Pages

Monday 17 February 2020

Hostage Pageant: The Cherry Point: Kazuma Kubota


Hostage Pageant: The Cherry Point: Kazuma Kubota: CD: Cipher Productions: 2019: (sic 115)



Hostage Pageant is Shane Church, releasing since 2010. The Cherry Point is Phil Blankenship, releasing since 2002. Kazuma Kubota is Kazuma Kubota and has been releasing since 2008. This split CD contains 3 Hostage Pageant tracks, 1 Cherry Point track and 1 Kazuma Kubota track. Artwork is by the Deathpile dude Jonathan Canady – Jonathan’s amazing art can be seen on his art page - here.

The Hostage Pageant work is like being immediately thrown into a big vortex of Harsh Noise. His work is Harsh and direct, the sound shifts and distorts massively. Depletion is brutal in its’ delivery. Falling Out of Place takes time, it crackles, splutters and keeps trying to explode, it tries and tries until it kick starts a massive wall of distortion. What sounds like a dog panting seems to act as an interlude as things creak and echo around until the sound explodes again, this time there appear to be shouted vocals in the mix. The sound here is more violent than that of Depletion, Church kicks off and fragments big-time here. Enabler is the last blast of Hostage Pageant, this starts with suspenseful tones until the wall of noise breaks through, sharp fragmented noises are forced through the wall. The contrast between wall and sharp noise keeps attention focussed until it breaks down again. This does the break down, build up again routine a few times and indulges that more than the previous track, building to a massive finale.

I confess to only hearing what Cherry Point did on the 10LP California compilation back in 2006 (wow, so long ago). The spaced distortion of Just Before Dawn is impressive from the off, it is as if Blankenship comes at noise from an entirely different perspective, where? I don’t know, but it’s something else completely. The whole track feels distanced and seems to come from a totally different mindset. I am very impressed by this, there is something else going on and I can’t pinpoint it - distanced, distorted and epic. From a personal point of view this project is the one that really grabbed me as it ties in with the current UK PE sensibility.

Kazuma Kubota takes epic journey to new proportions with Zattou Ni Tokete, this has quiet beginnings that shift to loud build ups of vortexed distortion right back down to quiet shifting. There is subtle rattling and creaking before some blast of noise takes over.  This like Cherry Point shows a different mindset, but it happily plays noise in the quiet areas allowing subtle sounds to play off each other, interact and build. This has more in common with Hostage Pageant yet is more shifting in the range of areas that it occupies for periods of time. Kubota delivers a gorgeous, long journey of sound.

Three artists who all play outside the box, all the works are different, yet share some vague similarities, the main being that they are all trying to push their work elsewhere. This is a good split of three artists pushing at the boundaries of their own work. A strained beauty of an album that I like a lot.

Nevis Kretini 2020.

No comments: