live in seoul 7"
[2007, 8mm]

justice yeldham (the abbreviated version of justice yeldham and the dynamic ribbon device) is one of the aliases of sydney, australia's lucas abela. he has recorded in the past as dj smallcock, a kombi and peeled hearts paste. he also co-operates the dual plover imprint.

ah, here's a dude who freaks me out a little bit. he's a totally nice guy, but most of the pictures of him on his myspace involve his face being bloodied. clearly, he's not afraid to go the extra mile for his art, and that's commendable. if you're willing to physically fuck yourself up to make atonal noise, you've got my respect... just don't get your blood on me.

with this project, lucas has himself a pretty identifiable sound, which is a rare thing to do in the modern noise scene. his secret? amplified glass. sure, he's not the first to think of it, off of the top of my head i know that bob bellerue and akifumi nakajima have discovered the usefulness of glass in audio settings, but i doubt that anyone's done anything quite like abela. he amplifies sheets of glass, presses mouth up to the glass, and then in a combination of humming and soft throat singing, proceeds to play the glass like a brass instrument. he also has a belt of effects pedals to enhance the sound. needless to say, it's pretty sick, and that also explains how his face and body will get so bloody.

the first side will start off pretty minimally, with abela's slow vocal tones getting affected and almost sounding like tape manipulations. after a minute of that, then comes the pedal work. there's a nice balance between the bassy glass hums and the dissonant noise that's being spewed forth from the pedals. i like the unexpected drop-off in noise in the latter half. right as everything was beginning to swell, it died down to a barely audible breathy lull, before kicking things back into gear. the noise that he summons via the glass tends to alternate between the whirling sputter of a dying power drill and the loud buzz of an amplified fly. at the end of the set you can hear the glass break, and then the, initially, cautious applause from the audience... should we be clapping or calling an ambulance?

fun fact (unless you're lucas): due to faulty ground wires during the second set (side b), he was being shocked through his pedal belt, and still he soldiered on. if it comes as any consolation, this is my favorite of the two. i dug the minimal moments of the first performance, but i'm really won over by the fuller noise approach here. also, for these shows being on back to back days, they're pretty different from each other. the first set was in a lot more of a vocal style, you can pick up on it easier because, due to the (relative) quietness of some sections, it was accentuated. this is a lot noisier, with the sounds emanating from the glass coming across more as shrieks than low hums. of course, he's not screaming, because doing that into a thin sheet of amplified glass would be moronic. the ending on this one is great, too, he'll briefly tap into a repetitious (dare i say rhythmic?) stretch, followed by loud screeching distortion, which, shortly thereafter, kills the glass. awesome.

fun(?) fact: the cover art for this record was a nice mixture of blood and red paint. i think it was done by a fan after the show.

note for americans, justice yeldham will probably be dripping blood on the floors of venues near you, starting in the middle of february at the international noise conference in miami. check out his myspace for complete tour itinerary as well as mp3s from this release and a few other ones. the shanghai mp3 he's sharing is particularly great. anyway, it's a bummer that he's not making it past olympia this time out... at least we have this...

justice yeldham @ gallery 1412, 2005; seattle, wa

bast c40
[2007, dihd]

the interestingly named new jersey trio, dogo & crackerjacks, consists of kevin winter (2673, thee black one, asps, penis in vagina) and two ladies whom i can only find their first names, ann (the wicked tall one in the picture) and liz.
first off, let me say fuck yeah! to trevor for sending this my way. now, the specifics. these recordings date back to 2003 and, according to what i read on this website, was in the process of being mixed in 2004, and is just... now... getting released? hmmm.

okay, now back to the fuck yeah! i'm not sure what took this release (officially a demo) so dang long to come out because it's fuckin' killer. like most of the stuff coming from this particular scene (meaning kevin and affiliates), it traffics in sludge. sound-wise, though, it's cleaner, but the pace is pervertedly slow (all due credit to david yow) and liz's guitar works more like a conductor of droning distortion than anything resembling a musical instrument. the actual music is capably handled by kevin (drums) and ann (bass guitar). the slow synchronization between that rhythm section, propelled by ann's forceful bass, creates the perfect psych-sludge canvas for liz's vocals to do their best jackson pollack all over. hmm, maybe not that sloppy. there's just something about shouted girlie vocals that are almost straining to be heard over the bass and distortion that's really doing it for me here.
side a's got some nice jams, and the eight minute long opener, dark & lonely, establishes this right off the bat. ann's bass playing is her most memorable, trading off between lighter strums and heavier chords while kevin backs her up perfectly with his uncomplicated kick drum and crashing cymbals. the instrumentation on bast isn't overly awe-inspiring in any sort of technical way, but that ain't the fuckin' point. most of the time, i can't really hear what liz's singing about, and this hauntingly reverbed effort is no exception, but her repeated wails of save me, save me from this darkness work beautifully with the music. i like the next track, laugh, but i'd surely like it more if they hadn't essentially used the same music to make an even better song in the one that follows, package power. it's paced a little faster, but the descending bassline is nearly identical, as is the vein in which liz sings; her shouts, in tempo with the music, have to be broken up by syllable, so package power becomes pack-age pow-er!, and it's adorable. i also really like the way that ann's back-up vocals work with liz's. there are two main lines of lyrics and when liz shouts one, ann's affected(?) vocals are simultaneously delivering the alternate line. very row, row, row your boat-esque, but you know, cooler.they'll stick with that vocal theme, in both regards, for side b's carcinogenic. this time the singing isn't as catchy, but that could be because there's more than just a few brief lines of lyrics. so, what are you to do when the vocals aren't the main attraction? have kevin break out with some real nice pummeling action towards the end of the song. holy shit, i can hear actual non-distorted guitar chords in treasures! the bass takes a good supporting role to the simple chimey chords, which is still hardly guitarlike, in a conventional sense. interestingly enough, the first half of this is trance-inducingly repetitious, but before its nine and a half minutes end, it turns out to be the most dynamic piece of music on the cassette. at five and a half minutes in, the singing changes a bit and both of the guitars will change up their chord progressions. while the guitar's is still similar in effect, it sounds more memorable in its new state. as they keep going on it becomes more and more apparent that they're building towards some sort of climax. it won't erupt into a disaster, but it was a pleasantly surprising twist, given bast's previously lethargic tone. closer frigerator, outside of having a great name, throws us another curve: harmony. while the voice of neither lady is likely to get confused with françoise hardy's, the tone of liz's singing is in tune with ascending scale of the warmly distorted bassline. bast hadn't been devoid of (a semblance of) harmony before, but it's a lot nicer sounding when it's not being shouted. oh yeah, she shouts on this one, too, but it's more of a half and half thing.

i already said that this tape is awesome, and it's hard to find a similar minded band, but my closest point of comparison might be knit witch, but recast as a sludgier band. maybe if knit witch and robedoor had a baby. yes, i am reaching. anyway, if hypnotic, catchy, bass heavy, repetition is your bag, this tape comes highly recommended.

Package Power

electroacoustic compositions for electric guitar
[2007, oks recordings of north america]

marco is a classically trained guitarist hailing from brooklyn, new york. in addition to his solo work, he's also a member of josh weinstein and the petty alchemy band.

according to oppedisano's bio, he's had experience playing the guitar in a bunch of musical settings: rock and pop, jazz, hiphop, dance music, free improv, music for film and stage as well as taking part in contemporary concert ensembles. while, at times, you can pick up on hints of marco's musical past, for the most part he'll do a good job of not being too schizophrenic with his playing.nearly all of marco oppedisano's scattershot leanings are confined to two of the disc's longest pieces, and occur within the first three tracks. by and large, he's successful with them. the first of the pair is time lapse. at eleven and a half minutes, this is his longest offering. while the length (and his past musical history) might lead you to think that marco will try to cram a lot into this time frame, he'll only spend a couple of minutes on noisy and affected guitar overdubbing, and then it's back to the warm droning ambiance and complimentary panned sounds. the last four minutes switch to multiple layers of a cleaner guitar sound, culminating in a shimmering strummed finale. the nine and a half minutes of karmicom are a bit weirder. here's where his balance of different aspects becomes a little skewed. most of this track is great, but part of it kind of sinks it. first the good. it opens up with a great repetitious plucking sound as its base and panned all around it are various other noises and brief, beefy electric guitar power chords, along with other affected guitar licks. that sounds good, mostly because the infectious foundation, but, unfortunately, the second half will completely abandon that as he will add choral female voices, which will also get affected, and really, it sounds awful. if the last part was a necessity, it definitely should've been broken down into two tracks since the complete sound of karmicom was ruefully ditched once past the midway point.

after the three short electronic pieces (one minute a piece) trilogy, things start looking (sounding) a lot better. i attribute a majority of the success to the fact that he'll stay a narrower course. steel sky is built around warm drones and marco's occasional delayed guitar and feedback enrich the piece of music as it all comes together much more organically. limbo is even narrower in scope, forgoing all dissonance for a slow, pendulum-like drone. the pace, as well as the colder feel, make limbo stand out from the pack; the bells during the latter minutes were lovely, too.
the final ten minutes belong to the four-parter, scenes from dante's inferno. the first two tracks, the dark wood and eternal lovers capture marco at his somber best, with the latter being my favorite piece of music on the disc. most of what's good about it happens in the first minute with the exchanges between a great background drone and memorable guitar playing. it's the only time (at least that i remember), where a pattern of chords emerged, versus a pattern of drones. it's short-lived, and soon eternal lovers reverts to mournful free-form playing, but affected enough to mask the sound. still a good song. the last two works are brief, but pleasant, experimental pieces, with the squeaky guitar chord fuckery of the alchemists being the standout.

the tracklisting on the cd includes the year of each piece's (or movement's) conception and the best tracks, in my opinion, all came from 1999 (scenes from dante's inferno), 2000 (limbo) and 2001 (the unmentioned, but excellent, opener, frozen tears). the later, up to 2005, tracks are the ones where he got more creative, trying to employ a broader range of sound within each composition, but i tend to prefer oppedisano's music, here, when he's not spreading his focus out as much.

Eternal Lovers

@ the monkey, nyc; 2/17/07

we're a monotonous band
[2007, musicyourmindwillloveyou]

don't be fooled by the words "we're" and "band" nor the label that released this; it's still iowa's darren bauler, and he's still making noise. i remember when the letters mymwly were synonymous with rad psych music (most of which hinged on folk), but i haven't seen that much from them recently. either they've slowed their roll or i haven't been paying as much attention since the past few years. regardless, i was intrigued when i saw that those folks were putting out an mpa disc. also, to be accurate (which happens less often than i'd like), there are a couple of helper-outers spread about on this disc: ana skyfish, david moses fruchter, jenna cohen and a few others.going back to the connection between the artist and the label, in this particular instance, the psych is short for psychotic. so, if that's the idiom, mymwly has another winner on their hands.

the sinister cobwebs of bauler's psyche won't get brushed out until later in this disc as the first few tracks are actually pretty nice. the yoke opens up with a lo-fi vocal recording; through distortion from the cheap microphone it's hard to make out what he's saying, but i know it involves said yoke. the last thing that he'll say is "... all the days of my life", then exhale a breathy sigh which transforms into a brief burst of recording noise once the yoke's music kicks up. speaking of which, what will stand out the most will be a dominant one tone drone (nearly omnipresent), but it's everything else that's he doing that you should really be paying attention to. throughout the track's thirteen minutes, darren makes great use of swirling atmospheric sounds (if your atmosphere happened to be entertaining a blizzard at the time) and panned noises with secondary drones, distinct in each speaker. there's actually a warmness to this piece of music, which is ordinarily not the case when it comes to mpa. okay, it's also the case in the following track, paleyellowpurple. now you're just making me looking bad. the barren howls of the looped backdrop manage to evoke a meditative trance in conjunction with the tiny splinters of digital noise dropping down and ms. cohen's pre-recorded soliloquy (phone conversation? poetry?). again, i can't tell what's being said, but it provides a nice humanistic touch, whereas the digitized sounds occurring around her could've swung the track into a colder direction if let alone.

circle of salt takes its cues from paleyellowpurple, but this time we have a man's voice. also, without the ambiance this does take on a colder, more isolated feel. not much going on in the noise department with the track, but there is a fantastic job done with layering. while the slow pace and relative minimalism make it subtler than other pieces of music on we're a monotonous band, this might be my favorite track. quite a few of the layers have a bit of dynamics to them, so while i might initially lock in on an undulating background tone, my attention would shift to the forefront and darren's staticy, sputtery tone work, then i'd shift again to a different drone, before a new wrinkle in the sound would reveal itself.

more vocals mark the onset of the deviating teenage basement spaceship, this time though it's a sample, and it's only briefly used. i enjoyed how it got overplayed on top of itself, but the second one will get slowed down to a snail's pace creating a nifty effect that will enhance the tripped out martian vibe that darren's creating. this is the soundtrack for plan b from outer space... on acid.
mpa's mood will start getting a little more fucked up just in time for slaughterhouse champs. taking a refrain from the overdubbed density of circle of salt, he'll use much lighter layers of brooding sounds to compliment and play off of each other to create a bit of tension. once near the midway portion of champs' five minutes, auxiliary sounds are held back, as the focus shifts to a fuller sound. a solid drone will take its place in the mix, there's an all too brief squawk of analog noise and the two main layers of sound are distorted, and occasionally manipulated buzzes which will intertwine, move out of range, and reestablish themselves. good shit.

the buffalo bill baiting how does the skin man get his skin certainly doesn't do shit to lighten the mood. ominous atmospherics, tortured wails that are pushed low in the mix and a deep booming bass sound are all he's giving us. by taking away the noise, we're just left with a creepy foundation, and it does its job very well.

evil plays a big role in the tale set to experimental noise, the story of the solehn sisters, who were in love with each other. the music here seems secondary, so let's get that out of the way first: repetitious and encircling ambiance (it might be phased, adding to the feel), a high pitched buzz of a drone (that's low enough not to become grating). as far as the story goes, it's like grimm's fairy tales, if they were more like grim fairy tales.

lastly, is the wonderfully titled the necropsych snowblind blues band performs overdriven liturgical dirges for lotte reiniger. for having the word necro in the title, it's actually not morbid at all. for having overdriven in the title, it actually uses that effect a lot. as has been his modus operandi (i credit mobb deep for this being in my lexicon) during this disc, bauler will implement a sonically pleasing background layer and a few innocuous drones to fill out the space not taken up by his distorted base. i love the trade-off between the overdriven noise and shrill squeals near the four minute mark.apparently, the best way to get this disc would be to go through darren himself, as he's packaging it with a bonus cd-r: vons serin exchanging frequencies with cicadas (dedicated to ruth white). the first, and titular track, is almost forty minutes of great experimental noise. decidedly less dark than a majority of we're a monotonous band, it does have a dreary thread running through it, which would surely appeal to white. the other piece, unrequited, is not as necessary being that it's just twenty-seven minutes of warm, gentle, undulating tones. it sounds nice and all, but certainly pales in interest compared to exchanging frequencies.

Slaughterhouse Champs

introduce: red cat green cat c10
[2007, jk tapes]

elephant kiss are seattle's kyle reimer and tiffany gartin.

yay, pop music! actually, all is not well in the land of pop for this tape. despite the fact that i have more c86 than anyone who listens to macronympha should, even i have my limits. i really want to say that this is awful, but i don't want to be such a blatant dick about it. it's got cute girl and boy harmonies, charming (to a point) innocence, no organic instrumentation (neither a pro nor a con, just putting that out there), spastic drum machine rhythm (assisted by a gameboy), but i really don't think that anyone older than say fifteen or sixteen should be listening to this (or would want to). the strongest draw that this tape would have would be in the quirky electro sound of it, as it's not really that catchy. i've listened to it five times and i still can't remember any lyrics; not that i'm complaining. this makes me want to buy multiple stereos and blast burzum, opeth and whitehouse all at the same time.this is an odd release by jk tapes and really, to me, (further) cements the fact that this label wishes it was not not fun. i can't think of any other imprints that would release noise-related things alongside dancey, lo-fi pop. i would applaud the fact that it's quite ambitious, if it hadn't already been done so recently. the big difference that i notice between the two is that, in the beginning, nnf culled their stuff from their own scene; picking out different acts in l.a. that they were stoked on. this just seems like a stretch, and the real casualties of this release are, unfortunately, elephant kiss. i wouldn't say that this duo sucks at what they do, i just don't find it appealing. i'm sure that there's a niche market for it, but having it released on a label whose best offerings have all been experimental noise doesn't seem beneficial to anybody.

Super Magic Bicycles

split 3" cd-r
[2007, wasting]

this split features one live track a piece by both projects. first is seattle-based diseased visions, which is levi berner (algiers, wasting...) and john lukeman from drowner and whatwedoissecret. next is shanghai's torturing nurse, which is currently junky, jiadie and youki.diseased visions' piece from methfest is an exercise in hypnotic noise minimalism. the main component is a high pitched droning wail; think whistling tea kettle. below that is a repetitious loop of sound that i sort of lock in on as it nicely counteracts that shriller tone. towards the middle of their set they'll swap out the loop for a lulling motor-like sound. again, they'll continue to maintain a nice balance between dissonance and tranquility. the final minute breaks their motif a bit as everything drops off, save for introductory feedback and then an unexpected outburst of shouting...
... interestingly enough, torturing nurse's @ loft 49 opens up with a few yelps, making for a terrific segue. once past the initial fit of yelling, these guys get into some terrific multi-channel noise, offsetting diseased visions' less is more approach. particularly fucking great is the left channel manipulations of a sample. the way that it's being affected and the sound of it while it's being affected is a joy to my ears. meanwhile, in the right channel, there's great things happening over there as well. quite a few times the noise will briefly settle into nice repetitious patterns while the other channel continues on with the dynamics. add to this mix a great use of shouting (pretty catchy, actually), samples and noise that's just a blast to listen to and you've got yourself one hell of a reason to go to china. beautiful.

Torturing Nurse @ Loft 49

torturing nurse @ d22, 5/3/2007; beijing, china