If Ectodurotomy is anything like Thoracia (or Acetylphasia) it is very good indeed! Great to hear that Knurl is "back", though I wouldn't say he'd ever left...
Been on serious Knurl-a-thon recently, in a way a natural progression from the Pain Jerk obsession that ruled the noisehead for a good several weeks... Natural? Yes, well, maybe. Pain Jerk, I was forced to note, is the only non-Bloor project to ever appear on Panta Rhei Recordings. I've tried real hard to find the affinity, occasionally thought I had it, gave up, decided that big man Bloor, Alan, deserved at least a few paragraphs of worship and thus... ever the spastic...
Knurl at pretty much any juncture is going to do the job, though I have a soft spot of nostalgia for a lot of the early work. The very earliest efforts- Initial Shock, Meatrag, Nervescrap- do not quite hit that sweetest of spots, nor is there all too much evidence of the knurled scrapsources that would come to to define the project- but all share a very rough-hewn, raw, aesthetic that is always to be appreciated. Tetramatrix, "the 5th Knurl cassette", is my pick from this earliest of periods... though it's hard to recall what was released (or recorded) when. As dates are only occasionally given, and perhaps only two or three tapes are chronologically numbered, I go by artwork and/or address. So, Tetramatrix: Listeners who need a little meat on their Knurl bones are advised to steer clear of Tetra as it remains firmly planted in the most severe of shriekings for the full, 90+ minute duration. I often come across criticism of Knurl's severely pitched tendencies (of, principally, the early work I assume?), but for me that is one of the project's strengths. This from a perv whose noisehead was "brought up", so to speak, by (early Alchemy-era) Incapacitants, so to complain about a lack of meat is kind of to reject a good part of what noise was then (and is still), to me, all about. Uh, yeah. I'm struggling to find words which may actually recommend Tetramatrix and frankly I no longer give a fuck. Shit is harsh, period. I know you like your pretty little asshole, but I like it more- RIPPED RAW.
Perhaps the biggest weakness of the Tetramatrix-era, especially given the amazing welded scrap monstrosities featured in live performance, is the lack of apparent metal sources in evidence. But this is soon corrected via my very favorite period: that of Hyper Flux, Diapason, and Infraneuroma. Chainmail probably belongs here too. At this juncture the steely junked sources start to bleed through, and the higher-ends start to approach something like piercing. Still the sound is very, very raw, very "primitive", very pure in the presentation, with no attempt to prettify or appeal to the more audiophilic sort of listener... and the net effects are among the most brutal of noise I've- ever- encountered. Hyper Flux kind of sets the tone for this period, but Infraneuroma really perfects the commitment to unfettered, unrelenting, screech, scraping out the dregs of all them tasty, scrapheap, flavors. Think metals dragged in shit-dirt, forced along the concrete curb, plowed into the filth-holes, repeatedly, and then just generally, viciously, hacked and slashed across the badly abused channel pan. Diapason is "the first Knurl recording using a four track" and might be a bit of an exception in that the overdriven electronics make way for exceedingly harsh acoustic banging, scraping and clanging that really brings the metal-on-metal hellbliss to life- a whole new Knurl, perhaps not one quite ready for the audiophile contingent but one clearly ready to branch out to bigger and better things.
A natural progression from Diapason is to Inelastic Scattering, which I can't for the life of me place in time- though I'd have to guess late 90's at the earliest. It is almost completely at odds with nearly all other Knurl I have encountered. Very wide stereo spectrum to highlight quite clear acoustic sources, really tapping out the potential of the stereophonic scope, and (for the first time?) evidencing the heavier depths that would become prominent in later work- a tense and frantic Knurl wailing about in a dark and echoing(!) trash compactor.
Another great period was during the early establishment of the Panta Rhei Recording label, and the standout for me: the truly epic: Paraphasm. Again a very unique piece of Knurl, "a multitrack of a piece recorded in 95" but I'd assume mixed and released a fair bit later. This is about the closest Knurl gets to Incapacitants, with maybe a bit of Macronympha's Crack tape thrown in. Multidimensional shrieking blast, pure screeching devastation all the way through. A nice bit of separation to the screeching assault, with an overarching structure one can almost pretend to understand (what harsh noise could possibly make sense over 90+ minutes of pure scorching hell??). Synovial Nematics may also have come out around this time (there's a date- Apr 97!) and shares some of the multidementional capacities of Paraphasm- but this relative brevity is practically fluffy soft by comparison, diving deep into heavier, more full-bodied thunder as to be featured at the tail-end of the cassette-era Knurl... and perhaps the first, clear, move onto proper, audiophilic, depths. December '96, meantime, saw the debut of Knurl's "extreme atmospherics" project Pyrox, though the results never quite convinced. Still an interesting experiment whose overtly harsh "droning" atmospheres would clearly inform later work.
Another anomaly from the Paraphasm period: Flat Bastard, though it is in fact recorded "in early '95". Here short blasts of very raw and brutal sound rip apart gaping silences, kind of like a finely shredded Infraneuroma, with emphasis on "ripped" and "shredded". A bit of a weirdo, kind of like Mr Bloor was listening to Kazumoto Endo and thought to himself, "Hey, them Japs have some good idears. Wonder if I could hack it?" In any case, good call Audio Dissection!
The cassette period ends with a relocation to Toronto and the release of three notables: Supravital Mephitis, Preparative Suppletion, Symbioplexus. In these, Knurl is starting to infuse his fuller bodies with experiments in dynamics and structure, while still endeavoring to retain a firm grip on the more puritannically inclined tendencies of the earlier years. Somewhat at odds, perhaps, with the stated initial aims of the project, re- "to take music and strip it entirely of what we know music to be". The sound is heavier, crunchier, and most successful in Symbioplexus – though I sometimes prefer, for reasons of my own inscrutable perversity, to treat the three tapes as parts of a single, colossal, piece, opening with Suprivital and climaxing with Symbio: massive and epic excursion into a world of dense industrial-strength demolition; Labyrinthian metal-works factory slowly, methodically, smashed, bashed, butt-raped, and slashed into tiny, twitching, bits.
The end of the 90s is the start of Knurl's graduation to digital format and a shift to less puritannical perversions. Also much fuller use of the frequency range. Metal sources gleam but more often drown in a sea of echoing effects that occasionally hit drone proper. Knurl is consciously or unconsciously appealing to a wider audience, or maybe just evolving naturally, but in any case I tend to prefer the shit back when it was stripping music of its musical values. Still a lot of interesting standouts, though my coverage at this point is far short of complete.
Vorticose (2003) was the first flat-out surprise, at times more ambient drone than harsh noise- sharp, hammering, acoustic sources more prominent than ever. Call it the sadistic, smoking hot, sister to Bloor's sweetly subdued Pholde. On closer listen, I would wager that Pholde's And With It, We Shall Divide was not only conceived in the same year (2003), but probably in the same recording session! Needless to say among the best recorded Knurls from the period, certain to please those who enjoy the sounds of steely, delayed-action, whanging. Kurtosis (2002) could also claim a similarly aligned set of fans, though the general taste is more in line with Stim's Harshnoise roster. Recorded/mixed quite differently from the other Knurls I've heard, though unmistakably the work of Mr Bloor. Very nice working over of the channel pan, approaching something like harshly-geared, ripped-to-shit, gamelon.
Thymostat was, at the time (2002), another surprise, a seeming attempt to present the project in all its many and varied possibilities, even if most of those possibilities were stuck in the realm of the crude. The edges are nice and sharp, with emphasis on contrast between the pointiest of screechings and a wide assortment of acoustic-sourced clang. At their peak, the shits get plenty harsh, but there's such a variety of mood you'd be forgiven for wondering wonder whether the dude responsible was on crack or was simply possessed of Harsh Metal-on-Metal-Whanging Incarnate.
One that I have difficultly justifying to myself: Dioculosa (2001). Not at all a fave, in fact one that I try to avoid listening to, but somehow sneaks through by virtue of being the notable anti-Tetramatrix- in that it is structurally similar (relent is not really in the cards), but concentrated almost entirely in the lower end. The scrapes and screeches are there, of course, but are mixed in deference the essential Heavy Metal Thunder. Two questions: do people still do this kind of shit- and does anyone listen to it? Kind of reminds me of latter era Cracksteel, guns blazing, exploding into space.
From the seemingly endless set of "drowned in a sea of echoing effects" submissions, I'll choose two: Traipse and Chromosytoma. To my ear, these tend shine with a little more clarity and definition, but also sound simply massive, almost comically melodramatic. This is the audiophile in me speaking, not the Knurlhead, the poor sad bastard caught between a Hasegawa and a harsh place. Huge plumes of scorched decay, mega-waves wafting infinite, the sky darkening, covered in sheets of vibrating clamor, scaffolding in continuous, bottomless, collapse. A muted brutality straining to realize the scorcheries so emphatically, and so long, lost.
Or were they? Enter, Thiocarbanid, Dichromatism, Hail Of Blades... pretty much anything released in the last seven years is going to, pretty much... UTTERLY FUCKING SCORCH. An improvement in the recording gear or a freeing from the echo chamber? Either way, the sound is marked by a distinct harshening of pitch, a searing viscosity that is just so much more jagged and piercing- HARSH, make no mistake. Generous flirtations with channel panning, ripping from earhole to earhole, constant drilling excess. By the time things like Pyrolysis and Metasynogen shoot out, one can only conclude that the project has come full circle. Is music still being stripped of all its musical values? How the fuck should I know or even care? Just bring the fucking Knurl.
Ugh. My ears are seriously fucked. Between consecutive nostalgic trips down lanes Pain Jerk and Knurl it has been an utterly awesome couple of HARSHweeks. Gonna probably spend the next three months listening, exclusively, to Thomas Koner. Goodnight. (Not that anyone can sleep with all that fucking ringing in his ears...)
