this disc marks the first of a very pleasingly large package sent to me by stan of psychform, so expect a steady stream of psychform reviews to close out your week.

zero is the journey
[2004, psychform]

ahh, the mindfuck that is pluralized project names for projects which only have one member. you say two assistant deputy ministers? oh i think not, try one. yes yes, in earlier stages (currently) hollywood's the haters consisted of more than just gx jupitter-larsen. what's puzzling me the most though, is that i thought tnb was still the duo of richard (who's also in nihilist assault group with dom fernow and ron lessard) and phillip rupenus, but the plethora of reviews that i've tracked down for this have either shed little light on the subject, have thought that the haters were more than one person (coughthewirecough), or just said "these two nihilistic ______" (insert your own highly praise-worthy entity for the noun as applicable, or just go crazy with it, madlibs style) in regards to the total sum of members from both projects...also on the cd's cover it credits gx jupitter-larsen (the haters) and rupenus...whiiiich could imply both, right, right?! i'm so over fact-checking at this juncture. if i can't trust the internet to tell me the truth, i..can't even think of what i'll do if i can't trust the internet...scary stuff.

zero is leads off and promptly goes off in a direction that i was certainly not expecting. surely with everyone emphasizing how nihilistic these two (two, three, whatever) are, we should be bracing ourselves for an onslaught...of drone! outstanding drone is far more befitting. the type of drone that if i were to play this at work, everyone would be staring up at the ceiling wondering if the air conditioning system was about to blow up. there's a dominating higher pitched tone being sustained whilst all about there's a buzzing drone that might have you swatting invisible insects. if you've ever had a gnat find it's way into your ear, you know what this sounds like, congratulations. in addition to those main sounds there's a more ambient drone in the background, which will soon become a fixture in the music, too. during an eight minute run near the track's mid-section, the buzz falls back and in its place there's a bit of subdued, scratchy noise and the best comparison i can offer up is what gx gave us on the haters' excellent totimorphous.

the second and final track is the journey. both pieces of music are thirty minutes long. this one is also firmly mired in drone aesthetic, but has more of a noise slant to it. not noisy like either of these projects is known to be, after all, you'd imagine that they didn't garner all the nihilist tags by making drone, otherwise growing must be the most fearsome band in all the land. the journey is noisy in that textured sense. it's interesting to the ear in its untraditional sound, but it's far from making me cringe on impulse. for me, just the drone they're making is great (on both tracks), everything that's happening in addition is simply icing on the proverbial cake.
zero is the journey comes in a square shaped vinyl dvd case with a nice full color booklet full of gx jupitter-larsen's writings which, as cold spring perfectly said, "makes no sense". it looks like extra-terrestrial graffiti to me, but, apparently, it's just encrypted and if you have absolutely no life, you could probably figure it out. after that perhaps you'd be willing to go help catch the zodiac killer.

while damn near every review that i read for this disc (thanks to tnb for having them all on their site) made me want to punch myself in the face, for one reason or another, the one thing we all share in common is that we think this disc rules. anyways, i'm a part of the information superhighway, you can trust me.

Zero Is Excerpt (from 14:28 to 19:53)