PLAYLIST with COMMENTS/REVIEWS

[Baglady]

SFÄR - Sprickor LP (Järtecknet, 2017)
Gustafsson (ALTAR OF FLIES) and Ottosson (BLODVITE) collaborating on what sadly seems to be the last Järtecknet release. They aren’t too far apart on their own, but where Gustafsson has an affection for rural and intimate sounds, Ottosson has mostly worked with machine-like sounds of urban construction/destruction. It all cones together here. There are alot of spoken layers here which took me some time to get used to, same thing with the last Ättestupa album. They do make sense though, and add alot of context, although they might be lost on everyone who don’t know Swedish (which might add a strangeness that I miss out on, come to think of it). Low key but intense album with some truly spellbinding moments (the almost Colley-esque first track on side B for instance). Grows and grows, this LP. Hope this wasn’t a oneoff thing.

[APPLE]

NON - Physical Evidence (LP, 1982, Mute)
Im on my second copy of this. Unfortunately both copies filled with loud crackle and surface noise. To the extent that the enjoyment suffers. Supposed to be NM copies. Have i had bad luck or is the pressing shit? Love the album though. Thinking about trying a third copy? The closure give me vibes of early 90s Incaps, but this is ten years prior. Fantastic stuff.

I have a copy and never noticed any surface noise etc. My copy is from the pressing with STUMM 10 A₁ PN and STUMM 10 B₁ PN etched on the matrix.

[Baglady]

BJNILSEN - Focus Intensity Power LP (Moving Furniture, 2018)
To me, BJ Nilsen has first and foremost been a sound wizard mastering other people’s work (the Sewer Election - Blizzard Amplification set being the latest example). It’s only during the last couple of years that I’ve delved into his own music (the Tape Dekay CD on Narcolepsia comes recommended!), and his contribution to the excellent Bidödaren compilation made me feel stupid; what have I’ve been ignoring/missing out on for so many years? So I picked up this LP for starters. Exquisite massive electronic drone of a warm vintage kind. Very evocative. Would have made a great soundtrack to one of the more chilling and sparse sci-fi movies of the 70’s. A sensation of being completely alone in a very very vast and unfamiliar place. Eerie... Chop Shop, Joe Colley and Jim Haynes crosses my mind, but this is still something else, and in a league of its own. I’m quite stunned!

[Bloated Slutbag]

See bottom of this post for digest commentary

Facialmess & SICKNESS ‎– In The Face Of Uncertain Odds tape reissue (Kitty Play)
Messrs Sanderson and Goudreau have certainly come far, fast. Just the other day comes the rumor, like a one-two gut-punch, that both sirs’ respective soundings into harsh cutup violence have been served with‎ an indefinite restraining order. Next thing you know thug-looped industrial-strength pate-pulverizers are sprouting up like…fucking...weeds, and meanwhile The SICK One goes full name, proper, on the heinie. You can’t make this stuff up. Before that happens, in the face of uncertain odds, the two come as one and...make beautiful music together.

Well look, when I say beautiful I mean the harsh cutup violent stuff okay? Beautifully harsh, beautifully cutup, beautifully butt-rupturously viciously violent. And, tight. Tighter, possibly, than the SICK-Facial collab snuck onto Facial double-discer Pig Hydraulics. I mean, per discogs, this tape clocks in at about twenty-two minutes versus the thirty-five allotted for the pig. Leaner and quite possibly meaner, rapid-fire stutter-bursts rocketing across the pan, full spectrum full-force explosive fire, ducking into closely ranged rabbit-holes, sinking into attention-stealing moments of frozen loop-burgle, unloading and just hammering away with razor’d-sharp, pointedly hole-blowing, fury. The analytic mind wants to dissect the shit into okay here’s the Facial here’s the SICK but frankly analytic mind dearest go fuck yourself. Gut-punch the analysis, go full retard. Bask in ripped-to-shit sonics violently lunging ‘n wrenching from ‘hole-to-’hole. Yiiikes. But them’s the punishments and them’s the way it gotta be.

One thing I like, is the range of texture in the offing. There’s some pretty crude ‘n rude scumbag level shit in here, but also plenty of other level shit, more than plenty not quite as what I would have imagined from either project on its own. In the event, burnt-to-shit textural butt-rupture cuts through the entire tape, crystal clarity of shattered edges brightly piercing utterly smoked air-cavities, sufficient in their full-spectrum tether-snapping jerk-outs to throw even the most studied harshshnozz off the scent. A random guess might say that each is working through material supplied by the other. Another would suggest that legit effort was expended in endeavoring to complement sir counterpart. A third: a clean division runs down the flip, trading carefully spaced tug-n-release Facial spatter and hard-driven never-relenting SICK insistence. Er, so much for gut-punching the analysis.

Side A starts with the title track, tightly compacted scrunch-balls blowing holes through the center of the cratered silences, wider panned incisions and digressions running in marginally delayed counterpoint. Into the cracks slip slow worming rhythmic oscillations, snuffling among the fractured intervals, sucking up airs in anticipation of the next full-force hole-blowing attack. And the next full-force hole-blowing attack always comes due. Pause now for a moment as rhythmic snuffling underlines high-pitched ringing keens, sudden frantic biting nasties blowing apart the calm, metallic feedback nails hammering into looped bilge-based ker-chunk, to net an unnerved, genuinely spastic, discombobulation. At about the halfway point, let’s call it track two, an irregular dialog starts to dominate, trading in the moment measured percussive thunk against unhinged sphinct-spasms of meticulously sliced ‘n diced crunch-sputter flatulence, razor’d peaks like rusted nails punched straight through the eye socket, the dazed ‘n confused focus puking guts in whirlwinds of frenetic apoplectic  frenzy.

Side B is cut-the-fuck-up, left right center, but with little apparent space between the cuts. The result is a full frontal assault that is very seldom given to relent, whip-lashing in rages of constant herk jerk mc’splerk. In the more frantic micromoments the shit is flying straight off the goddamn handle, vicious harsh purities breathing fire upon utterly scorched tracks. There are, nevertheless, a good few extended intervals of slow-looped bottom-chugged wobba-wobba, bellies flubbing along dribbling drainage pipe, drawing out the moment, upping tension, focusing attention on the inevitable scorched black spine-wrenchings exploding out the gate. There are, quite frankly, a shit-load of these, but they tend to cluster together among their upper-edged, break-neck, extremities, positioned just so, conspiring in their many and unmagnificent moments to blow yer fricken head off.

In the face of uncertain odds, out again with the lead descriptor: violent. First there’s the correct and astute placement of elements, expertly torqued to mime the sense of careening wildly out of control– though so clearly anything but. There’s also the rough, hardened, physical properties to the materials in play. The shit has a lot of heft to it, such that when it does– and often– careen wildly out-of-cum-in-to control the impact is that much more palpable. Symphonic brawls of bare-knuckled gut-punchery designed to reduce the remnants of quivering blubber to so much fleshly pulp. You can’t make this shit up.


Digest spew:
In the face of uncertain odds, we will struggle to be ourselves. A herculean struggle to signify squat amid burnt-to-shit textural butt-ruptures, crystal clarity of shattered edges brightly piercing utterly smoked air-cavities, measured percussive thunks and bass-chugs teeing off against unhinged sphinct-spasms of meticulously sliced ‘n diced crunch-splutter flatulence. At their upper extremities, razor’d peaks like rusted nails punch straight through eye sockets, dazed ‘n mangled focus puking guts in whirlwinds of frenetic herk jerk mc’splerk, the correct and astute placement of elements expertly torqued to mime the sense of careening wildly out of control– though so very clearly anything but. Bare-knuckled brawls of symphonic– sphinct-phonic– fudge-punchery, a beautifully butt-rapturously vicious violence. So here's the analytic mind, demanding to dissect the shit into here’s the Facial here’s the SICK but frankly analytic mind dearest go fuck yourself. Gut-punch the analysis and go, go full retard. There is no light left that can illuminate your ignorance.

[FallOfNature]

Alfarmania - Skracken
Candlelabrum/Suphuric Night 10"
Kudlaakh - Kudlaakh
ZSS - Live Medical Experiments

[holy ghost]

Jackson-Pratt - Deep In The Night, I’m Lost In Love CD (Oxen): Really enjoyable! I have a few other tapes (I recall really enjoying the double CS on Dead Gods that I’ll have to revisit) but this just hits just right. Nice and crunchy, lots of feedback and some mangled synth bits (???) and enough variety of keep things interesting and moving throughout the whole CD. Definitely highly recommend!!

Vomir/Bacillus CS - I have slept on Bacillus for sure, first thing I picked up was the split with The Rita last year and since then I’m trying to grab everything I can. Something about this stuff just grabs me the right way. This one has.... amazing packaging and I’m thrilled to have my own Vomir mask, even if I will never take apart the packaging a second time and try to get it all back together. Vomir side is Vomir. Not sure it warrants a review. It’s great. It’s Vomir. I love it.

[Yrjö-Koskinen]

MERZBOW - Exoking
This is not the most talked about Merzbow album, and I think some would say there's good reason. Rhythms, easily identifiable instruments and clownish nonsense could very well have made this one of the worse offerings from a guy who's made a whole lot of offerings over the years. It is saved by a couple of things. First of all it is very well produced, which seems to be an advantage with this type of unmusic. Perhaps more importantly, the music as such is also very well put together. The tracks come across as, if not written, then at least planned. That makes the experience more enjoyable than it would have been otherwise. Some tracks are more solid than others - glitchy, repetitive sounds, some rather held back noise bursts etc. Others are far closer to joke/chaos stuff, and things become more difficult the more actual instruments and regular beats get thrown in the mix. Still, at least tonight this was a decent experience despite the fact that I put it on without quite knowing what to expect. Could possibly be very annoying to me if the stars stood differently, though, and it is probably best to approach it when in the mood for "experimental" (or possibly "whatever") rather than looking for a japanoise brain burster.

[New Forces]

Kiyoshi Mizutani ‎– Works 1989-1991 (Povertech Industries)

A nice collection of late-80's and early-90's work from Kiyoshi Mizutani, an early member of Merzbow. Wide ranging experimental noise with no strict genre tropes. Feedback, field recordings, synth experiments, some percussion. It's all over the place, and I like that. It reminds me of the Noisextra podcast episode with GX where he mentions enjoying earlier Merzbow work "before he found his sound." There's an openness to this disc that feels similar. The artist is reaching out towards interesting sound art without necessarily reaching towards something specific. The best part is that you can buy one straight from Joe Colley here: https://issuesshop.com/collections/frontpage/joe-colley

[Bloated Slutbag]

See bottom of this post for digest commentary.

Chris Goudreau ‎– Further Fields, Or Close
You’d be right in expecting a departure from harsh electronic purity when SICKNESS spreads under his own name. You may also expect the familiar symptoms: angular dynamics, exacting precision, meticulous detail, constant movement, practiced attention to pacing and flow. And there you’d be right again. This three-part digital-only brevity was created for AMPLIFY 2020 out of remnants, partials, and leavings from field recordings gathered since quarantine and represents the fourth release under the name but only the second belonging exclusively to the studio. In the studio the departure from the celebrated SICKisms is more clear cut, every bit as infectious, but, just….not so fiercely now.

Opener Further is perhaps the furthest yet from the fiercely finessed cuts and chops honed over the better part of two decades. Or to say, the cuts and chops are there, but de-harshed in the service of disembodied industrial strength atmosphere, as though culled from late night sorties at a haunted warehouse or dockyard. Garbled snatches of voice accelerate ghost-like around shadowy corridors, flitting in between fuller bodied rumbles, snatched huffs of deep-sunk bellows, boiler room steam hiss, dampened washes of blackened gasp, wooden thunk, choked whisper. At the crystalline peaks, the jarring bite of scrap metal in clattered collapse, never to the fore, always fading back in spectral spirals. A possibly obscure comparison, and perhaps to earn in your sometimes faithful narrator a righteous hoof to the jewels, but in the hallucinated afterburn the caustic concrete considerations might dare to suggest deftly spliced highlights from Illusion of Safety’s From Nothing To Less.

A loud bang announces the centerpiece, whose expansive Fields leave any suggestion of the above comparison at some further remove (and with any luck to save the prized jewels from further malignment). Haunted warehouse disembodiments continue to invade the space, but so too a number of electronic buzzings, wheedlings, grumblings, heftier burls of field-molested huffs and chaffs dodging the occasional dull hammer or ringing clang. The majority of these tends to come straight at you without warning, singularly smithied caustics conspiring to unsettle attentions among their more abruptly finessed snips and slashes. The restless, often variable pacing, broadened textural palette and myriad hard-panned crescendos compete as readily to disorient as to invite fruitless quest to resolve the many and bruising stresses. On this occasion, the stresses are often meted out with some percussive force, the rough angling of each successive cut delivered in pointedly sharp dynamic contrast to net a jarring series of never-relenting bangs n thuds, razor’d staccato thwacking and smacking upside the backside down the back end thrown sideways round the bend, over and back again. If you catch my drift.

A lot of the textures here are very raw and organic, much in line with the gnarled thatch of cover art, roughly terrained fields through which to drag yr filthy carcass. Evidently a heavy sort of carcass at that, the dragging an episodic lurching, from field to field, never really harried but never keen to stick around, as though flipping through an industrial-strength pastoral picture book, lingering a few moments to dwell on the ambient afterimages, skipping quickly over the less absorbing gestures, sometimes knocking things off the tree stump and straight into the dirt in the process. Just in case you weren’t paying attention, stop-motion drags of grimy bass gulpage freeze frame, then off we go again, reversing upside-down through quick-spliced snapshots of screaming visages trapped in this heaving and jerking hall of mirrors. As the fields near their climax, the space between each cut narrows...closer, closer still...accelerating straight up to legit frenetic pacing that starts to wear just that dab SICK on the palate.

Closer or Close tightens the cuts into frantic jittery pincer-stabs, popping up from densely fogged, slow-grubbing, undergrowth and scampering in excited insectile fevers across the almost frozen tundra before dipping back again below the surface. The rare owl-call or singular echo sometimes startles the chattering fits, as though to remind the listener that someone has in fact been tasked with bringing this to earhole, and meanwhile the grumbling groundswells of subsurface rumble-huff steadily hold the fort. For the most part, however, them pesky ill-mannered buggers keep popping up again and again, quick-spliced snap, rattle, clack, pinching and scratching sickeningly against the earhole, tight-packed slivers of razor-wire caught in a mad, scrabbling, death-jig.

Still itching to contract some SICKNESS? Look no further than Close until Further, a sweet little bonus goodie available via the prime mover’s bandcamp. This picks up where the album proper leaves off, mad scrabbling cuts compiling pretty much the entire album’s worth of material into three minutes of straight fire. So I suppose, if you weren’t afraid of sounding like a complete dick, you could call this SICKNESS Plays Chris Goudreau. SICKNESS plays the full Chris Goudreau medley here, tightening the screws tighter still, closing the gaps between the cuts to the point of non-existence, close, closer, closest! In other words, if everything in the piece sounds exceedingly familiar it’s because you’ve just heard it. Only, het up to breakspine velocity, herking, jerking, lurching and jacking your ass all over the goddamn place. Because, like, it can. Now, if violently shoved into a corner and forced to choose a hole, I might indicate preference for this stuff when it’s laid bare for less frenzied introspection, to bliss up the relatively restful sublimations in myriad texture. No chance for that here. Stutter-blasted jerkout fits of frantic epileptic fuckfrenzy, rough-angled jump-cuts ramped with illiberally sprinkled spasms of distorted scrinch-scrape, razor’d staccato thwacking and smacking upside the backside down the back end thrown sideways round the bend in a dizzying hall of mirrored lurch ‘n heave-ho, out with chunks, thar she blows. Just, sick.


Digest spew
The second studio-specific sortie for the SICK One under his own name collects fields flung furthest yet from the fiercely finessed cuts and chops honed over the better part of two decades. Here the cuts and chops are studiously de-harshed in the service of disembodied industrial strength atmos, garbled snatches of voice accelerating backward around shadowy corridors, flitting in between fuller bodied rumbles, snatched huffs of deep-sunk bellows, boiler room steam hiss, dampened washes of blackened gasp setting off gnarled fields of raw, organic, texture, collapsed metals disappearing in spectral spirals. The restless, often variable pacing, broad textural palette and myriad hard-panned crescendos compete to disorient, the rough angling of each successive cut delivered in pointedly sharp dynamic contrast. Linger in one field, lurch to the next, bliss up the sickless sublimations in myriad texture. Then, it gets SICK.

[Baglady]

MSBR - Intensification 10” (Praxis Dr Bearmann, 1995)
I play this quite often, but I try not to as I usually end up neglecting whatever new records or tapes I have laying around. Everything just pales next to this. Industrial strength (literally, in this case) lazer sharp noise. Elegant violence all the way.

JAZKAMER - Bentobox 3xC60 (Abisko, 2005)
Such a cool set. A whole tours worth of live recordings in a box. Several of the livesets remind me of Speculum Fight around 1995-1997 (Swimming Pool, Medium etc.), both in the sounds themselves and that there’s a patience there, just letting the sounds slowly run their course and mutate until they hit home, so to speak. Great stuff!
For some dumbass reason, this is the sole Jazzkammer in this home. What other do I need? Any key albums?

[EyeSquared]

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.

As a huge fan of Unholy, this is something I cannot wait to hear.

[Spectral Burn]

 Having recently spoken with a couple of SE members (shoutout Soddy & Mikko) about review-length album/tape write-ups on the Noise Now Playing FB group, I've decided to start posting up the little blurbs that I include with my posts.
 I've been on a huge Hands To/Jeph Jerman kick lately, so you'll be seeing quite a bit about some HT releases over the next little while.

Hands To - Q'ojfa (C90, Big Body Parts, 1987)

 And so it begins.

  Anybody who knows me may know that Hands To is my all-time favourite sound project. What Jeph Jerman tapped into/conjured up in the eighties and ESPECIALLY the nineties is some of the most indecipherable, baffling, yet somehow entirely familiar sonic carvings ever committed to tape.
 This is the first Hands To release, and sees the project in full group mode, featuring a number of Colorado weirdos (including JJ's City Of Worms bandmates Ericson & Beckner).
 The A-side is nearly 45 minutes of ecstatic, cavernous scrapscrape, with only the short "Incindiaries" punctuating the New Blockaders-in-a-desert-cave festivities.
 The B-side is slightly more varied. The "Decomposition" tracks add warped tape/vocals to the now-familiar junk crashing, and REALLY push the capabilities of low-fidelity sound to it's extreme. "Scissorsound" is a shockingly strange piece of chopped/mashed vocals that will eventually become a recurring technique spanning multiple tapes/LPs.
 Definitely a strange first effort, and significantly more raw than the tape immediately following it (the better known "Do Not Touch Them").

[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.

As a huge fan of Unholy, this is something I cannot wait to hear.

This is now in press, together with Mania posthumous unreleased album that was completed just before Keith died. Umpio new album. Two Government Alpha reissues, both Jaakko Vanhala CD represses.

[New Forces]

Yes, please post good "Noise Now Playing" reviews here, I can't stand to be on Facebook!

[Spectral Burn]

Yes, please post good "Noise Now Playing" reviews here, I can't stand to be on Facebook!

 I hear you. If it weren't for that group, I wouldn't use FB at all. Absolutely miserable place.

Hands To - Maesh (C60, Big Body Parts, 1988)

 The cover is a good indicator of the sounds contained within. Is it some hideous body noises? Abstracted landscapes? Something else entirely? Damned if I know.

 This tape (along with Invesh) represents a more sparse, minimal side of the early Hands To sound.
 The A-side is slightly more varied than the latter, with "Salivicid", "Randine", and "Sayaw Cleath" functioning as a less-active take on the classic HT nature-swirl loop haven. "Bomach" is quasi-industrial, with a rhythmic, shurtering scrape holding it all down. "Cardience" is the strangest piece on the tape, sounding like a field recording of a park from inside a block of ice.
 Things get even more minimal on the B-side.
"Sonates", for my money, is the standout piece for the entire tape, with amp buzz malfunctions fighting primitive tape manipulations. The "Degenach" tracks barely exist, and "Wescame" sounds like an engine-room recording inside of the world's smallest freight train.

Hands To - Decesh (C60, Big Body Parts, 1988)

 A sonic outlier in the HT discography.

 Oh man, what to say about this tape.
Sure, you've got some of the more familiar sounds Jeph is known to employ (the crumbling, churning "Skaw"), and some full-bodied tape noise ("Feated" & "Salivones"), but it's the two long, droning tracks that open each side that sound unlike anything else in the Hands To catalogue.
 A-side opener "Heone Trach" is all pitched-down rhythmic pops with a rotten, disgusting trumpet "performance" by Michael Moynihan (of Blood Axis/Coup De Grace fame).
 "Bothum" though. Goddamn. I don't really have the words to describe how gorgeous this piece of shimmering, airy organic drone is. The sonic equivalent of staring into a late summer sun, perhaps?