jackie-o motherfucker

Jackie-O Motherfucker - Fig. 5

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"In America, we have monuments instead of mythology: bright obelisks and classical statuary erected as perpetually new in the place of the perpetually old. This is, after all, the New World; we dedicate these talismans against ruin across the landscape almost as if to keep history itself at bay, to keep time from catching up with us. Underfoot are bones and detritus, though, the debris of the little nameless events that are excluded from American history. It's all a rather shallow grave when you think about it.
Jackie-O Motherfucker's unprecedented Fig. 5, the group's first CD release, presents a dim and unsettling archaeology of American music. Released in the wake of the American century, it's the first unapologetically brilliant piece of experimental music I've heard this year. Somehow constructed bereft of any postmodern irony, Fig. 5 transforms a commanding grasp on the celebrated tributaries of American music-- jazz, Appalachian folk, soul, African-American spirituals, West coast surf-rock, Protestant hymns, Louisville post-rock, bluegrass, electronic noise-- into an autochthonous gospel. Jackie-O Motherfucker-- two multi-instrumentalists, Tom Greenwood and Jef Brown and the cadre of eclectic talents with whom they surround themselves-- abandoned the remix loop jazz-fusion of their first two albums (available only as LPs) and literally emerged from the basement and the soil with a masterpiece.
The gust-blown digital hum of the first track, "Analogue Skillet," underpins plucked and scraping strings, like a bow on the nervous system itself. It's buzzing neon yielding to something like a screen-door creaking on its rusted hinges behind wind chimes in "Native Einstein," a kind of front porch minimalism. There's a faint chorus of young girls counting down in the recesses, playing Double Dutch in the road. The strings sound like saws; the lone sax whines like an animal. The scene is replaced by the solemn repetition of guitar twang; "Your Cells are in Motion" is the working man's Mogwai: a funereal procession of rising guitar and faint vocals coalescing steadily into shantytown post-rock, tarnished but true. Labradford will spend the entirety of their career trying to create this song and never get it right.
The choral "Go Down, Old Hannah," performed here by the Amalgamated Everlasting Union Chorus Local #824, is a prison camp work song dating back to the turn of the century-- a plea for sunset to end the workday. "Amazing Grace," the slave trader John Newton's ubiquitous 1779 hymn to God, is barely recognizable as Appalachian free jazz: steely banjos and twittering horns that sound like bagpipes are equal parts mountain folk and Pharoah Sanders.
The lilting "Beautiful September" provides an interlude of catchy No Depression dream-rock. But the album's centerpiece is clearly the tribal 24-minute "Michigan Avenue Social Club," a track that sounds at times like dismembered Gershwin, and at other times like Cul de Sac with horns. Fig 5. fades out on the brief, chirping "Madame Curie," dissolving into the earth from which the whole work arose.
For all its disparate strands, Fig. 5 is surprisingly cohesive, constructing some ratcheted new sound with junk and memory rather than laundering old sounds with the irony and veiled contempt of other pastiche exercises. The disc itself is packaged in an oddly fascinating die-cut cardboard folio, complete with snippets of Alan Lomax's celebrated American ethnomusicology. Fig. 5 is slow and plodding like time itself. This work, again, simply has no precedents. Or rather, its precedents lie in the dusty anonymities of American musical history, instead of the proud and touted monuments of our cultural past. Listen to it once if you can. It is our secret national anthem."

sounds like: road trips, porches

emeralds

Emeralds - Servant
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sounds like: looking through crystals

hijokaidan

Hijokaidan - Tapes

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"Volume Six in the "Hijokaidan Rarity Series" is another treat for all of you into UTTER DEVASTATING NOISE. As practiced in Japan, which makes it even better. Hijokaidan, despite fierce competition from Merzbow, Masonna, and quite a few others, are still the reigning Kings Of Noise in the Land Of The Rising Sun. With a cover and title paying homage to their krautrock heroes Faust, Hijokaidan's Tapes is a crucial entry in their discography, a record originally released in 1986 as sort of a career retrospective to date, comprising tracks from various eras and lineups, all only previously available on cassette. It starts off way back in 1979 with Hijokaidan's first ever recording, the studio-destroying (so they, rather believably, claim!) electric guitar and vocal skree of "Angel Dust" as performed by the founding duo of Jojo Hiroshige and Naoki Zushi. 1980's "Circles" adds more members and instrumentation (including drums and saxophone) and certainly doesn't let up from the noisy standard set by "Angel Dust". Then there's a 1985 track by the Incapacitants (members of Hijokaidan, equally noisy on their own), followed by two lengthy cuts from '85 and '86 inspired by horror film/fiction ("The Beyond" and "Salem's Lot", the latter an especially effective/destructive 18+ minute drones n' screams attack). And then Tapes finishes up with a cover tune, their beautifully blown-out take on the classic '70s space rocker "Silver Machine" by another band of Hijokaidan heroes, Hawkwind. Good stuff. Plus, the front cover features very personal notes on each track, and a history of the band '79-'86, neatly typed up in English. How can any Hijokaidan/noise fan do without this??"

sounds like: fucked up old movies

the gerogerigegege

The Gerogerigegege - Tokyo Anal Dynamite

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"Easily the most infamous and well known release from the gerogerigegege, this one really just can't be beat, no pun intended. a little bit more than half an hour long, this album ought to come with its own built-in safety belt. if the album cover (a line of naked punk looking cartoons all simultaneously vomiting and shitting in unison) doesn't prepare you for the album, then hopefully this review will. it is basically a live recording from 1987 that is indexed into 75 (!) separate tracks. absolutely no track is more than 1 minute long. juntaro is listed as playing NOISE BASS and another person is listed as playing both drums and vocals. the liner notes are fairly confusing even though there is not much written to begin with aside from who is playing and when it was recorded. this cd is generally considered to be one of the most important and highly significant releases of the entire Japanese noise scene. even though there were about 3000 copies pressed worldwide, it seems to be one of the more difficult gero releases to get a hold of. Every song follows the same formula: "___(insert Japanese curse word, phrase, etc.)__" then a count off into short spastic bursts of pure punk-driven dissonance. Every song title is generally screamed in japanese with the occasional American cover song thrown in. although this has always been pointed out in other reviews of this same album, hearing Juntaro (or whoever) scream, "boys-a don't-a cry!" (the cure) or "I can't-a getta no satis-a-FAK-tion!" (rolling stones) actually IS completely worth whatever amount of money one is willing to spend on obtaining this obscure gem. At one point, Juntaro screams his own name and counts off only to end the song after 20 seconds to scream his name again BACKWARDS. it is completely hysterical. Near the end of the cd, there are more drawn out feedback drones and less screaming, due to obvious reasons that one could assume. The production is very gruff, although one can make out the drums quite well and the feedback and/or bass add an another layer of sound. There is not much left to say other than the fact that this is THE quintessential gerogerigegege release."

sounds like: tokyo, anuses, dynamite

daphne oram

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this is so rad. you have to look at the album cover while listening to it btw
"Daphne Oram might not be a name as familiar as, say Delia Derbyshire or Raymond Scott, but she is one of the unsung heroes of the early electronics movement, and even more interestingly was the founder of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop! Are you impressed yet? Well you should be, Daphne joined the BBC at a mere 17 years of age back in 1942 (turning down a place at the Royal Academy of Music) and from there on she badgered the company endlessly to start investing in electronic music. She was convinced of the potential of this new sound and was totally obsessed with pioneering it, to the point where she would camp out at the BBC studios for nights on end splicing tapes and working with various modified machines to create her abstract soundscapes. Eventually the BBC bent under her pressure and in studio 13 created the soon-to-be-legendary Radiophonic Workshop, with Daphne Oram as the director. Sadly this involvement was to be short lived as Daphne decided she was unhappy to be writing music simply to be heard in the background of some science fiction television show or another, and left the company to start her own studio and pioneer her own musical instrument. Named the Oramics system, this incredible device allowed her to 'draw' sound, and had the synthesizer's oscillators, pitch, volume, vibrato and more controlled by hand drawn slides. It was an incredibly original way to think about sound creation, and her work was totally pioneering in the genre - allowing her to make sounds and compositions totally unlike anything heard before. Daphne continued to experiment with music using the Oramics system and then an Apple II computer until she had a stroke in 1994, and was up until that time totally dedicated to experimental electronic music. Her work is here presented across two discs and shows many of her early compositions for film and television and also some later work (post 1966) which made use of the Oramics system. Having only managed to hear a very small amount of Daphne's work before (notably the track 'Four Aspects' on Sub Rosa's influential 'An Anthology of Noise and Electronic Music #2') it is an absolute revelation hearing this collection. Each track shows just how important she was on the development of music we know and love so dearly - Delia Derbyshire for instance was a devoted follower of hers, and is quoted as saying she was "one of the most important people in the history of electronic music". This sentiment is clearly evident as we are taken through a journey of devastatingly complex electronic and concrete music, music that would give any number of the more well-known composers a run for their money. Possibly one of the finest collections of early electronic music we've ever had through our doors, this is a stunning presentation of a truly remarkable woman's work - I think we've found our holy grail. Unmissable."

sounds like: interplanetary journeys

yellow swans

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"In an effort to describe the visual work of Shirazeh Houshiary, it was suggested that it had a "presence," like light, which required experience in order to be comprehended. This also holds true for Yellow Swans’ newest release, At All Ends. With this, their second album for Load Records, Gabriel Salomon and Pete Swanson present a work exquisite in the weight of its melodic presence and brutal in its devastating beauty. It is a work that seeks to assert itself beyond the limitations set upon it by its recorded form.
"At All Ends" begins the album with a series of passages, looping and dissolving in absolute reflexive response beneath their own counterclockwise fallout. These motifs move at the pace of hallucinatory trailings, in constant progression toward their final end, succumbing to an aggressive flare of guitar strum and feedback. This final sequence brings to full view the primary foundation from which their work is birthed: noise. And while sonic explorations that fall within this practice are often considered lacking in expressive qualities, this couldn’t be further from what’s on play here. Building upon this infrastructure of noise, Yellow Swans have fused elements of shoegaze, wherein the melodic basis of the record finds root. This component elevates the proceedings beyond what could have potentially been a fixed exercise in dissonant scree and feedback.
"Mass Mirage," a blur of somber guitar harmonics submerged in audio grain and rubble mixed with Pete’s obliterated vocals, is a prime example of this influence. It’s not difficult to hear the influence of Slowdive, My Bloody Valentine, or Loveliescrushing fixed within their open-mouthed, skyward-eyed noise, nor is it a task to hear the influence of the archetypes — dream pop and space rock — of shoegazers in the cathartic extremes. "Our Oases" is similarly invested in this celestial gazing, with expansive, divinity-invested ambience buried beneath seething guitar figures and vocal phantasma. And while shorter by half, the transcendent effect is undeniably achieved. Deconstructed in comparison, but no less entrenched in metaphysical otherness, "Stretch the Sands" is a panorama of scorched undulation laid bare before your eyes. The album reaches a final transcending moment through the slow, unfolding melody of the somber guitar on album closer "Endlessly Making An End Of Things," which radiates outward from a shadow in majestic climb; spiritual absolutism perhaps, but profoundly affecting.
With At All Ends, it’s clear Salomon and Swanson are progressively moving toward an openly pronounced use of melody, which will assuredly continue to alienate them from noise die-hards. Conversely, their decisive use of noise will alienate listeners easily frustrated by the squalls of feedback and electronics. It would be a shame, however, for any listener, regardless of their biases, to be lost on this record. Indeed, their melding of ideas induces an "unknown knowing," coaxing the listener into an absolute state of self akin to the work of Francisco Lopez and John Duncan. The element of "noise" is transcended, becoming an unobtrusive extension of the achieved infinite state. Records capable of provoking such psychotropic transitions come along very infrequently; do not miss out on this one."

sounds like: an empty desert

john wiese

John Wiese - Soft Punk

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"John Wiese is no stranger to the manipulation of others' music; he's mangled his own sounds and those of others on past releases, but Soft Punk contains his most obvious reworking of found sounds to date. The disc's liner notes credit Denny Mclain, Grand Ulena, Sissy Spacek (Wiese's band, not the actress), and Die Monitor Bats as providing source material for a few of the disc's tracks, but more overt sampling is evident on a few other tracks, and, alongside the digital pyrotechnics that Wiese usually employs, it offers bit of organic counterpoint to the proceedings.The use of samples isn't a necessary addition to Wiese's arsenal (in fact, "Recorded Hologram," heavy on such use, is one of the disc's weaker tracks), but Wiese largely avoids hackneyed use of the plundered material, and the trajectory of the disc isn't put noticeably of course. Soft Punk is another "debut" by a musician whose catalog is already bursting at the seams. There's an issue of semantics at hand, but, whether or not it seems ludicrous to call an album released at this point in John Wiese's career a debut, one can safely just call this album another quality release from Mr. Wiese, the cream of Los Angeles' noisemaking crop.
Wiese likely doesn't use tools unavailable to his contemporaries in noisemaking, but listening to a track like "Spectral Hand" might make it seem that way. When at its best, Wiese's sensitivity to timbre and his logic in sandwiching sounds are top notch; there's a cleanliness and clarity in even the most decimated masses of half-digested static and the swirling tones that surround them. Wiese works in sound that, at times, is practically three-dimensional, and through stereo panning and architecture of sound, he's capable of impressively immersive sonic environments, especially considering the hectic pace that much of his work has a tendency to take. Soft Punk is the sort of album to proves that noise isn't purely the realm of the talentless hack with an ear for discord, and though it's indiscernible in any truly tangible way, there's certainly a method to Wiese's madness, and an art to his crafting and arranging of sound.
Selecting a favorite Wiese album is somewhat akin to choosing the best looking blade of grass in a yard; there are way too many to choose from, and keeping them distinct in one's mind often proves to be a challenge. Soft Punk, however, seems a fitting entry to the upper echelon of Wiese's oeuvre, and a worthy wearer of the title of his full-length debut, no matter how contentious such use of the term, in this case, might be."

sounds like: grinding teeth

prurient

Prurient - And Still, Wanting

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"A follow-up to Dominick Fernow's Pleasure Ground tract, And Still Wanting maps out a fresh set of paths into the abyss, with an initial, limited edition CD run accompanied by a 5" slab of vinyl featuring 'Prologue' and 'Epilogue' pieces as bookends to the album proper. The voice tends to be at the epicentre of Fernow's infernal compositions, and on this album you're even supplied with a lyric sheet, so you can screech along at home. 'Memory Repeating' uses a straight forward spoken vocal as its lynchpin, while layer upon layer of horrendous distortion collapses in on you. There are plenty of noise records that cake on the fuzz and feedback, but just as there ain't no party like an S Club party, there really ain't no racket like a Prurient racket. Fernow always manages to go that little bit further into the filth-pit of extremes than just about anyone else. It's that particular kind of extremity to his work that makes it all that little bit more terrifying than the industry standard. Even by No Fun standards this is not for the squeamish. And Still, Wanting is hardly pushing things forward but the dark poetry recital aspect gives the noise onslaught an added depth, particularly in the deep, cavernous musings of 'Strict Ideas' which sounds like someone incinerating a William Basinski Disintegration Loop whilst reading out some unintelligibly overdriven statement in the midst of it all."

sounds like: speaker problems, beetles, solitary confinement

jim o'rourke

okay this will be the first jim o'rourke of many i shall post
i fucking love jim o'rourke
Jim O'Rourke - I'm Happy And I'm Singing And A 1-2-3-4

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"I'm Happy, and I'm Singing, and a 1, 2, 3, 4 is a collection of three tracks performed by Jim O'Rourke on his laptop computer in New York, Osaka, and Tokyo. Given the nature of these performances, the record inhabits that squishy gray area somewhere between a composition and an improvisation. Since this is the first time these songs have been released, it's impossible to know how much of the album is premeditated.
The results of O'Rourke's half-improvisations are absolutely stunning. I'm Happy, and I'm Singing, and a 1, 2, 3, 4 is comprised of sounds too intricate and complex to be the product of spontaneous experimentation. But unlike many albums consisting of such sounds, this album moves at the speed of human thought, developing in a subtle, methodical, yet never cold and technical manner. Changes happen slowly enough that you can fully take in every nuance, yet nothing ever seems obvious.
"I'm Happy" opens the record with nondescript glitchy sine waves playing a sparse, quiet pattern. That pattern swells to a buzzing mass of sound so dense that it seems to comprise a single melodic entity. Gradually, O'Rourke manipulates this one central sonic pillar, adding sounds that vary slightly in melody and timbre. And somehow, he manages to keep "I'm Happy" dense enough to be completely enveloping, while still open enough to be noticeably transformed by every one of its individual voices. About halfway through the track, a series of subtle melodic changes and the addition of a humming bass drone drastically alter the character of the song, though the elements comprising remain largely unchanged.
Though "I'm Happy" fades out with a few moments of dark ambience, the following track, "And I'm Singing," showcases a more playful side of O'Rourke's laptop. Opening with the stuttered sounds of a timer and chime, "And I'm Singing" then sees him using looped keyboards and synthesized sounds to create what could best be described as a single fragment of a gorgeous melody frozen in time. Strange, ambiguous percussive sounds create a controlled cacophony, until the song metamorphoses into a minimalistic arrangement of clean and distorted synthesized blips. A single array of melodies is repeated, developing so slowly that it can barely be noticed. It then flows seamlessly into what could be the album's finest moment: a progression of odd, ambiguous sounds backed by distorted sine waves and acoustic guitar. Like its predecessor, "And I'm Singing" ends with a brief period of subdued ambience.
Whereas "I'm Happy" and " And I'm Singing" often use a flurry of individual sounds to create the illusion tranquility, "And a 1, 2, 3, 4" is much more sparse, allowing the listener to focus more closely on every sound O'Rourke uses. And the sounds themselves are utterly gorgeous-- subtly manipulated strings that quiver and pulsate in slow, sweeping gestures, constantly arranging themselves into new harmonic patterns. As more voices are added, these patterns become more complex and more regular until the end of the song, at which point O'Rourke gently deconstructs the layers of sound that have been building for over fifteen minutes with the introduction of new, thoroughly engaging sounds that function almost like a screen behind which the song can dismantle itself.
Indeed, I'm Happy, and I'm Singing, and a 1, 2, 3, 4, despite its somewhat ridiculous title and its digital origins, is a startlingly personal, affecting album, drawing as much on the fragile melodicism of folk music as the technical manipulation of minimalism. And considering the strength of the bond that can develop between a man and his machine, this record may be O'Rourke's most direct statement to date."

sounds like: kitchen appliances, sunny days, perfect music

sword heaven

Sword Heaven - Entrance

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"Sword Heaven is a Columbus duo using sheet metal, electronics, horn, drum and treated vocals to bring a supercluster of black clouds into your zone. While there is an undeniable black tone of metallic grime hanging over the proceedings, this music will appeal to those wanting something absolute in their lives. Yes, name check pre-industrial dive bombers like the Swans or Godflesh, but realize that will not prepare for the all out bombast this duo spreads on your toast. The band has 7 inchers and LP sides on undy mainstays record labels like Not Not Fun, Deathbomb Arc and Cephia's Threat, as well as a split LP with fellow Ohio cyanide spritzers, Lambsbread. This is their full-length debut. Make no mistake, this release will be noticed and fans of exxxtreme soundz and bold smells will bow down and spill proper restitutions of pig blood stained dollars at their local record shack or illegal download center."

sounds like: crutches, giant cave spiders, a brass band where all the members have recently been hit by an automobile

food for animals

Food For Animals - Belly

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"Despite its penchant for woofer-throttling, high-tech bombast, Food for Animals couldn’t be more old-school. The group from the Maryland ’burbs embraces noise in a way that few hip-hop acts do, but calling the racket futuristic or dystopian would sell it short. FFA’s second disc, Belly, picks up where 2004’s criminally ignored Scavengers left off: Its beats are constructed almost exclusively from crackle and fuzz, and its rhymes veer from the personal into the impressionistic. The key terms here, however, are “beats” and “rhymes”—the group sticks to hip-hop orthodoxy (big sounds, thoughtful rhetoric) and just happens to present it through nerdy machinery. That’s FFA’s strength; it sticks to what it knows, even if it means dropping a Silver Spring reference now and then. Lead rapper Vulture Voltaire—a tall, pale, bearded dude—does a bit less hollering this time around, but he’s no less passionate: “I’m like, yeah/Yeah, my generation got clowned/And still my surroundings can’t even make a sound/You say you can’t find the words, and I say/Shit, I’ve stolen more than one from your lost and found,” he raps on the anti-apathy anthem “Shhhy.” FFA’s other core member, producer Ricky Rabbit, turns the song into a lesson on tension and release: While a synth loop anxiously shimmers in the background, the digi-bass throbs at a martial, fist-pumping tempo. It’s the album’s most accessible track, but that’s no knock on the others: The glitched-up “Bulk Gummies” and the hyper “Mutumbo” are both funky as hell (for FFA), while the chaotic “Belly Kids” and the percussive, jittery “You Right” both push the group’s aesthetic into psychedelic territory that Scavengers never quite reached. All of those songs, incidentally, feature new member Hy, whose hopped-up delivery provides apt contrast to Vulture Voltaire’s stentorian tendencies. Hy holds down the back end of “Belly Kids” like a political-thought professor, but many of his lines are nearly eaten by rushes of static. When the thunder stops, though, he says this: “But fuck bein’ humble/When it comes to these raps, I’ve sung millions/So all of the MCs in existence are my illegitimate children.” It’s a welcome blast of ego, even if it’s a tad facetious. FFA fills out Belly with some well-pruned instrumentals, a couple of tracks where Vulture Voltaire plays entertainer (“Tween My Lips,” “Summer Jam”), and a finale (“Grapes”) where he philosophizes about the inadequacy of language—and the grief that accompanied the death of his mother. “Because of you I had a childhood the size of the sky,” he says to her, injecting that rarest of hip-hop elements: true pathos."

sounds like: toys, chain link fences, computers booting up

teotihuacan

Teotihuacan - Live Smokeshows from Inside the Ciguri Cave Hazed Diamonds with Windswept Hair

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another side project by james ferraro of the skaters. i'll up some skaters soon enough.

sounds like: rituals being performed on the other side of a jungle valley

incapacitants

Incapacitants - No Progress

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sounds like: skidding cars, fingernails

bone awl

Bone Awl - Undying Glare

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instead of a label quote i'll just tell you the very \m/, names of the two members: he who gnashes teeth and he who crushes teeth

sounds like: that

snake figures fan

Snake Figures Fan - s/t

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"Another mysterious new project from James Ferraro of The Skaters, this is the first volume of three audio documents of a four month travel through Mexico and is a beautiful mix of sweeping Klaus Schulze-style Kosmiche synth, padding drums, Tangerine Dream scale teleport tone and washes of barely-there phase. Highly recommended, limited run."

sounds like: aztec ruins, hypnosis, moss, forests, fanning snake figures

grouper

Grouper - Cover the Windows and the Walls

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"Moving on from the vocal-and-tape-delay of “Way Their Crept” to the inclusion of guitar and piano on “Wide”, Grouper has already proven to be a project that had a signature sound from the beginning but was always expanding the horizon of what is essentially a musical landscape ahttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifs perceived or envisioned by Liz Harris herself. The tracks on “Cover the Windows and the Walls” still have her choral vocals drifting over reverb from afar with a somewhat drowned ambience fluttering and dancing in the breeze. At some point you become aware that Grouper’s music actually IS the breeze, gently creating an atmosphere you feel you could touch."

Grouper - Way Their Crept

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"'Way Their Crept' was originally released back in 2005 but the folks at Type Records have managed to re-release it on vinyl and mp3 and it's high time. Although since the album's release there has certainly been a lot of interest generated in Liz Harris's Grouper project, we've always felt that more people needed to get hold of this album. Maybe that's down to the construction of the tracks - deceptive in their simplicity, on the first play you are almost encouraged to think that there's nothing to it; it's just vocals and tape delay, right? That's where you'd be wrong, Harris's voice is submerged beneath layer upon layer of dense noise and tape saturation, looping into a degraded whirlwind of cascading sound and on every play you wipe away another layer and discover something more. There are comparisons I could possibly make, the original press release compared 'Way Their Crept' to Arvo Part and William Basinski, but while there are similarities (Basinski's use of slowly degrading tapes, Arvo Part's sense of harmony and stark minimalism) Liz Harris is an artist I can safely say is out on her own. A Grouper album simply sounds like a Grouper album, you can spot her tracks a mile off - that voice, those slowly-shifting waves of audio, and to have a sound that characteristic is truly amazing. For me, 'Way Their Crept' is like watching a film, once you've started it's hard to stop; you've got to go through it in one sitting, taking in each track as if it were a scene in a movie, analysing it carefully before coming to the breathtaking conclusion, and when you finally reach the end you're well aware that you've sat through a very special experience indeed. Personal, emotional and packed with that priceless stuff missing from so much contemporary experimental music; substance, this is a stunning record and one which I'm certain we will be able to listen to many years from now and it won't have dated at all. These productions are totally out of time and out of place in the world, and rather than feeling like an alien experience listening to it, it feels like you are learning something about music, something about subtlety and restraint. An absolutely bumper recommendation."

sounds like: the bottom of the ocean, bioluminescent creatures that live at the bottom of the ocean, jellyfish

pukers

Pukers - Beach Cop

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"”Where are you going, what are you doing, you’re doing a bad job, you’re doing a bad job.” Lyrics like these – and song titles like “Look at Me” and “Don’t Look at Me” – are what elevate Pukers’ meta-thrash into an even wilder arena of high art internal debate. Beach cops aren’t the only law enforcers brought to task on this savage C32; bike cops and park cops get equally brutalized. Since semi-temporarily relocating to Culver City/LA, Pukers have ditched the dead dog worship for a more conceptual crowd-surf across the polluted waters of stream-of-songciousness. The results are sick and blazing. Especially seeing as how the A-side finds Britt sitting in on electric axe for a session while the B stars Manda’s intuitive six-string synergies. This is some supergroup shit."

sounds like: napalm death drowning, stubbed toes, living next door to an underground wrestling ring

contagious orgasm

Contagious Orgasm - The Flow Of Sound Without Parameter

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"The sounds on this CD flow without parameter as the title suggests. Recordings of the sound of a town in Germany. The sound of a park being cleaned. Recordings at a zoo. A conversation in the kitchen. The scenic sounds on a balcony. These sounds were processed, and other sounds were added with ambient beats mixed in. This gives you The Flow of Sound Without Parameter.
Hiroshi Hashimoto has been recording under the name Contagious Orgasm since 1987. Their has gone through many changes; from dark and creepy sound constructions to beat oriented music verging on dance music. This CD combines a little of all of the Contagious Orgasm styles. There is sample based sound sculptures, annoyingly repetitive looped bits of musical phrases sounding like Muslimgauze, Japussy 2000 or Climax Golden Twins and wonderful complex soundscapes combined with mellow beats that blend right in."
(from the ground fault series II)

sounds like: movies, the internet, rainforests

yellow swans / the cherry point

Yellow Swans & the Cherry Point - untitled

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"a collaborative effort that starts off by lunging at you with a furious velocity. you don't get a chance to do much more than blink before this track has you on your knees & deep in the violently gross wreckage. and on your knees is where you'll stay for the almost 19 minutes the track lasts. it is varied and layered, but never lets up. give up & give in. the three currents behind this pummel through you & drag you in. this is being overwhelmed at it's very finest, you surrender your struggle and sink to the bottom in a defeated stupor. there is no delivery here because delivery calls for consideration and this track considers nothing. it is a maliciously persistent piece that has little mercy for tender ears or faint hearts. there are no second guesses here. action is king and the action is nonstop. exploding slabs of sheet metal, sounds that mimic static frying and bubbling over. nonstop. for those who fancy a faster hand, you're in for a treat. not just fast hands but forceful hands. no means yes hands. nonstop hands. hands that push shards of ugly sounds into you & through you. if you favour being handled with a certain roughness, this is highly recommend. play it loud and get thrown around. the caustic symphony will mute your tender cries."

sounds like: being caught in the wheels of a train moving at 400 mph toward the center of the earth

hototogisu

Hototogisu - Chimärendämmerung

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"Chimärendämmerung is the 3rd Hototogisu release on Destijl and the 5 untitled walls of vertical viola drone / overtone, lapped by shifting electronic waves of feedback, blackened guitars, rhinegold cast deep into dying rivers, an instrumental cycle of conflict, of the birth of a supreme aristocratic beauty into a fallen world, and its inevitable conflagration, then a glimmer of hope of escape from the cycle, in tune w/ the breath of the cosmos, like a glacial reimagining of van der graafs 'a plague of lighthouse keepers', and it represents a current plateau for the duo."

sounds like: 1000 years, polar bears, cement