Tag: power electronics

DECAYCAST Reviews: Choisir Le Pire “-” (LE TOMBEAU DES MUSES, 2018)

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DECAYCAST Reviews: Choisir Le Pire “-” (LE TOMBEAU DES MUSES, 2018)

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Choisir Le Pire is a newer project out of Metz, France  focusing on  harsh noise / harsh noise wall and this  new  cassette release is no  exception. Released on the newly formed LE TOMBEAU DES MUSES imprint also out of France. “-” as it’s  titled wastes no  time slicing the listener with  sharp, grating, alienating plumes of  static  filled gut  wrenching harsh noise with some  HNW and  even Power  Electronics sections to boot.

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The strongest track on this release, “De Charybde en Scylla.“, which is also the  opening track on the  A side offers  the most interesting and  dynamic work on the album,  featuring an ominous sludgy, fuzzed out  thick  droning intro  which is  quickly and  swiftly encapsulated by violent throbbing stabs of  sonic mayhem; grating, dark, and  uncertain. This tape is the  perfect soundtrack to a nauseating feeling that comes  moments before  leaping off  a  cliff into the  black abyss. The closing track, Ce qu’il en rester. is another favorite with it’s  blistering  shuttering fast paced dynamic  stabs and wells, peaks and  troughs of a  chaotic land, Choisir Le Pire wastes no  time and no sound, it’s all said and nothing is said  except for the  blood running slowly down the  side of the  listeners neck out of their ear. Focused, sharp and  agitated harsh noise release with  beautiful design and packaging to boot. Check out more from the  label and  artist via the links  above.

– malo

 

DECAYCAST Reviews : TODD ANDERSON – KUNERT “A Good Time To Go” (This Is Non Linear,2018)

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DECAYCAST Reviews : TODD ANDERSON – KUNERT “A Good Time To Go” (This Is Non Linear,2018)

This little unassuming tape arrived in our mailbox all the way from NZ, where the artist Todd Anderson – Kunert is based. This work titled “A Good Time To Go” boasts the sonic equivalent of finding that perfect moment to ditch out on the show or event or interaction that you’re probably enjoying (or maybe not ) but are suddenly met with that harsh and disorienting wave of uncertain feelings, emotions and sense of space or lack thereof. This album is very much that. the albums opener “No” starts with a slow quiet drone which ascends into a loud, shuttering thud, and steadily breaks up into a more distorted, disorienting, confusing version of itself until the listener is left with their own feelings of confusion about confusion. Dark, crumbling noise swashes give way to more rhythmic patterns which oscillate moments between disappearance and uncertainty while bathing the listener in a sharp bath of loud and overwhelming sounds all to build to a climax and erase themselves to the point where only the distant hum of a sharp bell remains, a single alienating tone tuning and ringing inside the brain of the unsuspecting listener. The overall vibe is dark , disorienting , haunting with spurts of beautiful articulate decay.

The albums strongest track “It’s Taking Forever” is an honest, heavy take on what could be best described as digital power drone. Lots of dark and articulate textures exist throughout, crawling and wringing out dark, alienating slime into the ear, especially on this second stand out track which really carves out a lonely and confusing sonic space, oscillating between traditional takes on drone, ambient noise, “power ambient” some might say.  Overall a solid release with a wide interpretation on what could be considered psychoacoustic drone music.

TODD ANDERSON-KUNERT

TONIGHT: NOISE SHOW IN SF w/ DEMONSLEEPER / THOABATH / NEHA SPELLFISH / MALOCCULSION

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TONIGHT  4/20 IN THE  CITY OF  SAN FRANPSYCHO

SECOND ACT. 1727 HAIGHT STREET, SF, CA 7:45-10PM SHARP

 

“Four twenny in the Haight Ashbury? Yup. If smoke makes the best sunsets, the banks of Golden Gate Park will be blowin’ up as Neha Spellfish, Malocculsion, play the final show with Demonsleeper and Thoabath before they hang ten off a dank ring blowing out toward San Juan, Puerto Rico where they’ll opena new venue for experimental live sound. Come see them off with…1414959_10153953359597836_4368103547300810001_o

NEHA SPELLFISH (Oakland/Madrid)
With low frequency waves washing up on a beach of dark noise ambience, Spellfish delves into the shared space of interspecies communication and paramnesia, invoking the spectral measure of waking consciousness and noospheric cognition. Neha invokes themes of macro psychology, xeno feminism, dynamically modeled weather enclosures, and instinctual variance, employing audio programming platforms and algorithmic granular synthesis.
https://soundcloud.com/spellfish

Demonsleeper
Deathrattle lullabys and inescapable lucid dreamscapes wrought by somnambulist maestra, Alexandra Bushman. In 1999, she formed the electro-acoustic group, Synethesia, tegether with Angélica Negrón. After scaring the daylights out of everyone at the Conservatory of Music in Puerto Rico, she matriculated to Mills College before committing to advanced studies with ancient dark forces whose names must never be spoken.
https://soundcloud.com/demonsleeper

Thoabath
There’s a perceptible gravity to Andy Way that somehow vanishes once you draw near, the material world floats adrift. His solo project, Thoabath, might just be that massless Euclidean point where noise, dub, power electronics, horror, and ambient all emanate, an entelechy without clear precedent, of no laws. Prepare your ear, first study his collaborations with luminaries like Bruce Anderson (MX-80) & Petit Mal in the project, French Radio, sink yourself in the occult cacophony of Sutekh Hexen, and then, approach Thoabath, inescapable dark quasar.
https://soundcloud.com/acway/

Malocculsion
Watch concrete turn to quicksand and glass return to sand as this sonic juggernaut storms the Haight Ashbury. His inaugural solo album released last year, “Psychosis Industrial Complex”, melds blown out distorted beats, arpeggiated synths, tape manipulation, voice, field recordings and homemade oscillators to belt forth a dark, unique offering of post industrial, prison music.
https://ratskinrecords.bandcamp.com/album/malocculsion-psychosis-industrial-complex

 

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DECAYCAST REVIEWS: SHROUDED RECORDINGS ZINE #1-3

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Whenever  one  goes out to the mailbox  and   is  granted with music its a great  day, zines and  books are no exception, especially collaged zines which  throw my brain back into  being  15 and   thumbing through pages and pages and pages of   crudely  xeroxed interviews  with friends, bands i looked up to and  bands i  had yet to discover, Shrouded Recordings Zine is  pretty much this:  centered around the label with the same name.   Issue 1  has an interview with Sam from the Rita, which is  funny, informative and to the point, which is surrounded by high contrast images of cassette  tapes, industrial style  textures and abstracted artworks, and  ads  and  upcoming releases for the label. Volume 1  is more fanzine style, however,  Vol 2 and 3  give considerably more  to the  reader  in terms of length, quality, artwork, and information. Shrouded Zine boasts cut up style interviews, NOISE, NOISE, NOISE and more noise are jam packed  within this modest zine. All of the content  blends together in an interesting and almost dadaesque  way. Interviews   blend with reviews, ads, non sensical, albeit beautifully crude collaged images, and blank space – the MOST important  space in noise and  art, imho.

 

#3  is  perhaps my favorite so far, as  each page of content  is  intelligently paired with a blank page  to act as a  journal, sketch pad, notepad, blank space  for  contemplation. What at first seems maybe like a  printing  error later  reveals itself to be an intelligent and generous  offering from the  writer  to the reader – in fact mine is INDEED  scrawled with random notes and drawings  that i made on the  bus ride into the city  whilst  thumbing through volume three.     Fun and informative interview with Kevin Yuen from  Sutekh Hexan,  lots of  reviews covering  harsh noise, death industrial, power electronics, noise, electronic, ambient and  even some hardcore/metal  stuff! PLUSS   adds and upcoming releases  from noise, industrial, electronics, and harsh noise  labels, distros, and other  zines/webzines with some  minimal artwork  scrawled across the pages as backdrops.   I’ll be  looking forward to  stumbling across  more  from this  zine/label in the  future!

SHROUDED  RECORDINGS

decayREVIEWS: KILT “La Santa Muerte” cs (2012)

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US scattered super group KILT, (Bob Bellerue, Raven Chacon, and AndorKappen recently made a trek through the Bay Area a few weeks ago and farted out one of these little tour tapes my direction, It’s a cassette version of a forthcoming LP, (which I was lucky enough to receive one of the test presses for (mwahahaha) but the cassette will get the review as it’s exists in it’s final form.
Popped this lil sucker into the stereo. Intro’s with slow winds, creeks, gentle shudders, and whisps from a distant cracked window. This seems unusually nerving for this dynamic outfit, yet the intensity starts building, building, building, and clawing at your inner most ear hole, crawling in and leaving a vile sonic infection which begins to ooze and pus with the blackened fluids that is “La SantaMuerte”. Before your system can react, flesh is pummeled with barely discernable vocals, pummeling feedback, high pitched cuts and scrapes, buzzing distortions, oscillators- POWERFUL SOUNDS. Peaking and troughing with dynamic rhythmic slams, ascending frequency modulations, and, the tension of metal cables snapping, architectural misfortunes – KILT ebbs and flows like the shifting of California’s unstable tectonic plate museum. A dark, chaotic machine chugging through the batten landscape of a failed system.

Flip this little devil and it’s more of the same. Dense thought out composition, harsh, vibrating spaces are carved out with scientific precision, theatrical dynamics, and swelling bass and distortion. Occasionally locking into a groove and then dicinigrating said groove within seconds, gives this release dark, yet traceable pacing – a must for fans of harsh noise, and negative spaces. This power trio does not disappoint in the slightest with this release, be sure to pick up the LP as soon as it drops, if it sounds good on tape, it should warm up nice in helllllllllll……..

Written By: Malo

KILT

HALF NORMAL

DECAYreviews: GNAWED / RXAXPXE Split Cs (Industrial Culture Records)

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DECAYreviews: GNAWED /RXAXPXE Split Cs (Industrial Culture Records)

This arrived in the mail a few weeks  ago out of the blue, I rip open the package to make sure it’s not a bomb ( it has the weight of one, not that I’ve ever picked one up, but let’s just say the whole package seemed “bombey” . Anyways a cassette tape  encased in two sheets of  metal bolted together, holding the  cassette tight in it’s grips. (Yes, you actually had to unscrew one or two of the bots to get the cassette out, pretty unreal) It almost seemed as if the  piece were  fabricated for the project, either way the sterile presentation of the  metal case leads the imagination wild as to the sounds that could be contained inside.

The GNAWED side opens up  with dark, growling LFO scraping manipulation  madness, oscillating  undulating thwrawts of ripping bass, almost instantly bringing the listener down into the  perspective on all  things unnerving. Muddled CB radio esque style  vocals emerge  from the modulating squelching feecback  synthesizers and a more  dynamic space  emerges and then it clutters into  chaos, vocals and  synths building up into a maddening, nauseating eclipse of chaos.  A vortex in the  universe starts sucking in on itself, creating broken  vacuum stuttering  synthesizer and  vocal swells which unveil a  dark  sloppy underbelly of your  subconscious; the  rattling machines which you are  slowly turning into. This is  really well paced harsh industrial, but the  clarity and  sounds never really suffer as a result. Individual sounds blend together to  thicken the  chaotic sound, yet are  never pushed to a point of muddying the mix, donr  very  well IMO,  A great glimpse into the dark, chaotic harsh sonic world  that is GNAWED.

Flip the tape and RXAXPXPE HITS  YOU  right off the  bat  with a bleeding, oozing, clawing harsh noise wall, layers and  layers of  feedback occasionally give  way to high pitched squeals of what sound like a baby  bird caught in a high pitched machine that needs  lubrication  BAD. Cluttering and  clanging dark undertones modulate the wall but it  remains LOUD steady and pretty unchanging, then it  DROPS;  giving way to a second track which is just as  errie, yet  has a slower and  more  refined pacing to it, Scratchy in the beginning and  then the  feedback  decays into a middle-low  bass drone which  slowly modulates- sub oscillators help  dig  out  your  grave. The  title and  sounds of  this  all point to the  soundtrack to the burial of the listener, Slow moving,  relentless, and maddening.  High pitched blasted distortion waves come in and out over the bass drone, but it  goes on  for  a few minutes, and  then CUTS in and out and in and out, until your not sure where the entire thing started.  Distant  distorted vocals  slowly creep in and become a more  prominent part of the mix but actual words/lyrics are  pretty indistinguishable, would be nice if the lyrics are  available  somewhere?  Aside from “personal meaning” to the  artist him/her/them selves, I have honestly become frustrated with listening to people  sing, yell , scream with no access to the  content, i would like to  know, but  ONLY if the  artist wants me to know, kind of a side  rant, but the music and  project title, only lead me  to assume the  lyrical  content is  harsh/negative/etc. Maybe I’m wrong.  About 10-12 minutes in really gets going in a distinct, yet concise direction on the XRXAXPXEX side, a  sudden cut  of a  feedback wall brings in a new more  dynamic feedback wall, which holds the most meat-   sounding of  simple mic and  feedback scraping whilst possesing an  internal tension which  elevates the track to the peak of the RXAXPXE  side. It’s a bit more  raw in it’s fidelity, yet controlled and  articulate, and the  groaning vocals play a wonderful counterpart to the stop – start flutter of the  feedback punches. A  solid  tape overall and worth checking out if  your into the harsh/industrial  still that borders on wall  at  times.

written by : malo

available  still from http://industrial-culture.com/

decayREVIEWS: DEVELOPER “OOBR004” CS (2011)

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DEVELOPER “OOBR004” C20 (Out Of Body Records, 2011)

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DEVELOPER "OOBR004" cs (2011)

dEVELOPER blazes forth sharp, visceral, hills of harsh noise walls, pausing and chopping for various lengths only to punch back in at the oddest time where your ear-mind just begin to orientate itself to the sound, and then it slices-dissappears-kills back in again. Super high pitched feedback blasts knife their way through blown out bass hammerings, and then swell together to once again enduce a choppy form f nausea. The parts of this tape that work best for me, are where it gets really choppy, as opposed to the places where the walls build up to a point of density where things become blurred and sashed out, but this never happens for long, as DEVELOPER stays on the pace quite swiftly throughout the majority of the A side. Roaring, pummeling mechanized broken up loops sift through the blown out pillars of chaos and take brief rests, before jackhammering the cavity with thousands of white noise ghosts. The more the tape goes on the less and less breaks there are between the chaotic buzzing walls, yet it never totally looses it’s chopped aesthetic and frenetic pacing. Developer’s style, on this release at least, doesn’t come off as a bunch of tracks piled upon each other digitally, but rather a line-in style of recording where the cuts are being made live, I have no REAL evidence of this, but that’s the “organic” nuance that I pick up from the aesthetics of the pacing and editing, done quite well.