the canadian-based divorce label, which was nice enough to send me this split cd, has been around since 1999, but had, up until last week, managed to slip beneath my radar. i think most of that can be attributed to the fact that divorce seems to have a lot of local bands on their roster. musically, the label's pretty diverse with a nice mix of noise, punk, hardcore and folkier artists.

split
[2007, divorce]

torso is halifax, nova scotia's sandy saunders. apparently, he's been doing his noise thing for around five years now, but has only recently begun officially releasing albums. his first, self-titled disc, came out last year, also on divorce.

after man is the bastard and bastard noise, los angelean w.t. nelson shakes free of the fatherless theme for his solo electronics project unicorn. granted, he has been involved in a couple of other things sans the bastard tag that i've never heard before: sleestak (with fellow mitb alum henry barnes (amps for christ)) and geronimo... but seeing as how i'll probably never hear anything by either project, i'll pretend not to know about them. well snap, i just went over to bill's thumbprint press and i see that he's selling two sleestak cds. maybe i will get to hear them at some point. he also makes and sells noise gear at trogotronics. no idea what any of that stuff is or does, but it sure looks fancy and worthy of your money.
i've got to say that i'm real impressed with what i'm hearing from torso. atmosphere, tonality and drone play key roles in saunders' music. thick stifling noises don't factor in as much as well thought out layering does. on his lead-off track, river grave, he's giving us a terrific droning ambient background that he builds off of with drilling noises, creating a unique sonic contradiction until the final three minutes when he really gets serious about his chaos and piles on the feedback and distorted shrieking. on blood arc there's some great repetitious noise matching up beautifully with a pervasive static hum. i'm enjoying that fine until it gets even better when feedback and distortion filled screaming joins the fray. both catchy and dissonant, this'd be my pick for torso's finest moment. the other legitimate challenge to that title would be the second track, behind the field. this one's kind of a beast, clocking in at ten minutes, but it's a quality listen. the first half has the seemingly auditory combination of air raid sirens, what i'd have to imagine the inside of the chernobyl reactor sounded like right before everything went all to hell and some creepy church organ-like ambiance. the last half plays up to the ambiance and has torso delivering spoken word lyrics that are distorted to sinister effect.

if your familiarity with nelson's work lies primarily with either of his bastard named groups, boy, you're in for a bit of a surprise. well, that might depend on which bastard noise albums you've checked out, but my main point is that much like this project's name, the music on display won't evoke images of aggression and destruction. at times, unicorn can be downright pleasant, such as on the warm sounding lanterns on water. there's an agreeable drone running the show which is fleshed out by continual panned sounds. eventually, some electronic squeals will push their way up to the forefront, but they still do little to detract from the overall lightness of lanterns. aurora mine is another piece of music that manages to airily float along. this one's a lot more scaled back in terms of additional noises being included with the drone, and the percussive pound that reoccurs is also tamer than the high pitches on lanterns. balance experiment no. 1 has an ominous sputtering backdrop, but the noise which adorns it is held in muted check, never following through on the threat of an onslaught. the same holds true for dawn on the chemical battlefield. there's a tangible sense of tension, but we're left to stew instead of having an outlet for release. seeing as how the majority of torso's tracks were build, build, build, release, unicorn is taking a decidedly different angle, and his approach also works. due to each artist's different style, unicorn's pieces work best when consumed as a whole, while torso's are individual compositions and can thrive as such.

Torso - Rust Storm
Unicorn - Dawn On The Chemical Battlefield

our thin mercy of error
[2007, hymns]

formerly residing in lansdale, pennsylvania, apparently jeff's now in korea, seoul to be precise. sweet, he should collaborate with joe foster. i'd check that album out. other than that, there's precious little info about the guy. he doesn't really seem to keen on the whole idea of self-promotion, but that's not a bad thing. sometimes it's nice not to be beaten over the head with one's musical endeavors.

jeff rehnlund is embracing both noise and avant-garde idioms with our thin mercy of error. across the span of the disc's fifty-one minutes he'll work his way through cut-up noise collage work (160 india street), more easily identifiable dense noise (schmid), field recordings (raleigh), rounded out musical pieces (green piano), atmospheric drone (bowls) and finds the time to touch on everything in between.

while as a whole the album's a success, there are several tracks on here that stand out for me. the shrill chimes on mera can be counted as one. even if it feels like someone's drilling into my head there's still this subliminal beauty to it which transcends that piercing noise. i'd advise that you keep the volume down during it, if you value the future of your hearing. the squeals and feedback of valado is a winning combination and i love the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach of the whimsical birthday. i'm not sure if it's a toy or a music box that's providing the background layer, but it's a great addition. near the end of the track it sounds like it's being strummed, so hell if i can figure out what he's using. the only track that i could really do without is the ten minute long raleigh. the first three minutes of it i quite enjoy, but the last seven minutes are bits from a couple of different (vocal) field recordings that are just kind of boring. rarely do i actually want to listen to people talking (especially when i'm not involved in the conversation). that's why i listen to music all of the time instead of hanging out with people, so maybe it's just me, but it really kills the pace of the disc. thankfully, it's followed up by three of the album's more sonically interesting pieces, so that minor hiccup gets pushed out your mind pretty quick like.

Birthday

andrew chadwick of the hymns imprint, who has his own project in ironing, sent me a couple of albums. unfortunately, my turntable isn't feeling quite up to working, so i won't be able to review the ironing & gaybomb 12" split that he sent until i get a new one. next month, i'm hoping. i can handle the two cds though, no problem. first up:

skin atonement 3" cd-r
[2007, hymns]

wether is wilmington, delaware's mike haley. delaware? if you say so. looking over wether's discography on his myspace page, i noticed something peculiar, the living headache cassette put out by magic bullet. i've listened to more than my fair share of (good, ha(?)) screamo and hardcore, so i recognized the label from putting out splits by pg. 99. after a little more link clicking i come to find that mr. haley was in the hardcoreish electric human project (one of those guys is behind the ehp label/distro as well), whom i'd actually heard of. good times. anyway, skin atonement is a digitized reissue of an old c20, of the same name, put out by lover's tapes in an edition of twenty.

if you're still reading this after seeing the word screamo, i'm impressed with your dedication, but you should be sticking around because wether is pretty damn good. i can only imagine that he's even better than when he originally released this.

if you were lucky enough to hear the free beasts tape compilation that not not fun put out, you heard a wether track that was mired in sticky dense distortion and was mighty fine. oh, and a wether is a castrated male sheep, which would explain his being on that animal oriented album. there's a few tracks on skin atonement that come close to that same style; silver flood and anticipate the genesis. the latter ups the visceral level with some shrieking, shouted and screamed vocals. the manipulation of those vocals is outstanding. the whole thing has a very industrial (in the steam-laden, dank factory sense, not the skinny puppy one) feel to it that's really connecting with me. selective reasoning, wind erosion of the hive mind and herder center less on outright noise and more on subtle electronic work, with hive mind being the most minimal of the three. while not being pleasant in the classic way, save for hive mind, they are excellent changes of pace, but also have their own merit beyond just being segues. the harsher works like mouth, moth and torrid have great layers to them as well as repetition that keeps things interesting. i'd say that both of those things are mike's strengths throughout skin atonement. the album ends in fine droning noise fashion with the five minute long seeeeeds. while it doesn't start out as much, things pick up considerably near the three minute mark when the distortion's applied. the vocal sample in the background that you can't really pick up on (until the end) manages to provide a mesmerizing companion to the noise. it reminds me a little of alvin lucier's i am sitting in a room, when his vocals get transformed from mere spoken words into waves of sound, where you can kind of tell what's going on, but it's more about the sound than anything else.

Torrid