Jackie O-Motherfucker "Fig. 5" (Road Cone, 2000)

Artist: Jackie-O Motherfucker
Album: "Fig. 5"
Release Date: 2000
Label: Road Cone
Genre: Experimental-Rock, Post-Rock, Improvisation, Noise
Mood: Theatrical, Uncompromising, Searching, Confrontational
Reminds Of: Volcano The Bear, Vibracathedral Orchestra, White Rainbow
What People Think: TheBrokenFace, AllMusicGuide
Definitely Worth Buying: Amazon, Emusic

Tracklist
1. Analogue Skillet
2. Native Einstein
3. Your Cells Are In Motion
4. Go Down, Old Hannah
5. Amazing Grace
6. Beautiful September (We Are Going There)
7. Chiapas! I Must Go There!
8. Michigan Avenue Social Club
9. Madame Curie

In America, we have monuments instead of mythology: bright obelisks and classical statuary erected as perpetually new in the place of the perpetually old. This is, after all, the New World; we dedicate these talismans against ruin across the landscape almost as if to keep history itself at bay, to keep time from catching up with us. Underfoot are bones and detritus, though, the debris of the little nameless events that are excluded from American history. It's all a rather shallow grave when you think about it. Jackie-O Motherfucker's unprecedented Fig. 5, the group's first CD release, presents a dim and unsettling archaeology of American music. Released in the wake of the American century, it's the first unapologetically brilliant piece of experimental music I've heard this year. Somehow constructed bereft of any postmodern irony, Fig. 5 transforms a commanding grasp on the celebrated tributaries of American music-- jazz, Appalachian folk, soul, African-American spirituals, West coast surf-rock, Protestant hymns, Louisville post-rock, bluegrass, electronic noise-- into an autochthonous gospel. Jackie-O Motherfucker-- two multi-instrumentalists, Tom Greenwood and Jef Brown and the cadre of eclectic talents with whom they surround themselves-- abandoned the remix loop jazz-fusion of their first two albums (available only as LPs) and literally emerged from the basement and the soil with a masterpiece. The gust-blown digital hum of the first track, "Analogue Skillet," underpins plucked and scraping strings, like a bow on the nervous system itself. It's buzzing neon yielding to something like a screen-door creaking on its rusted hinges behind wind chimes in "Native Einstein," a kind of front porch minimalism. There's a faint chorus of young girls counting down in the recesses, playing Double Dutch in the road. The strings sound like saws; the lone sax whines like an animal. The scene is replaced by the solemn repetition of guitar twang; "Your Cells are in Motion" is the working man's Mogwai: a funereal procession of rising guitar and faint vocals coalescing steadily into shantytown post-rock, tarnished but true. Labradford will spend the entirety of their career trying to create this song and never get it right. The choral "Go Down, Old Hannah," performed here by the Amalgamated Everlasting Union Chorus Local #824, is a prison camp work song dating back to the turn of the century-- a plea for sunset to end the workday. "Amazing Grace," the slave trader John Newton's ubiquitous 1779 hymn to God, is barely recognizable as Appalachian free jazz: steely banjos and twittering horns that sound like bagpipes are equal parts mountain folk and Pharoah Sanders. The lilting "Beautiful September" provides an interlude of catchy No Depression dream-rock. But the album's centerpiece is clearly the tribal 24-minute "Michigan Avenue Social Club," a track that sounds at times like dismembered Gershwin, and at other times like Cul de Sac with horns. Fig 5. fades out on the brief, chirping "Madame Curie," dissolving into the earth from which the whole work arose. For all its disparate strands, Fig. 5 is surprisingly cohesive, constructing some ratcheted new sound with junk and memory rather than laundering old sounds with the irony and veiled contempt of other pastiche exercises. The disc itself is packaged in an oddly fascinating die-cut cardboard folio, complete with snippets of Alan Lomax's celebrated American ethnomusicology. Fig. 5 is slow and plodding like time itself. This work, again, simply has no precedents. Or rather, its precedents lie in the dusty anonymities of American musical history, instead of the proud and touted monuments of our cultural past. Listen to it once if you can. It is our secret national anthem.

(source: PitchforkMedia)

“Apocalyptic dirge, the monotony of life, light the whole world on fire and destroy it…”

Lightning Bolt "Wonderful Rainbow" (Load Records, 2003)

Artist: Lightning Bolt
Album: "Wonderful Rainbow"
Release Date: 24 February 2003
Label: Load Records
Genre: Noise, Noise-Rock, Experimental-Rock
Mood: Uncompromising, Suffocating, Insular, Visceral
Reminds Of: Boredoms, Black Dice, Arab On Radar, Ruins
What People Think: AllMusicGuide, PitchforkMedia, SputnikMusic
Definitely Worth Buying: Amazon, CdUniverse

Tracklist
1. Hello Morning
2. Assassins
3. Dracula Mountain
4. 2 Towers
5. On Fire
6. Crown Of Storms
7. Longstockings
8. Wonderful Rainbow
9. 30000 Monkies
10. Duel In The Deep

“Oh shit.”

Inevitably, that’s what music is all about. Be it a crossfade, a sax bleat, guitar solo, or some wicked algorithmic programming, we listen to music to find those moments when you lose the right words and just lock in on the sound of something, the force of it. Not to reduce theoretical studies to a base oversimplification, but ultimately that’s what you look for – someone, some sound to make you look at the bottom of your drink and just say, “Oh shit.” Lightning Bolt’s music is entirely made up of these moments and sounds – riffs linked with breakdowns, disfigured vocals that resonate like mechanical laughter, splattering, tapped out basslines and breakneck drumming all adding up to one continuous moment, one single jaw-dropping experience.

“Oh shit.”

The genius part about Lightning Bolt, the part that takes them from being a great band to a flat-out amazing one is that they take those revelations from so many different places and twist them all together. 2001’s essential Ride the Skies sounded like a collision between Derek Bailey’s most non-idiomatic improvising and Eddie Van Halen’s pinpoint over-the-top fret board taps. At the same time, it was filtered through a cracked lens of hardcore and metal, lifting distorted bass sounds from Flipper, the teetering aggression of bands like Scratch Acid, and the flat out bombast of groups like Slayer. Adding more to the mix were the obvious influences from Japanoise bands like Ruins and Boredoms. The amazing part comes from taking all these sounds and turning it into something that doesn’t dwell on its references, but rather becomes its own entity – one with an intense mixture of fun and chaos.

Take “Assassins”, the second track from Wonderful Rainbow, for example: a quick screech, and then the sonic equivalent of getting smashed in the chest by a truck. Brian Gibson carves a monolithic bass riff out of his 3,800 watts and smacks it full on against Brian Chippendale’s drumming – a scattering, clattering mess of constant bass drum slams to build the tension, and then a release with enough manic fills for six other bands, all the while chattering through his distorted microphone (conveniently attached to his throat via a jaunty knit mask).

“Dracula Mountain” doesn’t let you collect yourself either, with galloping drums and a naïve sing-song melody that stops on a dime and lurches into a massive swath of off-time, bass drum heavy thumping and perfectly timed snare cracks and high note snatches. And of course, just when you get used to the sheer force of it all, that naïve melody comes back, bringing with it a serpentine little bass riff, some rhythmic tom work, and a plunge into what sounds like a Munsters theme song outtake.

“2 Towers” highlights manic improvisation before quickly developing a harder edge, with Gibson burrowing his riffs straight into your skull while Chippendale shifts the rhythm, alternating his fills with simple, pure heavy handed precision. And this is all while building it to a breakneck climax of insane bass work and hyperkinetic drumming. “On Fire” sounds like an alarm call with piercing bass lines that work their way to a low end throb while the drums pound away happily, showing that as hard as Chippendale plays, he matches it with a light handed precision, pausing only for a moment for Gibson to sound off, then launching back into the fray twice as hard.

Gibson starts tapping out the high notes of “Crown of Storms” only to quickly flip it back, contrasting a thumping low-end bass blast with Chippendale’s measured snare cracks. He works the tapping back in, letting the ascending melody rise as he tries to smack it back down. The pace quickens, the drums’ antics increase, until Gibson and Chippendale detonate everything – blast beats and squalling bass lines fighting for air in the relentless din. “Longstockings” almost sounds spare by comparison, with its simple, clean and melodic bass line and the straight-forward drumming and distorted vocals. It then falls, however, into one of the most intense and abstracts burst of noise on the record. “30,000 Monkeys” is Lightning Bolt firing on all cylinders – at times intricate and complex, and at other times hitting with the force of a jackhammer. “Duel in the Deep” finishes out the record on perhaps its most intense and noisy notes – equal parts aggressive and ominous warped shards of bass.

In the end, though, words fail me. I have such a hard time describing Lightning Bolt because it’s impossible to talk about their intensity, their talent, and the great music they create and do it all equal justice. If you want a truly accurate picture of Lightning Bolt, you just have to see them play. They destroy any notion of a fourth wall when they set up on the floor, feeding off the disheveled and energized masses as much as the crowd soaks up everything they have to offer. It’s truly an amazing thing. Wonderful Rainbow is a brilliant record and has upped the ante tremendously for Lightning Bolt. They managed to take every single aspect that made Ride the Skies such a great record and intensify it severely, all the while showcasing incredibly tight and complex musicianship – knowing when to hold in the reins and when to set them on fire. And yet it all seems so effortless. Every time I listen to them I feel like I just stumbled into the practice space of the greatest band in the world, only one that doesn’t know it or care. They just hammer away making music for the pure unadulterated fun of it, while all I can do is sit here and think, “Oh shit.”

(source: DustedMagazine)

“At its best, though, this album is like having a beautiful girl hit you repeatedly over the head with a baseball bat. Imagine all the best aspects of Fred Frith, Derek Bailey, the Ruins, Slayer, and Ornette Coleman all thrown into a blender together. Then imagine them on speed. This one's a keeper.”

Wolf Eyes "Human Animal" (Sub Pop, 2006)

Artist: Wolf Eyes
Album: "Human Animal"
Release Date: September 26, 2006
Label: Sub Pop
Genre: Noise, Experimental, Industrial
Mood: Paranoid, Bleak, Ominous, Trippy
Reminds Of: Melt Banana, Hair Police, Nurse With Wound
What People Think: PitchforkMedia, AllMusicGuide, DustedMagazine
Definitely Worth Buying: Amazon, CdUniverse

Tracklist
1. A Million Years
2. Lake Of Roaches
3. Rationed Rot
4. Human Animal
5. Rusted Manage
6. Leper War
7. The Driller
8. Noise Not Music

Two years and millions of cases of Coors Light later, Wolf Eyes return to Sub Pop for another go at making a cohesive studio album. The band's new Sub Pop album, Human Animal, marks many casual fans' first exposure to Mike Connelly's contributions. In a move that prompted many to dub the group Hair Eyes or Wolf Police, the Wolf guys acquired Connelly from his Hair Police death after electronics ace Aaron Dilloway moved to Nepal with his girlfriend.Connelly spends the duration of the album ensuring that he is part of a triumvirate, not merely ducking under the spastic heroics of Young and Olson. He lends the slow-crawl, horror movie intensity and sense of suspense he exemplified on Hair Police's excellent knife-'em-up Constantly Terrified. His awareness of space and ability to sketch warped aural underworlds complement Olson and Young's face-melting percussive-corroded sonic attacks. As a result, Human Animal has more of the same creative muscle-flexing as Burned Mind, but is a distinctly different animal – one that does not show its teeth immediately.Whereas Burned Mind would lead you down a darkened path just to hit you in the face with a Louisville Slugger like "Stabbed in the Face," Human Animal chooses to build on the mood and charge at the right time. The disc starts with "A Million Years," which maintains the same stalker-esque pulse of Burned Mind, but the threat seems more real and lingering. It is as if Michael Meyers is in the building, but no one knows where. When Connelly's piercing, tortured scream appears at the end of the corridor and Olson's reed wails to emphasize the confrontation, the mood is set."Rationed Riot," the disc's third tune, finds the destruction unit delving in dense atmospherics, while Nate Young rattles off killer beat poetry about sewage rats and generally horrific degradation. It is another tone-setting menace guiding the band through frightening netherworld swamps. The unstable mood seems to be steadily building to some sort of eerie sonic murder.It is not until the title-track that the band melds their slasher-flick sludge with Burned Mind's sheer brutality. Their subtlety pays off on "Human Animal," and their offensive proves more effective; the "song" is a direct kick to the gut. "Rusted Manage" is a prickly ball-of-hate, complete with lots of hideous screeches and a drum machine pulsation akin to the rapid fire of an M-16. The tune is so devastatingly claustrophobic it feels as if Young is trapped in a studio box with spiders and leeches attacking from all sides. The album ends with a cover of No Fucker's classic "Noise Not Music," a sonic statement from the band. The song melds the Wolf guys' classic B-movie soundscapes with power violence hardcore. Connelly's screams punctuate Olson's manic old man vocals."Noise Not Music" is a prime example of the band's aesthetic of "Fuck art, let's have fun." However, it is also a reminder that, although highly advanced from early pioneers like The New Blockaders and Merzbow, the noise "genre" still has quite a ways to go. Human Animal is arguably one of the best sonic statements in the entirety of the "noise" sub-genre, yet it is still not canonized, classic material. As many repeat listens as this album and many others in the vast Wolf Eyes catalog warrant, the band still has not made an album that transcends its niche market or serves as an undeniable classic from the critic's vantage, like Slayer's Reign in Blood. Human Animal is, however, as close to perfect as a noise album can be, and one gets the feeling that the Wolf dudes are going to keep chipping away until they create their Reign in Blood.

(source:tinymixtapes.com)

“Human Animal comes off as a less directly brutal assault than its predecessor. It sounds a hell of a lot better cranked to ten, though, its contours more explicit, the sounds sharpened to a steely point.” [STYLUS MAGAZINE]

“For Human Animal, Wolf Eyes have stepped back from pure violence, bringing in some of the old cinematic features while retaining pieces of the vicious nature that has served them well.” [NEUMU.NET]

“A near-perfect balance of industrial threat, hardcore power and black comedy. [UNCUT, Oct 2006, p.134]

“This is a punishing record that manages to be both incredibly dense and yet highly listenable.” [DELUSIONS OF ADEQUACY]

At the same time you contort, squirm and surge toward the non-music, your spirit somehow gets the message…

Aube "Cardiac Strain" (Alien8 Recordings, 1997)

Artist: Aube
Album: "Cardiac Strain"
Release Date: February 1st, 1997
Label: Alien8 Recordings
Genre: Avant-Garde, Experimental, Noise, Abstract
Mood: Uncompromising, Harsh, Intense, Volatile
Reminds Of: Government Alpha, Bastard Noise, Merzbow
What People Think: RYM
Definitely Worth Buying: Alien8Recordings

Tracklist
1. Steal Up
2. Infatuation
3. Cardiotonica
4. Angina Cordis
5. Core-Strain
6. Vent

Akifumi Nakajima's Aube project has amassed a lengthy discography, most entries realizing the maximum capacity for audio variation from a minimum of sampled input (in many cases, a single sound source). Influenced by space rock and musique concrète, Nakajima began recording in 1980 but released nothing until a decade later, when he produced music for an art installation given by a group of friends. Since the installation involved water, he decided to use appropriately watery sounds for the music. Nakajima's first Aube release came in 1991, when the Japanese noise label Vanilla released his cassette LP Hydrophobia. Quite a few more water-related recordings followed, and Nakajima soon began branching out by using varied sources such as field recordings, the hum from fluorescent lamps, human voices, brain waves, heartbeats, even pages being ripped from a Bible. He has recorded for Staalplaat, Manifold, Charnel Music, Pure, Iris Light and the Grand Rapids-based upstart Elsie & Jack Records. Nakajima also operates a cassette-only label named G.R.O.S.S. that has released several albums of Aube material. In 1999 the album Evocation was added and a year later Aube closely released, Richochentrance and Blood Brain Barrier, respectively.

While Akifumi Nakajima of Aube not only creates a rather diverse selection of noise works (generally he gravitates more toward ambient than full-blast harsh noise), he also uses some very unique sound sources. This release, as the name implies, is created solely from the human heartbeat, although one wouldn't guess it at first. Distinct heartbeat sounds are heard, but much of the album distorts and twists these sounds beyond recognition. Cardiac Strain is among his noisiest albums. A typical track starts off barely audible until Nakajima either shocks the listener with an ear-shattering burst of rhythmic noise, or until the track eases into things and culminates in a point of pure chaos. Either way, this is a great album, considered by many to be one of his best.

(source: AllMusicGuide)

“If you’re getting a message about the heart being the devil’s organ, or the pit of hell, your brain is ready to endure this album, it’s red flooded sleeve and all.” Carl Wilson, Hour Magazine.

“The six tracks are so creatively processed that it is a shame that those in the electro-acoustic ivory tower will never hear it.” Chris Twomey, Exclaim.

All composed, Mixed, Recorded And Designed By Akifumi Nakajima At Studio MECCA, Kyoto Japan November 1996 – January 1997.

Limited Edition 666.

A guided tour to the human circulatory system…