Reviews

It's just as well I'm going through one of my periodic Noise moods at the moment. This is another compilation from Cipher Productions which comes with a zine featuring interviews with the contributors. I like ideas like this, gives me something to read while I listen (a favourite past time) and I enjoy getting more information about what I listen to.
Unlike Cipher's "Underground Australia" compilation, though, I found this one to be a bit more hit and miss. The first track from Guilty Connector, project of the appropriately nicknamed Kohei "Fast" Nakagawa, is what I usually call "fast" or "spiky" Noise. Single source power electronics recorded directly without, it sounds, any overdubs. Harsh, very loud, and usually good when its screaming or groaning along. But I'm no big fan of the stop/start type of thing that he examplifies at the end of the track; reminds me too much of Metallica. Still, this track is no worse for it. The interview presents him as an affable and enthusiastic young fella. Rock on, "Fast".
Up next, some more lo-fi sounding shit from Bizarre Uproar. First track of theirs, "Loudin Drvoinen", sounds like voice through effects, which I like as an idea, but this sounds dissapointingly muddy after Guilty Connector's hi-fi violence. A little adjustment of the volume, however, makes up a bit. This track is okay, but not exactly peeling my skin off. Which always dissapoints me, not having my skin peeled off. The next untitled track sounds a little better, lots of fast scattering and harsh gratings. Not bad. Nice pictures of people porking themselves up the bum with crucifixes to accompany the interview too. If I was stupid I'd be impressed with that.
Humectant Interruption is next but I sort of wish it wasn't. Four tracks of rather patchy and pedestrian Noise, which does a lot of the start/stop thing and gets into some lower frequencies that don't seem to translate to well on the recording. The first of this project's four tracks, "Black Is Beautiful", is the main one in my view, some nice low crunching sounds. The next, though, "Evacuate", seems to be just an excersize in tape hiss with bits of sound thrown over as if as an afterthought. No drama, and not sexy. The next track is just some microphone warbling and the track after that some lead buzz played with. No imagination.
It's a pity in a way that Rat With Wing's "Dithyramb: Rosella" is next as it continues in the sounds-over-silence approach, making for a confused listening. But by far this is more creative and mercifully better-recorded. Found and made sounds run the gauntlet of effects slowly and with savour. I prefered the electronic/effected sounds myself, as they lend to a pleasant ambience, and are creative. The bird sounds seem to lend the track it's name. The interview with the project's Bill Burson is the best of the zine, too, informative and speculative.
Up next is K2, a name I've heard whispered across this dissapearing land. I take it Mr. Kimihide Kusafuka has been doing the rounds for a while. He maintains the standard for Japanoise; harsh, loud, spiky, fast, electronic with metals and samples overhead, raining bombs of death upon the middle-class and complacent. It does jerk about in the stop/start sort of thing that today's Noisers just seem to love so much, but fortunately he doesn't let up the torture to let you breath, oh no, you don't deserve that you little shit. Take THAT! And THAT!
Finally, Antibody get the party ended with another now typical sounding burst of electronic crunch and crash, going this way and that, never really settling on any one sound. At first. Then we get this great electronic drone while the other sounds battle it out for what space there is in the stereo. I dig this kind of thing. I have to say I'm more at home with huge mixes of intense sound rather than the spiky stuff, but it what the kids want these days, I don't know (sigh)....
Taken from Taped Crusaders