TARDIVE DYSKENESIA

 

The last times a band hit me like TAR-D was when I saw PIG DNA at House Of The Rat. There's something about the people who aren't assimilating by choice and the people who aren't assimilating out of sheer determination - and there's a sonic bond that connects the two groups. "Agoraphobia" sounds agoraphobic."Death" feels desperate and real. The screams in "Numb Life" are yearning to feel. This is nine minutes of frenetic determination presented as hyper-speed pogo noise mania...and it's going to be another decade before I hear anything like it.

NEVER TRUST A DREAM   

VIOLENCE AND THE SACRED

 Outsider improvisational and/or experimental sounds from the Canadian realm, captured in Montreal in 1986. It's difficult to describe what VIOLENCE AND THE SACRED are/were/is, but I can tell you that intentional listening will likely result in intensified thought and/or analysis.  Like NEGATIVLAND and IDIOT FLESH and RESIDENTS, maybe deconstructed by ZOLAR-X because it's just that fukkn weird. 

TEDDY DIED (SINCERITY)

SCARLET WOMAN

 

Continuing on a theme (almost) this live ritual from SCARLET WOMAN lands like a black metal summoning interrupted by psychedelics and noise. Captured in København in 2009, a half hour of mystery and patience groans like your aching body...and then there was nothing. 

SCARLET WOMAN

ADAM VOID & CHRIS FISHER

 

I've developed several virtual connections through Terminal Escape - people and artists I've never actually met (and likely will never meet) but whom I have followed and communicated with over the course of several years. There's one person who just sends me tapes sometimes - no note, no nothing, just their music - and I return the same. Tapes from the label, Wright Copy volumes, the occasional mix tape. We've been trading sounds for a decade and never exchanged a single word. But...we're connected. Enter outsider Appalachian outsider folk visionary ADAM VOID joined here by Unread Records empresario CHRIS FISHER. The listen becomes a thing in and of itself here; it's not that you listen, it's that you are when you're listening. Force Majeure / Forced Manure is the full experience; never a hint of the next move, just like I never know what 's inside when I open the envelope. I love this shit, and I am grateful.

FORCE MAJEURE // FORCED MANURE

DAVID RUSSELL

 

Shit sounds like a compilation made by a person on all of the drugs. This person grabbed bits from the Poltergeist soundtrack and used their phone to record some noise band testing out their gear before a show, then looped some squelches and manipulated them before dragging their $20 thrift store keyboard down into the basement, documenting the sounds as it bounced down the stairs. They broke some things (and recorded it). They walked past a stranger's window and heard a baby crying (and recorded it). They put it all together and made everything sound so...fucked...up. A noise recording that sounds like a sound collage - a noise recording that defies description and never even suggests what might be coming next. Eighteen minutes of complete (controlled) cacophony awaits. 

SYNTHESIZER IS A DEAD SCENE

MAGICAL MIND

 

Remember when I was stumbling over myself on Thursday, trying to find words to describe and/or provide context to THE WALLFLOWERS? Well, none of that here. Just pure, unadulterated, disorienting noise. One hour and twenty-four minutes of noise. Some damaged beats come in on "Part 2" (around 55 minutes into the torture). They are absolutely terrifying. It's like one of those sleep sound machines, except it's hard wired to make you lose your fukkn marbles. Strap in.

WIATHI

THROBBING GRISTLE

 

A group that should need no introduction. THROBBING GRISTLE changed the game completely, no just just with their sounds but with their approach to creating and presenting those sounds. Don't take my word for it....take theirs.

BEYOND JAZZ FUNK: TG PSYCHIC RALLY IN HEAVEN
23rd December 1980 London

EXHUMED CORPSE // DOUR

 

Dark and filthy sonic murk from two sides of the same damaged coin. I keep wanting EXHUMED CORPSE to go somewhere, to do something.....and then DOUR takes out the garbage. The conscious deliberation required to create a release like this is enviable. 

BLOOD FILTER

COUMADIN

 

(This) reality breeds desperation. Unspeakable stress collides with constant uncertainty, and it feels heavy beyond words (sometimes). It feels like a weight that envelops and suffocates you - limiting hope first. Air second. This is what COUMADIN sounds like. Like a slog. Disorienting. Slow-motion excrutiation. 

COLD EYES

FULL MEAT JACKET

 

There's another (relatively well known) release titled My War but goddamn that shit if that shit doesn't escape me because it doesn't sound nearly as fucked up as this shit. FULL MEAT JACKET come off like a real and desperate internal struggle manifested as improvisational noise punk. If mental anguish had a sound, it would be FULL MEAT JACKET. If emotional frustration was a band, it might be FULL MEAT JACKET. If punk lost all pretense....it might sound like My War in 2004 (say it out loud to get the rhyme). 

MY WAR

The label boss says it better than I can, naturally. 

KASHAIOF

 

Deliberate and cerebral industrial tinged dark electronic mania. Their sound seems to fill unknown voids; existing in darkness and shadows - existing, as in "A Sofa," awkwardly and with no real definition of (or?) purpose. But the duo exists, and 2020's Home is a master class in presence. This is the experimental goth I needed when I was a teenager...better late than never. 

HOME

HEDGEFUND

 

A dozen years after HEDGEFUND initially appeared on these pages comes their post script. I posted their self-titled debut in 2012 and Apreiron was snail mailed to me with the companion OHR // P.A.Y. shortly thereafter. I sat on both of them for the average lifespan of a trash panda before I unleashed the former on you a few years ago but still I waited for this one.....just because. "OHR" is a brutal sonic exercise, painful noise and deliberately manipulated sound while "P.A.Y." is an even rawer version of the band who hurt us with their two previous releases - howling, desperate. You're going to recognize the sounds here....but you'll never hear them the same again after you listen to them like this. This band was relatively short lived and I fear the waves they made were rather small, but damn this shit was good. 

OHR // P.A.Y.

TIME ADDICT

 

Free form improvisational misanthropy, presented as experimental free jazz noise shit.
And some days all I ever want is cacophony. 
TIME ADDICT delivers (again). 

U.S. BLUES

PSYWARFARE // BBVGC

 Not to be confused with the recent P.S.Y.W.A.R. post, this is Dwid's PSYWARFARE sharing destruction duties with Japan's BBVGC. The latter takes the BLOODY MINDED hardcore-as-noise-as-hardcore approach and makes it spooky and theatrical while the former....well, I can't speak on the world of Dwid but I recognize that it's a world. And I respect that he has been doing the shit for three decades (plus). And "Evisceration" is a perfect mind-melt of erratic power electronics, harsh noise and deliberate constructions of desperate sound. If you're looking for something to fukk up your day, then look no further. 

DEMONS MOURN FOR BLOODSHED

KILT

 

I was having a conversation with my mother yesterday, discussing the nuances of stench core versus crasher crust and the minute but distinct differences between the Japanese and Swedish interpretations of DBeat. Most of these fascinating details were unfortunately lost on her (though she does acknowledge the differences between THE LETTERMEN and CHUCK BERRY). At one point, I inserted noise into our conversation - there's harsh noise wall and power electronics and ambient and drone and countless more subgenres, and I brought this up to demonstrate that the more you know about a subject, the more there is to learn about the same subject. Came home that night and Nathan texted me a reminder that CRUDITY totally rips (see: Swedish interpretations of DBeat) and then I listened to 2010's Culos Asados and tried to make sense of my day. 

CULOS ASADOS 

KJELD DOKNER

 

I'd like to tell myself that I have words that meet the moment, but really I have nothing. Still and again I have nothing at all. We are just so fukkn bad - collectively we, like Thee Royal We, we are just so bad. It doesn't mean The Other is good (far from it) but our pomp is just so transparently false. As if The Emperor didn't even bother to pretend getting dressed before he announced that he was wearing clothes. It's a farce. WE are a farce. It's a false narrative and it's complete bullshit and this timeline is terrifying. To anyone reading this who ever thought we were better than any of the people they told us were bad - we aren't any better. We are the same. It's just a different narrative. Can you imagine what could happen if all of the "others" got on the same page? But alas, this is what they want. THIS is what they want. Fuck this. FUCKAMERICANS.

FUCKAMERICANS

MAX NORDILE

 

God/s this is beautiful. You've heard me talk about Max and his compulsions on these pages over the years, and these comments are no different.......it's that this one hits just right as I type these words. Free jazz mixed with boundary-free experimentation and ambient bliss. (Pharoah) Sanders, (Shane) Embury and (Genesis) P'Orridge embodied in sonic freak skin. There's really nothing like Sir Nordile in the current realm. 

THE VIVID HISTORY OF THE CAPITOL EGGS

COLIN LANGENUS

 

One Side: A multi-instrumental freak out captured live in 2007.

Another Side: A collection of improvisations collected by Colin Langenus between 2005 and 2008 and manipulated to create.....this.

SON OF BEETHOVEN // HIGH AS HELL

HIGH AS HELL

BONEMAGIC

 

Been wondering what do do with this and what to say about this for (quite) a (long) time, and even though I'm not sure if today is the right day to talk about BONEMAGIC.....here we are. Classic, brilliant '80s industrial worship of the highest order - CLOCK DVA, NITZER EBB and mid-decade Wax Trax! punctuated with complicated dirges like "Unified Violence" and dark ambient missives like "Welcome To Sinew" or the vaguely SKINNY PUPPY-esque "Tales Of Hate & Separation." There is a lot more BONEMAGIC where this came from - more than a dozen releases under this moniker alone (there are other monikers) - but Meat Concrete is a gloriously dark place to start.

MEAT CONCRETE

KAKERLAK

 

Twenty minutes of brutal and disorienting harsh noise wall punctuated by a few subtle respites. Actually....there are no respites.
This shit is just sonic brutality.
Kinda like an ocean crashing into your face.
I could say so many more things, but....just listen.
Loudly.

THIRST, HUNGRY, SEX & SAFETY

Yes...Play at High Volume.