Category Archives: noise

2017, albums, Already Dead Tapes, analog, music, noise

mchtnchts – “.a….i….” [free download]

Leave a comment

If you head over to onyudo.com right now you can download the first batch of analog noise from mchtnchts. The album is called “.a….i….,” which is good, or at least consistent because now both the album and artist names are rendered unpronounceable. But, worry not, the album still gives us plenty of stuff to talk about.

A few years ago mchtnchts released “The Spoiled West and its Freshly Minted Infants” on Already Dead Tapes.  That tape went the direction of a more desolate soundscape that aimed to completely redefine, or re-examine what musical expression could be using analog electronics.

“.a….i….” takes a similar approach, but at times uses older, tried and true forms for their musical expression. Opening track “…o..i.. ..i…e” is a riff on a simple gesture in repeated rhythm and contour. The simplicity of the sound components here is what is most striking to me. The clear buzz of the sawtooth wave alternating with an extremely high, clear sine tone effectively opens up the tessitura to create space for a broad, and varied tonal palette.

It’s the rhythmic elements here that hold most of the tracks together. A steady pulsing that grows and fades becomes the premise behind “.ui.i.e” The song, of course, like much of the rest of the album, is a steadily developing work. By its close we are in fairly ambient territory, with the pulsing becoming smoothed out to a dulled hum.

The sounds generated by mchtnchts approach the same realm as what can be heard across the work of Mincemeat or Tenspeed, whom I covered a few years back. Where Mincemeat or Tenspeed’s brand of electronic noise tends, at times, more toward thrash antagonism, mchtnchts prefers to work in subtleties.
Download mchtnchts’ “.a….i….” and “The Spoiled West and its Freshly Minted Infants”
“.a…i….” is available as a free download at onyudo, and their follow up, the even more spacious and noisy “The Spoiled West and its Freshly Minted Infants” is sold out in its physical form, but can still be downloaded from Already Dead Tapes here.

The duo is planning to release more music in the very near future, so keep an eye out. You can get updates from Kyle Bruckmann over at his website (and check out all the other great stuff that he’s doing).

2017, cassette, EP, Nailbat Tapes, Nashville, noise, Portland, reviews

Hadals – “The Dog”

Leave a comment

Here’s a fresh batch of noise coming out of Nashville. Hadals’ “The Dog” is available on cassette from the Portland, OR based label Nailbat Tapes.

Opening the release is “Hound of Golden Light.” It’s squealing feedback refuses to be kept at bay, while the track plows forward aided by the heaviest of bass lines. Vocals are relegated to the background, and despite being pushed into the red the punishing discord of the guitars are clearly at the fore here.

“Claws Stretching to the Sky” starts off one part Wolf Eyes and one part punishing death metal, choosing to focus mostly on anxiety inducing wails and distant sounds of torment. Following that “My Teeth on Your Neck” picks up exactly where “Claws…” left off – with the crushing bass-heavy backbeat and feedback taking over once again.

Closing with “Sink Into the Earth” solidifies the fact that this release really is of two minds. On the one hand there is the noisy, Wolf Eyes/The Thirteen Ghosts elements, casting an unnerving pall around the distorted guitars and drums. Slowly building from one to the other the last minute and a half finds Hadals absolutely punishing their instruments into apparent oblivion.

You can grab a copy of this limited cassette from Nailbat over at their bandcamp page. And while you’re there you should check out a few of their other new releases including the Portland-based death/grind of Maltheist, and dark/ambient/noise of Red Boiling Springs.

 

2015, music, noise, reviews, songs, Soundcloud

Alessandro Cortini – “Scappa”

Leave a comment

Alessandro Cortini has just released his “Forse 3” double-LP, which is the third and final installment of a trilogy of “Forse” double-LPs, through Important Records. “Scappa” is the third track on the album, and was composed–like everything else in the Forse double-LP trilogy, on a Buchla Music Easel.

The track unfolds slowly, across nearly the entirety of its 10 minutes, unveiling a beautiful, long melodic line little by little, that dovetails its end to its beginning to create a perpetually growing looped line. Delicate pulsations give this otherwise mostly ambient affair an added dimension, providing a regularity of sorts, or something more for the listener to grab onto in order to orient themselves within the piece. Other timbres are allowed to take shape underneath the main legato melody line, with deep bass fuzz that calls to mind Tim Hecker’s “Ravedeath 1972.”

Personally, I am most impressed and fascinated by the way that Cortini manages to create a work based on a compositional scheme of a consistently growing structure. The amount of forethought, nuance, and technique that needs to go into creating a successful long-form work of this nature can not be underestimated. Creating an idea that slowly develops, and builds up enough momentum to propel the work while remaining engaging the entire time is easy to do wrong. However, when it is pulled off, as it is here, the results are typically awe-inspiring.

It’s truly a breathtaking track, and I would imagine that the entire rest of the 4-sided affair will deliver in exactly the same way. “Forse 3” is available as an extremely limited double-album, and you would probably be smart to grab this now, as the first two installments of the Forse trilogy have long since sold out.

2015, albums, analog, Chicago, contemporary classical, jazz, music, noise, reviews

Jonah Parzen-Johnson – “Remember When Things Were Better Tomorrow”

Leave a comment

Jonah Parzen-Johnson’s music is an eclectic mix of soulful, street-corner solo sax melodies, gritty multiphonics and microtonal excursions against a backdrop of analog synths and various effects. His tone is impeccably clean one second and drenched in layered waves of pulsating echoes. He plays both with electronics and against them, sometimes using them as extensions of his horn, while at other times he’s using them to create dense contrapuntal layers.

Across his album “Remember When Things Were Better Tomorrow” these incredibly complex and vibrant ideas take shape within each track. Each song is a journey with its own twists and turns, and its own highs and lows. Contemplative one second, resolute the next. In the video for “I Wrote a Story About You, Without You” we get a clear visual analogue to the sounds. Life rushes around, filtered through clandestine security cameras in downtown Chicago and New York; soon its seen through the frantic movements of someone desperately searching google maps. At first the track’s opening soliloquy begins an ascending scale that slowly speeds up, is mixed with bright and reverberant harmonies, and then takes off into the realm of something a little more synthetic and frantic. Parzen-Johnson’s circular breathing, prolonging lines well beyond a single breath, only adds to the tension and propulsion. “I Wrote a Story…” captures a sort of sentimentality, but also an uneasiness, a malaise; perhaps something we all feel as we go about our daily lives, trying to remember what it is that we were planning on doing, and why it is that we aren’t doing it. We go on about our daily business anyway, trying to figure a way out.

That sentimentality, that same subtle melancholy is also captured on the album’s closing track, “On the Way Home.” Stripped of any electronics, we are treated to an extended melody with absolutely brilliant phrasing and control. Each small break between the phrases has me listening closer, waiting, and hoping that there will be more to come. Eventually, of course, the last phrase comes and goes and we are perhaps left feeling a lack of resolution, a wanting. Or maybe it’s that we are left in deep contemplation.

The entire album is brilliant, and just came out earlier this week on Primary Records. Parzen-Johnson, a Chicago native by the way, is out on an extensive tour in support of “Remember When Things Were Better Tomorrow.” You can find dates below the video and you can also check out his website in order to get the album as a CD, digital download, or on limited 150g vinyl.


06/05/15 Seattle, WA Cafe Racer
06/06/15 San Fran, CA Center For New Music
with The Steven Lugerner Octet
06/08/15 Sacramento, CA Luna’s Cafe
Time: 7:30pm. Nebraska Mondays
06/09/15 Los Angeles, CA Moryork Gallery
06/11/15 Chicago, IL Elastic Arts
06/12/15 Milwaukee WI Frank’s Power Plant
w/Devin Drobka, Barry Paul Clark, and Jay Mollerskov
06/13/15 Madison, WI Bright Red Studios
06/15/15 Minneapolis, MN Ice House
w/ JT’s Jazz Implosion
06/16/15 St Louis, MO Foam
06/17/15 Louisville, KY Dreamland
06/19/15 Greensboro, NC New York PIzza
with Xelos Verv and Sun Swan
06/20/15 Durham, NC The Shed
with Polyorchard
06/21/15 Asheville, NC The Mothlight
06/24/15 Charlottesville The Garage
06/25/15 Washington DC 453 Florida Ave NW
06/27/15 Philadelphia, PA The First Banana with Accretionist, Daniel Fishkin, and LXV
06/30/15 Cambridge, MA Lilypad
07/01/15 Montreal QC La Passe Canada
07/02/15 Providence RI 186 Carpenter Street

2015, Bandcamp, music, New Amsterdam, noise, video

JOBS – “killer BOB sings”

Leave a comment

Today we’ve got JOBS’ track “Patient Angel,” a unique amalgam of several different styles crammed into a tight 6 minute track. Starting off with a detached, spacious, and hypnotic sound, the rest of the song slowly develops. Surprises pop up here and there, like the quick jolt of rhythmic guitar stabs that seem to come out of nowhere and then quickly disappear, only to return later as a sort of motive that ties some of the more disconnected stuff together.

The song is more of a journey, and something that really needs to be concentrated on from beginning to end as you listen or else you’ll miss so much of what is going on. The persistent, echoing bass drum in the background continually keeps the tension at a maximum, anticipating some of the crazier material that starts to crop up with increasing frequency as the end draws near.

One final freak-out comes crashing in quite literally at the last minute. They’ve been building to this, and the payoff is a a wildly distorted guitar bending its pitches like yelps in the distance, crying out over a crowd of rushing drums, and noise.

Their album “killer BOB sings” is due out at the end of this month, on June 30th, from New Amsterdam records, and can be purchased on vinyl or as a digital download from bandcamp.  A video for “Patient Angel” was premiered on popmatters, and can be checked out there or below.

2015, albums, Arachnidiscs, Bandcamp, music, noise, reviews

Lost Trail/DOR – “Arachnidiscs Recordings Split Tape Series Vol. 12”

Leave a comment

I’m going to get your week off to a great start right now with some fresh noise and drones.

These tracks are coming from a pair of noise/drone artists From North Carolina. The first, Lost Trail, is the husband and wife duo of Zachary Corsa and Denny Wilkerson Corsa. From the sound of it, opening track “Eyes of Fire ’83” finds its footing right away with a huge blast of booming noise that almost immediately finds itself morphing into about a dozen different micro-melodies. Each stream of pitches that emerges from the original blast takes on a life of its own, and it really creates a beautiful texture. The opening blast eventually becomes this lush backdrop similar to a loud sonority being churned out by a large orchestral string section, with all the cellos and double basses bowing molto ponticello on their lowest strings in order to really accentuate the rich overtones.

“In Cold October Houses” takes a similar approach, with a little more focus on the roaring feedback that more or less completely envelops the melody, buried within the cloud of distortion. Unlike “Eyes of Fire ’83” the overbearing roar dissipates, and as that harshness fades the pure tones become clear. This track works more like a suite with various sections that fade out and back in, each exploring different textures.

DOR is a duo of John Rutherford, and Jacob Worden, and they offer up 3 unnamed tracks that are a nice counterpoint to some of the harsher sounds of Lost Trail’s side. Here, steady, glowing tones dominate. Each sound is prolonged, very gradually growing and then shifting in pitch ever so slightly before fading back into the distance. I think that the orchestra analogy is apt in describing this music as well, but the approach is quite different. We’ve sort of moved from Penderecki to Scelsi in a way. Where Lost Trail is clearly approaching from the noisier side of things, and it might be harder to parse out from where exactly the sounds maybe be coming, DOR is more in line with sounds that could come from any of several different post-rock bands, perhaps.

DOR’s 3rd track moves full on into steady rhythm territory, taking their gradually shifting tones and placing them within a new context. The percussion sounds add a degree of coldness to the overall sound, while serving to reign in some of the more ambient elements.

I would highly suggest not only checking out all 6 tracks here on the Arachnidiscs bandcamp page, but also pre-ordering the tape. The packaging looks fantastic, and it’s a steal at $7 Canadian. The cassette is limited edition so get on it.