good to revisit or even discover decade(s) later.

BLOODLUST! Did a lot of good stuff. Their old 7” series is such a classic, but huh... This series of ltd ed 50 copies tapes, what a great series it is. Con-Dom was re-issued, but... MSBR, DBL, SOLOTROFF, MANGLED CLIT, etc.. Should actually check what is the -complete- series of this? Who all were published in this similar packaging? I think these both series could demand topics of their own!
MSBR is really good. It may be almost heritic to say that I would have preferred something such as this tape being reissued and not the first LP!
DBL! Huh... If the lo-fi power carnage was that wanted now, this is pretty much same league and I guess mere 50 exists out there. Someone should try to change that as I feel there is not enough DBL available for lovers of brutal crunchy noise!

Bloodlust tapes just too much, so had to dig up more. Label boss tape is probably THE best done under his own name. Just fierce and solid noise taoe.
Dead Body Love tape on LOUD! Label (italy), is obviously not Bloodlust! Stuff, but equally brutal to best of this project stuff. Track 2 on side A, is like half DISCORDANCE half DBL. This utterly lacerating feedback dranched vocals on top of crunchy noise.... Oh yes. Any label who could lure these guys for CD reissue, I am sure population of this world would need more than 100 copies of these.

Emil Beaulieau ”abusing the little ones” LPand Dieter Muh ”stockholmmonsters” LP are as good as I recalled they were. Then returning to  some 90’s industrial-noise from Poland. If there is era, and country you can trust nobody talks about, its this. Guy behind Desolation Zone "Sonixslaughter" tapeprobably got more attention with his involvement with Profanum, but this industrial noise stuff wouldn’t ring a bell for most. Not absolute classic, but certainly nice stuff to listen to. Early Dead Rats label release, piles of corpses on cover, quite juvenile XXX rated song titles, so what not to like?!

V/A Kolari 2 cd is comp of great finn noise. Breaking The Will cd on New Forces even better than I thought it would be. Bow Gamelan Ensemble got reissued on cd by Cold Spring. Ends into fanfare of firecrackers in ... steel drum -kind of grande finale.
K2/ Incapacitants reissue, is flawless harsh attack. First song actually I felt that after Breaking The Will, it didn't start with brutal impact - but soon it developed to fierce and ripping sound.

First MNEM release Arkaeo CDR. Discogs says 1999, but release was actually 2000? 20 minutes of Mnem as we know them sound ever since. I think band did very solid discography all the way. Reel to reel noise before it was peaking again, and continued it after peak was over...
I recall I once requested demo from them for potential release, but somehow back then didn’t ”feel it” and release never happened. I wonder if material actually appeared in their later works or if session remains unreleased...

Mika Vainio, a.k.a. Ø ”metri”. First thing I ever heard from him back in the 90’s. Crystal clear electronic signals. Odd beats (heh), but barely anything to dance to. Just cold and hard electronic signals. Soon to open Mika Vainio’s posthumous exhibition in Helsinki modern art museum. Some stuff, I don’t feel belongs to ”museum”, but in Mika Vainio, at this moment, seems very much something that should be there. Back in the day, Kiasma museum has even Merzbow, Sudden Infant and other such stuff doing live shows! While I would prefer scum venues for noise, some stuff can work in museum settings...

Wiese interview in latest Harsh Truths was probably best interview on the podcast, plus.. maybe best interview of Wiese?
I got quite many of his releases. Of course only by number. If you talk about % of his total output, I only got fraction!
If judging based on things I know, I’d say man is at the moment as strong, if not stronger that he has been? These two are the latest things I got. Skin Graft / wiese CD is absolutely neat harsh noise blast. It may not have the scummy and dirty elements what I would have expected a bit from SG but loud and crystal clear distortion & full frequency spectrum usage with tasty mix is something I would associate for Wiese. Lots of good physical sounds are ripped to shreds by utterly hight tech sounding methods.
50% moonshine with equally crystallic clarity is good companion to match strength & tastiness.

Been thinking of SI podcast episode of obscure anarchist noise. Listened all Shadowed Veil stuff I got. Some really good. Tape seen here had the released 1994 tape, but also unreleased split tape materials dubbed on otherwise blank b-side.

Macronympha is usually associated with long tapes. This Macronympha/Prurient tape on Hospital prod.. its c-10 I think? At least went so damn quick. Good murky noise in oversized packaging.

Forza Albino is one of those Danish projects that are regrettable dead and gone... At least I assume so. This double tape is their rarest stuff, ltd mere 12 copies! It has some exclusive stuff, but also alternative versions. I would say the original Pussyboy track is far more demented than the more widely available one. I was told vocalist though his performance was too... hmm.. odd or bizarre, and not enough brutal. I tend to like more bizarre and odd vocal performances that border the limit of laughable. Anyone can do the maximum brutal roar or highly effected aggro scream, but what really is remembered, are the demented and unusual, almost goofy vocals in industrial-noise!

I have been lazier to "report" recent listening, but playlist is HUGE. I guess from last few days there's like 30 cm tall pile of tapes that I should comment, but probably.. won't. A lot of good stuff, though. When people say where are the classics of current age... I tend to think... well... you just have to find them out. One can't really recommend everything, but there is so much good items that one just needs to discover them. If you discover after "hype", it may not be what you expected. If you discovered it by yourself, it may appear as pretty much  better than many older titles. All they are missing is the novelty of being first thing you heard. That should not be the problem. Noise deserves way more than novelty value. Not glory of the virginal first time experience, but the old man’s unsatisfied thirst! More noise, yes please!

Latest listening from last night dark gutter drone noise from Hair Police "The Hells have eyes" LP. So good I think I’ll give it another spin today.  Utterly primitive rawness from Hands To/Mental Anguish split LP. Industrial beats on the b-side by Mental Anguish have not aged so neatly as Hands To, that is as ageless now as it must have been when it came out!

[Baglady]

WORTH - Hidden In Christ CS (Self Abuse, 2019)
Like unscrewing and bending your way through a gigantic machine of sorts. The vast grey interior of a Christ machine. Cogs ticktocking, oil dripping, steam pipes gushing. Like getting lost in a huge level in the first Quake game after all the fiends and lobotomized grunts have been slain, trying to find an exit, or a way further in perhaps. Flashbacks to sleep deprived red teenage eyes, a brain turned to mush and grades in steep decline. A small price to pay for such a trip, I'd say!

[ConcreteMascara]

WORTH - Hidden In Christ CS (Self Abuse, 2019)
Like unscrewing and bending your way through a gigantic machine of sorts. The vast grey interior of a Christ machine. Cogs ticktocking, oil dripping, steam pipes gushing. Like getting lost in a huge level in the first Quake game after all the fiends and lobotomized grunts have been slain, trying to find an exit, or a way further in perhaps. Flashbacks to sleep deprived red teenage eyes, a brain turned to mush and grades in steep decline. A small price to pay for such a trip, I'd say!

As someone who still regularly plays the original Quake, this has to be my next purchase.

[W.K.]

Been listening to quite a lot of Angerfist today. I know dance music is a curse here, but hear me out, the melodies are fucking good. Layers upon layers of slightly detuned synth melodies makes for a very thick, total melodic bliss. Cheesy? yes, digital? very much so, but I wouldn't mind hearing someone making noise bases on such melodies. It's not all good though, the kicks are very hollow sounding and there is an absolute lack of bass, the 'I am really though' samples can be a bit much and I wouldn't be surprised some jacked up Italian guy will come knocking my door soon asking for pills.

[Theodore]

The Death Project Volume Two compilation tape on Lor Teeps, from around 1988. Comes with big size [A4?] inserts / booklet in hard paper, with info, texts, art from the projects / label. All of which seem they are from Holland, and most were unknown to me, when Volume One has enough familiar. That's not a problem as long they prove to be good, and some are very good, but with very limited other appearances / releases, if any. Bands caught my biggest attention are : Dust And The Minds, Forbidden Photographs, Friends In Low Places. Material is forms of 80s industrial, from 'rock-ish' to experimental [Dont know but if any project today was coming with tracks like Hagzisse's for example and other -seemingly- simple and easy stuff, i would reject it. But in those old tapes almost everything is accepted by me and appreciated.] - Good time, good tape !

Also spend some time with The Rita / Dog Holocaust CS [Utmarken] the last days. When i had first listened to this i liked The Rita side better. Now i cant resist to the massive energy and volume of Dog Holocaust. Live air-recordings. Imagine that room like a black hole shallowing the audience.

[Decrepitude]

Raime - If Anywhere Was Here He Would Know Where We Are 12" + Hennail 12" + Quarter Turns Over A Living Line 2xLP - Blackest Ever Black 2010, 2011, 2012

Quarter Turns over A Living Line is a great album. Very well created moods and good sound. I somehow pair Neugeborene Nachtmusik with them as "dance music" with influences more in avantgarde and old and obscure things than in straight techno lineage.

My playlist has been this for the past week or so.
Black Leather Jesus - Crossburnt
Nicely all over the place release. It's got metal junk, feedback, guitar, weird samples and even oscillators. Very good stuff.

7MON -  Conscience Will Not Acclimatise
For how much I like 7MON this is along with the split 7" with Slaughter Of the Innocents are the only releases I have. Even though it seems redundant I've been enjoying listening to this from the CD with both the rough and original mixes of both of the compiled releases back to back.

Cazzodio - Ad Negantem Usum Significationes
Rhythmic industrial from Italy. Not as good as the 2CD compilation or the full-length on Malignant but still a good one. Pretty bare bones and vocal driven.

Screloma - Dirt
More rhythmic industrial. Sometimes it kind of reminds me of Linekraft. Also has a great way of turning points that sound like hot mess into a very well composed and even musical sounding moments. Have to listen to this more.
Edit: And thanks for the trade again Frank!

Edgar Froese - Aqua
Been playing this constantly to get our new dog to sleep and it works every time. I also have to try to learn how to do something resembling THAT lead synth sound that Froese just runs into ground on these early releases in the best way possible.

[cr]

Pleasure Fluids - Show No Mercy LP (Breathing Problem Productions)

I have the "gutter editions" tape (not sure if it was called like that) as well, but it's fantastic to have this also on vinyl. All TF/PE releases should get this treatment.
Whoever wants to do this - yess, please! I'm in.

[Bloated Slutbag]

See bottom of this post for digest commentary

Mo*Te – An Idle Complaint
With Mo*Te, you’re pretty much guaranteed a trip. You will go places, some familiar, some not, some at some remove from expectation. First though, it might be worth checking off the expectations. Heavy psyche overtones. Whitened scathe etchings. Arched drone frieze. Measured, cyclical, drawls. Trippy shizzle, all check. The remove is in the off-kilter convergence of elements, and the just as off-kilter elaboration. An Idle Complaint to be sure, but-

FUCK MO*TE

-uh, sorry there, just had to get that out of the system. One thing I wanted to suggest, is that Mo*Te would seem to have calmed down a bit. The project was never the most spastic even at the most off-kilter of times, but in recent days the ‘holes report more through-thought feel of deliberation. The materials are assembled. The vision is in place. And then it’s just a matter of floating on through the trip’alodious landscape, never to rush the moment, nor to subject it to the rigors of the editing deck, letting the sound casually carry things forward, sleek, sultry, silky smooth. And perhaps in there somewhere is to be gained entry to the off-kilter’d-ness. The sense of plan clearly worked out, but that the planner is completely open to the spanners and deviations of the moment, to readily go places at some remove from expectation, to literally live the noise of it.

Darakata Me builds slowly and steadily, depth-charged rhythmic regularity underpinned by faintly hollowed hum. The hollowed hum soon fills out with steely-pitched alarm wail, frigid oscillations strangling the rhythms in their repetitive grip, freezing the mood in drizzled spirals of grey, bleary-eyed, frizzle. Fighting the freeze is a tonality, a soothing electric blanket of smudged and bleeding tonality, fuzzy-wuzzy warmths tickling the earbone, carefully navigating a narrow path between fogs of singed drone and more roughed up flecks of char-burnt harsh. The depth-charged rhythms make a very brief return, then bow out to flattened loops of downmixed wall-banging, carefully drawing the tensions into frozen spirals that may or may not rip into the expected harshraptures, delayed distorto-blurts doing little to calm the now quite frazzled nerves. In the closing interval, high-end keens to the celestial fringe precipitate due roughening of the bandwidth, as though to finally make good on the harsh promise, but, no.

Incidentally, there’s a second track to reckon with. Only the most minuscule break before Bokyaku comes on, strong. A lot more active, much fuller in body, the aforesaid promise– aka HARSH– being made good. Interestingly, though, the essential materials are pretty much identical to those of the opening ditty, but just wound up into quite fevered states of enraptured dis-tether. Kind of where you might imagine things would eventually have gone, but with the whole middle section of build-up judiciously excised. The opening moment’s got the jitters, juiced up electrodes dancing along sweat-flecked pate, electronic brain storms coming on in deranged waves of epileptic fury. Once power gets jacked, to the max, the blisses are pretty full on, refusing in the event to hold steady, constantly jerking from buzzed oscilla-sizzle to straight-ahead rips of piercing scathe-drillage, celestial screes meeting shrill alarm squeals caught between rougher crunches of raw-mangled invective. Call it what it is, fucking awesome. In the closing minutes the raw-mangled crunchings reveal in their submerged breakage the bare dregs of that depth-charged rhythm, downshifting to a drawn out drawl, slowly cycling back to the start, signaling flip to B.

Ame No Hi wastes little time in building to harsh, serving straight-lined graywalls of flattened purity. Once again electrified buzzings prickle along the surface, bristling static charges diving deep to resolve in sultry fuzzy-wuzzies. Sustained, wailing, electro-bleat cycles coax harshdrone saturations from deceptively thin reeds of drawn-out shiver. At the shriller extremes, one may surmise, there is little question as to the earhole damages being inflicted, but it all just feels so niiiiice. A very convincing approximation of the sound of getting, very methodically, teasingly, electrocuted. Meanwhile, irregular intervals of abbreviated bass-thumping seek to ensure the nerves their share of jitters. Well, take me, nervous fucking wreck, coasting on the frazzled fringe, zoned out, zoning in, electrified walls flattening the field among straight-lined drills to the deliciously shivering core.

Kasukana is a deep, rich, mahogany, burgundy buzzing electrocutions gently caressing sleekly pliable scathewalls. In drops a surprised clanking of acoustic metal scraps, mostly obscured, occasional sharp peaks poking holes in the fuzzy-wuzzied calm, more vigorously hammered slams distorting the percussive force. Twin smolder lines calmly coast along opposite ends of the channel pan, their pleasant undulations coursing through more raw-bled firestorms. In snake whispery tongues of measured tssktssktssk, semi-rhythmic bludgeon-loop frequently disturbed by rough patches of acoustic cantanker. This, is a winner, and a weirder, successfully weirding out attentions not quite sure of where they ought be planting themselves, but in the final moments at least revealing the brightly broken contours of chiseled glass and metal, bludgeon-loop duly tssk-tssking the proverbial aha-moment.

At last, a sweet little surprise in Kuzudarake (Remix/1995), featuring, per dadadrumming dot org, a new mix of the very first Mo*Te to assault the ‘holes, like, waaay back in them golden 90s. Yeshir, thems was the days. Here it may be worth mentioning that the original c10 from which this is taken also appears somewhere amongst the overtones of Life In A Peaceful New World, which, as any sorry sod will submit, is some absolutely ear-ssential shiiiiiiiizzle. Kuzudarake sounds, to these earholes, nothing like anything on LIAPNW. So whether that is the remix talking or what is something to invite repeat auditioning. Y’know, in the advocacy of science. (Major academic journals have already reported interest, so stay tuned for more on this.) So yes, unsurprisingly, this here’s some kinda scorcher, flattened white blister-sheets ripping with unvarnished, unswervingly nasty, insistence. Some surprised entries of legit vocal spasm propel fast-paced storms of tightly active gristle-surge, even admitting that rarity of the Mo*Te MO– a few drills of legit feedback shriek. In other words, much more raw and raging than anything I can specifically conjur to mind from LIAPNW, but of course further research is required. Unworthy of mention perhaps that, in the advocacy of science, the amplitude was duly cranked, to the motherfucking max, and I am not at all pleased to report that the ‘holes are, once again, utterly fucked.

Digest spew:
FUCK MO*TE!

[Ashmonger]

Edge of Decay - Riistettyjen Antologia (CD, Aussaat): 2nd album from this by now well known Finnish PE/Industrial Noise unit. Maybe a bit less rough sounding than their older stuff, but very good nonetheless.

Citalopram Shunyata/North Central/Rotat (CD, Hiisi/Daddy's Entertainment): All very good, Citalopram Shunyata never disappoints, though I think this are some of his best tracks for this project so far. Didn't know what to expect from North Central, but it's not very harsh noise, but rather going into the "atmospheric", creepy direction, good as well. Rotat isn't my favorite project, though I have some releases, this sounds a bit different, less low end sounds and some vocals in one of the tracks, first time I hear that. Pretty lengthy CD (over 60 min).

[holy ghost]

Sissy Spacek - Featureless Thermal Equilibrium CD - GREAT CD with Jay Randall on vocals. 25 min of bass/drum/vocals noisecore, lots of start/stop, lots of blasting..... the first time I saw SS they had Mike DuBose on vocals and this is a really similar trip. A++++++++ exactly what I want from SS - that’s not to say I don’t appreciate their other incarnations/sounds but sometimes I just want the fuckin’ grind man.....

The Cherry Point - Live Hell CD - excellent loud 3 track scorcher. The final track with The Rita I had not heard before. Top notch stuff. Great layouts on these.

[Bloated Slutbag]

See bottom of this post for digest commentary

Mo*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.