Merzbow – Animal Liberation – Until Every Cage Is Empty

Merzbow – Animal Liberation – Until Every Cage Is Empty – CD/Download – Cild Spring Records - CSR314CD – 2022.

https://coldspring.bandcamp.com/album/animal-liberation-until-every-cage-is-empty-csr314cd

https://coldspring.co.uk/

         1.   No Cages Part 1.

         2.   No Cages Part 2.

         3.   No Cages Part 3.

         4.   No Cages Part 4.

         5.   Baby Bird.

"There is a theory that Covid-19 broke out from the poor conditioned wet markets where live animals are sold. If there were no poultry farms, there would be no mass destruction of chickens due to the spread of bird flu. Human beings' cruelty to animals, animal abuse and species discrimination are all adding up to a disaster for mankind and the whole planet. The pandemic is an opportunity to reflect on the relationship between animals and humans. Veganism is the future for humanity" (Masami Akita, 2021).

The theme of this album, coupled with the Anarcho Punk style artwork takes be back to my days of discovering bands like Conflict, Doom, Cress, Napalm Death, A.P.P.L.E. and Crass and exposure to their take on the world, particularly the issue of animal rights. I remember around that time of discovery regularly going to the Coventry Airport Veal export protests in the 1990s, Jill Phipps died there, it had a massive impact and I remember becoming a Vegan not long after that.

The intensity of No Cages Part 1 is immediate, starting with a pulsating distortion, it throbs at speed before high pitched, screaming noise asserts itself over this. The high-pitched wailing is like a horrified screaming in protest. Frequent rapid shifts jolt the overall sound in other directions until it returns to something resembling what it once was once the screaming noise returns. There is a constant struggle of claustrophobic tension and anger as if imagining what it is like to be stuck in a cage where you cannot really move, cannot see the sun, cannot escape your own filth, cannot really live. The power of the backstory has a massive impact on the work.

Savage pulsating forms the base of No Cages Part 2, rapid, repetitive and relentless. That’s nothing compared to the wailing frequencies that overlay it. I am sure I can hear field recordings of caged birds in there as if in a battery farm for chickens. So far, the delivery on this album is particularly savage, or is it how I am receiving it? The shifts are more subtle here, things do not move too far from the initial group of noises that started off after the pulsations of deep noise. Constant screaming noise is prominent throughout this album. Metal abuse, repeated battering kicks into the proceedings to overlap the pulsating. The busyness of the noise drops off to allow rumbling bass to dominate the sound and create a bigger sonic landscape that allows a deeper depth of sound to engage the listener – this is a simple, yet effective shift to the work. This chapter of the album goes into hyperdrive as it accelerates towards its’ own death.

Industrial, repetitive grinding sounds coupled with sharper noise (metal sheeting, hit repetitively) forms No Cages Part 3. Digital pulsations do kick into the sound occasionally to allow a higher build up of noise to occur. This is the shortest No Cages and the most sonically violent, it feels like an act of slaughter.

The looped metallic clanging and throb of No Cages Part 4 is imposing and serves as a base for the noise to go off. Noise levels and busyness drop off quickly to allow the high-pitched screaming noises to interact and converse with more clarity, offering a bold contrast to the massacre that was No Cages Part 3. In parts the sound seems to malfunction and gasp for air as the base sounds take prominence for the noise to then go off around it.

Baby Bird begins with the base noise and its’ repetitive rhythm, but manic, conversing noise then takes the centre stage. Parts of it seem to mimic the noises a young bird makes, coupled with Industrial machine-like noise, it doesn’t look good for the bird. The noise becomes particularly violent on this track, seeming to emphasise the shitness of life applied to all ages of animal and bird in the food industry. The sounds break down and seem to splutter and become very unstable as everything melts down to an end.

Animal Liberation is a powerful album, which makes a powerful statement. All proceeds will benefit animal rights charities.

Nothing and Nobody 2022.

Relevant sites.

https://animalliberationfrontline.com/

https://www.vegansociety.com/

https://merzbow.net/release/

https://www.peta.org/international/

Astro - Far in The Distance

 

Astro – Far in The Distance – CD/Download – Abhorrent Creation Tapes – 2021

Release link - https://abhorrentcreationtapes.bandcamp.com/album/astro-far-in-the-distance

Band pages - https://astro-hasegawa.bandcamp.com/

https://www.facebook.com/people/ASTRO-CCCC-Hiroshi-Hasegawa/100045702438105/

          1.    Cluster Amaryllis.

          2.    Rebel Moon and Emotional Resolution.

Astro is a Japanese project that was started in 1993 by Hiroshi Hasegawa of CCCC. Since 2013, Astro has been a duo with Hiroko Hasegawa – I am usure if both artists are related. Releases date back to 1994, starting with Moog Resuscitation on Ant-Zen in 1994. Astro has also released on Phage Tapes, RRR, Trashfuck, Important and Fusty Cunt amongst many labels – this latest release is on French label Abhorrent Creation Tapes.

Astro. 

Cluster Amaryllis starts off with field recordings that drip and echo to build an image of an empty wet space – this creates the canvas which the work can play out onto. The rise of intensity comes through the increase in the water pouring and gradual introduction of glitching sounds that spark off each other until a thicker ambient atmosphere arises. There is an increase in the amount of noise used, these creak, roll and gradually fill up the sound creating a playoff of noises that is backed by continuous, foreboding drones.  The density of the sound increases as the number of noises grows. Things become blurred as chaos gradually sets in, individual noises take turns to take prominence in the picture that is formed. I like how the ambient drones from the start of the work eventually shine through the chaos as a smaller palette of noise shoots across the scene. The work intensifies and begins to die off several times towards the latter part of the track, the final die off allows the drones to cut through and dominate the chaos and lead it towards an end.

Subtle conversations of small noises are the start of Rebel Moon and Emotional Resolution, which allows a longer passage of minimal, quieter noises to fire off each other. The conversational aspect is emphasized by some of the noises sounding like voices or vocal based noise throughout the track. There is a good 5 minutes of this before a measured build up starts, bigger drones and blasting distortion build a sound that has thicker lines of noise going through it than before. Sharper sounds cut across this to build distinct layers. At different points there is a warped feel to Rebel Moon that arcs across the track, this is coupled with a clearer sense of violence that erupts into the picture. Digital blasts emerge as the chaos increases, until it peters out.

The sound on this release is made by overlaying a range of noises in small and big, busy combinations. Astro does this by allowing the work to start or reduce to passages of quieter interaction for things to then get louder and for chaos to erupt which is then controlled and manipulated. I was impressed by the mastery of the sounds made to move things along and ensure that they shift continuously. Far in the Distance is two passages of sonic communication erupting into violence, both fights move differently yet meet similar ends. This is a demonstration of good, layered chaos that is available in digital and physical format from the Abhorrent Creation link above.

Coventry Soul 2021.

Scum – Life Sentence

Scum – Life Sentence – CD – Aussaat – 2021 – Aussaat 14.

https://scumcumcum.bandcamp.com/

https://www.facebook.com/Aussaatundernte/

http://www.damagedcorpse.com/

For Life Sentence Japanese Harsh Noise unit Scum delivers 9 tracks of contrasting, choppy, chaotic cuts. Scum is the sole project of Sou Inomoto who has been releasing under the Scum name since 2010. The artwork on Life Sentence is by Françoise Duvivier who has been creating amazing, nightmarish visions from France for decades, her artwork is worthy of individual inspection.

Label Aussaat is no stranger to Harsh Noise, they have the French perspective from Brutalists Entre Vifs and the American take L’Eclipse Nue that actually started in Tokyo bringing and regurgitating the influence in a new form. Aussaat seem to select good noise acts and do proper CD releases with them as opposed to Cdrs or tapes.

The tracks on the album operate at a high speed, sounds evolve by cutting each other up with collisions and overlaps. There are sharp jolts of sound that punctuate passages of noise, cuts and drops break the movement of the sound into other directions. I like the erratic interruptions that seem to make way for eruptions that have no similarity to what has gone on before. Hisses are broken by buzzing screeches, that are then chopped up so that their flow is broken, feedback cuts through all of this. As the sound bottoms out and new tracks start the process over again, with new variations and methods demonstrated across the album.

The works often function on a partial capacity so there are impressive, detailed sound interactions at the lower levels and this will then gradually and sometimes suddenly rise to a fuller capacity. The slower build ups allow for a lot of change in the sound to happen during this time. Life Sentence’s strengths lie in the quieter areas haunted areas that resonate bleakness and how they contrast the busy areas that give the feeling of being a passenger during a high-speed drive along a motorway.

Army of One 2021.

Merzbow - Dead Lotus.

Album: Dead Lotus

Artist: Merzbow

Label: No Funeral Records

Catalogue  no: nf-009

Tracklist:

       1.      Dead Lotus pt 1

       2.      Dead Lotus pt 2

       3.      Dead Lotus pt 3

       4.      Spirulina Blue

I have pondered, many times in fact, how long it would take for someone to listen to the entirety of Merzbow’s recorded output – his productivity would surely make that a lifetime’s work. You’d get to the end of the last one you bought only to find that in the meantime he’s released 600 further albums.

Before I go any further, I am not denigrating either the man or the music – I find his work endlessly fascinating and texturally multi-layered. I have more than a few of his releases and each one has something new to offer, and something new to say. On top of that, even at his fiercest and rawest, his collages of blasting jet engine noise and swirling chaos more often than not send me into blissful states of reverie.

This strictly limited edition cassette release for the tiny No Funeral Records label out of Cambridge, Canada is no exception – three shortish slabs of lush carpets of chaotic static and pure noise, interspersed with recognisable almost rhythmic bass ‘beats’ and shrieking high-pitched whines, feedback, squeaks, and machine noises on side one (which form a themed whole) and a longer, layered, and shimmering assemblage that is, dare I say it, almost tuneful. ‘Spirulina Blue’ is what I would call ‘classic’ industrial music, the kind I particularly gravitated to in the late eighties/early nineties. This one still has the Merzbow trademark nuclear granulation but also includes a keening ‘melody’ weaving its way through the noise. I’m even tempted to categorise this as dark noise ambient – labels are mostly useless when it comes to this Japanese artist but in this case it fits nicely.

This, as I said above, is a strictly limited release on cassette so if my description tickles your earbuds then you can purchase from either:

https://nofuneralsound.bandcamp.com/album/dead-lotus?fbclid=IwAR2BHpLtj_cHAdXcJw116BK0vnRN9Q5XDUKKCZh31Q3HZ-K6Q5Dkav6Xpxk

or

https://nofuneral.storenvy.com/products/27085800-merzbow-dead-lotus-tape

Psymon Marshall 2019

Viviankrist - Morgenrode

Album: Morgenrøde

Artist: Viviankrist

Label: Cold Spring

Catalogue  no: CSR268CD

Tracklist:

    1.      Silent Soul

    2.      Spring Storm

    3.      Spite Spits

    4.      Morgenrøde

    5.      Black Out

    6.      Cactus

    7.      Higher Minded

    8.      Pleasure of Confusion

Viviankrist might be more familiar to some of you as Vivian Slaughter, bassist/vocalist of doom/black metal band Gallhammer. On this release from the UK’s Cold Spring label, we get to hear a ‘lighter’ expression of brutality and dissonance from her (lighter is used here in a relative sense, compared to her work with Gallhammer that is). Having described it thusly, do not for one millisecond think that this is any less challenging and in your face than her usual oeuvre; indeed I would go so far as to say that it’s a necessary counterpoint to the all-out attack of Gallhammer. This certainly isn’t a walk in the park on a nice sunny day. Whereas Gallhammer is all blackened crustiness Morgenrøde (the Norwegian for ‘dawn’) is painted in technicolour brightness but its obtuseness signifies the collapse of everything held dear, as the sun melts and the sky and earth bleed.

Album opener ‘Silent Soul’ is a blast of industrial noise, groans, and sirens, pinning Viviankrist’s manifesto to the tumbledown wall of some decayed manufacturing complex. Not as dense and lightless as you might expect given Viviankrist’s pedigree, it’s nevertheless the soundtrack to disintegration and annihilation. However, this is where it gets interesting: the following tracks diverge from here on in, cutting back on the nuclear nightmare of attenuated blasts and granular distortions and instead presents us with overtly analogue electronics, bleeps, rumblings, and twisted mutant disco beats. This approach does nothing to dilute the vein of utter despair and darkness running through every aspect of Morgenrøde.

Listening to the album I was reminded of early, pioneering electronic musical exploration, computer-driven rather than through the agency of a musician. This is not an affectation – it emphasises the ungraspable something beyond that lies behind the disruption of order and structure. It’s cold and impersonal music, and inhuman. Every piece has a steel edge, bright stabs of danger, and dissipating energy. Furthermore, despite some of its funkier, syncopated moments don’t let yourself be beguiled or deceived: this is a canvas painted with dust, rust, and waste, the hues subdued and darkened, and its atmosphere claustrophobic.

In other words it’s excellent and perfect for a Sunday afternoon.

Psymon Marshall 2019