next up are a pair of albums from trevor penn's new brunswick, new jersey, d.i.h.d. label.

myl itt lepiec eofh eaven
[2007, d.i.h.d.]

this disc is a retrospective of the group's output over the past three years, a best of, if you will, with seven previously unreleased songs tacked on as well. i was stoked to see hot hands included on the cd, since it was easily my favorite song that they'd done. it used to be on their myspace, you couldn't download it, but i'm clever and recorded it.

ahhh, i've been hoodwinked! this version of hot hands is certainly not the one i fell in love with. no, this is overdriven distortion placed over the top of said song (and not even the full song, at that). way to punch me in the gut, jeez. at least i still have my copy of the old one. anyway, it definitely sticks out in the human adult band repertoire, being the only piece of noise music that i've heard them make. alright, while my favorite song might not be on there, they did include two gems from the out of print god's life cassette. those being resurrected here as git you and samanther, and both are real fucking good. since i reviewed that tape awhile back, just go read that review so i don't have to recycle myself.the first thing that you're likely to notice about human adult band's music is how overpowering trevor's bass is. live in a crappy apartment with thin walls and want to piss off everyone around you? play this. mike mccoskey's guitar playing is pretty damn killer, too. the music on myl itt lepiec eofh eaven does a good job of achieving balance between the band's more structured moments (samanther) and their looser jam-based ones. actually, with the way that the disc is sequenced, it seems like the first half is devoted to the conciser songs, while the second half is spaced out noodling. overall, i think i'm digging the longer songs; schizophrenics control th' weather, i like it here so much i could shit and hoop dreams are all really rad stoner jams that don't forget to rock in their waywardness. all that i like it here is missing is some chanting to give sunn o))) kids a boner. yeeaahh doooom. ok, i'm not all about doom metal, but this is good. there's a solid head-nodding rhythm in place and lovely guitar noise towards the end.of all the more traditional (still not saying too much) songs that i hadn't heard before, red cent is a favorite. not much in terms of rocking out or a memorable chorus, but the music is great. human adult band has a great knack for making, what i want to call lazy, even though i don't mean it in a derogatory sense, jams. there's just this feeling of ease in their slow approach, and i think that trevor's vocal delivery plays a large part in that. i just really dig it, there's no band that i can think of off the top of my head that sounds like this. it's simple, but effective. there are a few times during the cd that this slowness doesn't always work. skeltons in th' closet (their spelling), teenage parking lot and flukes & flames all sound like dj screw got a hold of these. though i still like teenage parking lot, it's out there, for sure.

here's a video of hab performing ogod oshit live at 233 hamilton street, new brunswick on 11-17-06. hey, that's my birthday, sweet!


Hoop Dreams
(also, be sure to head over to the band's myspace for four more streamable tracks from the album)

womb blizzard
[2007, gods of tundra]

before i get into the next package, i wanted to talk about this disc from ohio's zac davis, of lambsbread fame. zac [pictured to the far right in the lambsbread pic] is also the proprietor of the maim & disfigure label. truthfully, i'm not that into lambsbread, but as popular as they're becoming, i found it a little surprising that more people haven't been talking about davis' solo work or even his side projects such as traum. traum's a terrific avant-garde duo rounded out by ben hall of graveyards. the first time i listened to it i was like... this is one of the dudes from lambsbread?! crazy fuckin' times. anyway, connelly recently put out this disc of zac's early recordings. from ten years ago (actually, zac told me that most of this was from february of 2005, with one track dating back to the late '90s, i was misled!). in an edition of twenty-five. what the hell man! i'm one of the privileged few who've heard this, and holy fuck...

what happened in those ten years? (err, two years) marijuana discovery / obsession? who knows, but this cd is seventy-two minutes of some outstanding experimental noise. sure, it's nowhere near as shocking as teenage andrew w.k.'s ancient art of boar project, but it's still weird. weirder still is how fucking great this is and why he doesn't do this anymore.

womb blizzard's title conjures a surreal coldness and the music adheres to that ideal pretty damn well. desolate drones, icy noises and ambiance will comprise a large portion of the disc's sound. there's a few times where you can pick up on some appreciation for maurizio bianchi, most notably on track two. great use of short samples which are then looped into a locked groove state of repetition, but it's the music that zac samples which makes the whole thing work. i love it. the samples will cut out at around four and a half minutes in, from there on out it's drawn out tones, beeps, squeals and drones. the piece of music which follows provides for womb blizzard's most ambient moments, subsequently it also takes on a warmer tone. not altogether different than, say, impregnable's beauty stone. even more subdued than that, though. it makes for a real pleasant listen. once that's out of his system, it's back to loud whines. i really like the beginning of it when it's super minimal with just the squeals. more sounds will eventually enter the fold, including some nice static, but it's the midpoint of this twelve minute track that does it for me. by this time the track will have changed its dynamic, drastically, and zac will establish a firm rhythmic center for his synth blurbs to dance over. the fifth track will also feature a memorable backdrop for davis' fried electronic sounds. i'm really liking this one, while the backing music is indelible, it's not just a short loop played over, it changes as it goes along, but retains the best features. halfway through, davis unexpectedly reverts back to samples, mainly from beatles songs. don't let sir paul find out about this. bad news, dude. once we've had our fill of beatlemania it's on to some whooping noises which, at first, just sound good as they're presented, but zac will start to play around with them and squeeze a bit of musicality from them. the sixth and final track does a great job of marrying ambient background sounds with some real ugly shrill discordance. the first half of the track is dominated by noise, but then the ambiance will have its four minute window to shine, before being brushed aside for that trying to tape record outside on a windy day noise. this will soon lead us up to cut up samples of rollicking old time rhythm & blues, ending things on a fantastic note.

with womb blizzard, zac davis has done a tremendous job taking a pretty monotonous form of music, drone, and spicing it up with just the right amount of noise. it's not overly aggressive and the calmer moments won't drive you towards boredom. that balance is improved upon by great composition, too. most of these tracks rarely end up the same way that they started and all of the changes are quite unexpected. you should definitely look hard for this, easily one of my favorite albums of the year.

zac's got a new cd-r out on his great maim & disfigure, humorously called no vaginas and no black people. don't expect any similarities between the two solo efforts. no vaginas is davis and an acoustic guitar. it's nice to see him work (extremely) comfortably in different styles. his sometimes free-form, sometimes structured, strumming is a nice, breezy, change of pace.

Womb Blizzard 2

split 12"
[2007, hymns]

hey, andrew, i got a turntable! ha. originally, ironing (andrew chadwick, from gainesville, florida) sent me this, almost three months ago, or something like that, as a part of the package from his hymns label. well, i reviewed the cds that he sent, but i've been without a functioning record player for a while. within the past few days people have sent me more vinyl, so i figured i should get on the ball. thanks again for your patience. i received another package from hymns on monday that i'll be getting to, probably next week.
joining andrew is another andrew, andrew barranca, also from gainesville. from charleston, sc. barranca makes noise rather uniquely with "distorted magnetic strip manipulation through facilitated communication machine". yeah, wtf indeed. i've added a live video of gaybomb using said machine in a park in geneva. if you're not familiar with the technique, you should definitely check out the video. also, i can't believe that the u.s. military was seriously considering making a bomb that they thought would make enemy soldiers gay. this was in the mid-fucking-90s. i need to move to canada, the u.s. government is insane.

man, gaybomb, this is seriously fucking ruling. when i first listened to this, without knowing barranca's approach, i simply presumed that this was either tape or vinyl manipulation. the fact that he's doing this with magnetic strips... boggles the mind. opener loosen is centered around an echoing, repetitious, pounding sound. those give way, periodically, to allow for high pitched blasts of sustained noise. i'm especially digging the last minute of it, good stuff. that shit's next, and this is really where the manipulating feel begins to come into play. the best part of this track is the vocal samples. there's a regular yelling one, and then one that sounds like it's sped way the fuck up. the way that he alternates between the two throughout is fucking brilliant. the noise on that shit is a sort of heavy, undulating, behemoth wave. the constant shifting between the noise and the samples is great. l'orgasm sounds like a bunch of people on turntables all playing random records at once, it's beautiful. i'd have to say that this track falls more into the category of sound art / collaging than noise. bleeder; however, will end the side in fine noise fashion. there's a distinct amount of minimalism to gaybomb's noise that i really appreciate. the shrill piercing dissonance and shrieks of feedback against a backdrop of nothing is fantastic. i am impressed!

ironing's your oxen have drowned was recorded straight from mixer at a festival of the same name on june of 2005. i don't know if it was intended as such, but i broke the track down into three parts. in part one there's a heaviness to the sound that i wouldn't consider dense noise, but it is powerful stuff. perceptible underneath all of that are what appears to be a couple of records. the music from those will provide interesting texture more than anything else. eventually, a sample of a woman talking will become prominent for a hot second before being consumed by low end noise. part two's only a minute and a half long and it's a slow churning haunter. the final part opens up with the playing of an uptempo spanish number and a very brief piece of mr. vegas' heads high. this third part really captures andrew in dj mode, spinning quite a few records, and fucking them all up (for the better, of course, and truly so with regards to that r&b song). oh, i think i just heard some sean paul, too. what you're going to notice the most with this track is the cold ambiance applied over everything. there's also some feedback and, yeah, turntable manipulations. i rather like ironing's spin on things. meh, not all puns have to be good.

Gaybomb in Geneva


GayBomb - That Shit
Ironing - Your Oxen Have Drowned, Part Three

iv c30
[2007, earth / space noise research laboratories]

yeeeaah! this is more like it. less screwing around, more power. this is some real nice noise which makes it a pity that we won't know who's making it. i'd imagine that that's the real bummer to anonymous tapes, when you find something that you really dig, but won't be able to check out the artist any further. oh well, all you can do is enjoy it while it's here.


with this fourth installment we're getting quite a bit of noise which has a very invigorating sound to it. side a is killer, lots of synth noise, tone modulation, frequency shifts, high pitch whines. there's a thickness to the sound at times, but they occur more as brief passages, in between some of the tone work. seriously dynamic noise that gets better and better until the end, which will provide a surprising change of pace.

side b starts off with a sound not too dissimilar to that of a passing jet, and that'll bounce back and forth between your stereo channels creating a very pleasing effect. additionally, there's some staticy noise happening underneath it, joined by some high pitch sounds. there's affected vocals too, maybe. so far, there's less going on in this track than there was on the other side, but the culmination of sounds is getting the job done. alright, in the vein of side a, this one will also change up quite a bit, it just takes a little longer (at least it seemed that way). the jet noises will cease, but the love for channel panning, thankfully, won't. from this point on they get more into the noise making with electronic squeals and plenty of shrill tones.

Side A (excerpt from 4:02 to 8:02)

iii c33
[2007, earth / space noise research laboratories]

kassette kvlt isn't a person, but, well let me just read what's written on the inside of the cover: "an ongoing tribute to the history and future of noise. featuring devoted worshipper's (sic) of noise in it's (sic) various forms. whom for the sake of noise have cast aside their ego's (sic) and proclaimed anonymity." grammatical errors aside, it's a hell of a concept. could be frustrating since you don't know what the hell you're going to get; dominick fernow or the kid from down the street who records himself beating a frying pan with a hammer? it's a mysterious risk/reward kind of situation. we'll get to whether or not it's rewarding.



those of you who don't listen to black metal might not know what the hell kvlt is. i sure as hell don't listen to black metal, so someone had to tell me awhile. anyway, it's derived from cult, meaning, i guess, that they were "true" black metal. this is one of the reasons i don't listen to bm. that, and i think it sucks. anyway, ironically, assuredly, the term kvlt is beginning to bleed over into the noise scene a bit. i thought that i was told it was more of a pacific northwest thing, but esnrl's not in the pac nw, so that fucks up that theory.

man, i just got a new speaker set-up for my computer, and the addition of a subwoofer is really working with this tape. there's an undulating low end rumble (not in a dense noise way) that sounds great. the background music is very cinematic, it comes off more as being the score to some spacey sci-fi film. you know, without anything that overtly shouts out "this is science fiction!" it's in the cold space-like feel of the music. added to that are female vocals, first speaking plaintively, then singing more towards the end. with the presence of those vocals i'd say that they really push this one into the dark ambient spectrum. not bad. side b carries over nicely from the first side. whoever these guys are, they should've supplied the soundtrack to event horizon, could've easily raised the creepy factor a bit. or at least jason x. dracula 3000? no music would've helped that. actually, i'm liking the b side more and more. there's bits of actual instrumentation (probably sampled) inserted in a couple of different areas, more vocal samples and they're relying less on the female vocals. the last half of the tape is what i'm especially impressed with. just loving the synth work throughout it. throb throb throb throb sustaaaaaaain; lather rinse repeat. yeah, i dig this. if you like your dark and moody soundscapes, here you go. the second side is the one that i could see having a broader appeal, though.

supposedly, there's sound quality issues with this particular volume of the kvlt series, and as a result paul's issued replacement tapes. mine seems to sound fine, there's a few clicks that pop up now and then, but certainly nothing that would derail my enjoyment of the cassette. he did also send me the replacement tape, which i just listened to. actually, i prefer the tape that supposedly has the audio issues. it sounds a lot better. the new tape's sound is cleaner, but the noisier elements, the rumbles and such that i was really liking, are toned down a bit, whereas the first tape had a more epic sound to it. i've uploaded sound clips from both cassettes, if anybody cares.

Side B (excerpt from 6:55 to 10:30, note that this is not from the replacement tape)

Side A (excerpt from 6:55 to 10:30, from the replacement tape)