Audio recordings of sound installations comprise a significant portion of the material most foundational to my learning to appreciate everything I hear (and don’t hear). Classics like Tinguely’s Sculpture at the Tate and Eastley’s career-spanning 2×CD compilation on Paradigm were and are incalculably influential on me and the way I listen, thanks in most part to their simultaneous radicalization and distillation of the relationship between the physical and the auditory. That quality, however, is somewhat predicated on actually knowing what the installation that was recorded looks like, or better yet having seen it in person; there’s an interesting limbo opened when a document is presented without the thing it documented, as I discussed with regard to Wind Tide’s release of audio from their Focused and Found Routines. But in that case we were at least given a bit of description about what the work involved, and any shred of context can go a long way. Here, with Tendresse, the Polish sound artist operating under the pseudonym Galerie Déplacée gives us what is perhaps the most precisely cut half possible—i.e., the effect without any of the cause—in the form of a digital album ripped from a cassette which in turn was tracked with roughly 33 minutes of the sound of the unknown installation. With two degrees of removal (or three?) it’s hard to tell where one plane of perception ends and another begins, so one might as well focus solely on the audio itself, which is pretty incredible. I love the subversion of clarity in using portable analog as a documentation medium, and the automated homemade-industrial mechanisms that somehow drag across and tap string instruments with bows, strike bells, and maintain swelling cells of feedback that never tip over into chaos are a perfect fit for it. The static minimalism of the overlapping operations easily immerses, and the incessant repetition is comforting, in a way, and it’s as if we don’t actually have to see the physical art at all to “know what it is.” But I bet it looks cool as fuck.

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From the mysterious, unbroachable wilderness that is upstate roars the relatively new Cruel Symphonies imprint, which since November 2020 has offered a finely curated but still eclectic catalog of noise music. Breathe Heavy’s Hypothermia, one of two in the label’s most recent mini-batch (alongside the long-awaited—by me, at least—physical edition of VIVIAN’s excellent Abduction Plot) is somewhat relevant to reality at the moment, given that many of us are cursing the incessant, bitter cold daily in recent weeks; but the scathing pair of bifurcated walls, each of which covers two of the four stages of the titular condition, are hardly concerned with the everyday bite that dries hands and runs noses. This is music for the precipice of death, an iced-over end. Fatal freezing is said to be far from the most painful way to die—in the final moments, most of your nerves have shut down, and you apparently just blissfully “fall asleep”—but Breathe Heavy chooses to survey all of the time leading up to that: panic and desperation, subzero chill like so many needles in every pore, the horrible sensation of feeling your very thoughts slow to a stop. It’s not exactly a sudden process, but the first slab in “Stages 1 & 2” certainly kicks in with brutal abruptness, a thick current of chunky distortion crunch that’s made all the more punishing by the few seconds of quivering blank tape that precede its entrance. There isn’t much nuance to the sonic progression between stages, but the artist really had an incredible core blast going here, so I don’t mind hearing it in minute variations. Wait, “don’t mind”? No. I love it. Is it just me, or is it kinda cold in here?

Much like the first release from New Zealand artist Noel Meek’s God in the Music imprint, the owner/operator’s own collaborative tape with Yan Jun (Mirror One, reviewed here back in March of 2021), the self-titled debut from newly minted trio Group of Three is an enthralling, unforgettable piece of instantaneous creative music. Featuring Meek on no-input mixer and various horns, Sean Martin Buss on strings, more horns, and objects, and John O’Connor on percussion, the single untitled track that comprises their first recorded outing both slowly seeps like steam with abstract freely improvised reticence and heavily tramples like a steamroller with the unhinged, muscular volatility of the best of small-ensemble brut-jazz. The three well-tuned musicians are patient and contemplative, always listening and reacting, and yet the music moves between the two aforementioned stylistic poles with speed and fluidity; take the bit about 15–20 minutes in for example, when Meek and Buss are both torturing their brass and O’Connor’s malleted toms are lumbering forth in a magnificent stampede—until they aren’t, and it’s just careful plunks and squealing NIMB and clattering strings… until it isn’t, and a sudden bout of snare abuse leads the rest into earth-scorching chaos. Spectacular stuff, and it only gets better on repeated listens when you can look between the more noticeable moments and find the nuances etched in every second of interaction.

I usually try to provide at least a bit of respite from an onslaught of violent/extreme music reviews with some coverage of less abrasive or disturbing material (plus I’ve already written about another Audible Violence release this month, Augurio Drama’s The Noise Box), but not only are the wells pretty fuckin’ dry on that front, the ones on this front are overflowing with bounty—as long as you don’t mind some chunks of rotten flesh, pulled teeth, and a decidedly above-regulation concentration of blood floating around in your water. With A Life of Gore, Colorado artist Razorwire Handcuffs delivers a series of prime butcher cuts of loud, dirty, diseased harsh noise, not quite fully planting an ankle stump in the trashwater-puddle of gorenoise but not completely leaving it behind either. An introductory sample about a three-month-old child being eaten by rats is always an auspicious beginning, and the rest of “Picked Apart” doesn’t disappoint as an opener, releasing a spurting geyser of crunching, crushing distortion from the fetid mush beneath ruptured stomach lining. Later tracks provide enough variation to make the whole tape a well-paced and engaging listen, but not so much as to wrest the music as a whole from the sluggish throes of the decomp phase: “The Breaking Wheel” surges like the flailing limbs of an electrocuted corpse, “Hara Kiri” claws at eardrums with punishing high frequencies, and “Execution” roils in a muffled, deformed inferno. I’ve featured the digital cover because based on the photos I’ve seen, the physical cassette doesn’t have “Picked Apart,” which is disappointing.

More relentless sonic destruction from the southern hemisphere arrives in the form of this half-hour monstrosity from Ecuador’s Cynthia Velasquez as Kortslutning. Self Obliteration, among other things, is mastered so ridiculously loud that you won’t be able to see straight, and it’s glorious. If one were to recover from the initial impact quickly enough, the doubled-mono style stereo profile might seem a bit tedious despite the mighty force of the stems themselves, but Velasquez makes it work with thick, chewing movements that bridge the gap, spires of scalding feedback that jet into the center, and jarring dropouts that rip the razor-threaded rug out from under your feet over and over again, taking your soles with it. All three tracks start strong, but also steadily get better as they progress; “Anachronism” culminates with those blasting feedback screeches I mentioned, “Derealization” (a nightmare after my own heart) sculpts some structural failures and high-/low-end interplay into a thrashing crescendo and its smoldering aftermath, “Visions” dissolves from piercing chaos to an incendiary wasteland of distortion mudslides, sci-fi pulses, and fleeting ghosts of melodies shredded to near-oblivion. This is another case where the album cover is a J-card but there doesn’t seem to be any physical edition available; I hope that changes soon.

For the most part, I tend to stay away from artists who are extremely prolific. It’s not that I believe it’s impossible that high levels of quality and quantity can coexist—I’m just never convinced. Calling Argentinian project Mente-Atada “prolific” is a bit of undersell; they’ve released nearly 100 albums, EPs, and splits since member Mosca took up the mantle solo in October 2020. Like I said, digging into that much isn’t really my thing, but when a more reticent label like Poland’s Antenna Non Grata highlights some material (in this case in the form of Disembodied) it’s a good way to check in. I don’t know much about LDQ Ysimaro, not even where they’re from, but just based on the music itself, this split pairing of a very infrequent and a very frequent releaser is a great one. Both artists deliver ersatz monoliths of grinding, churning, gnashing harsh noise and other unruly live electronic bedlam that make use of both stasis and dynamism in roughly equal measure. On LDQ’s side, heavy apocalypse-synths crack under the weight of unrelenting distortion drill bits, which shatter the more palatable textures into shards that flit around the ensuing tornado of debris for the remainder of the track. Mente-Atada’s is more traditionally harsh, but it keeps things interesting by assimilating a whole host of techniques and styles—cut-up, stop/start, power electronics, wall—into a single, brutish assault. ANG states their cassettes are “made with love”; I’m not sure I would wager the same about the music. And in this case, that’s a good thing.

“Sounds collected by recording walks with human Bom, Maltese Bbangdol, and Jindo dog Yeonhee. Pigs Saebyuk and Jandee, and countless other beings participated. It’s the first collective album.” Translated from Korean, these are the only words auxiliary to the music itself that give context to BARK, PARK!, the debut release from Jelly Bark, a project ostensibly composed of all of the aforementioned “beings.” Bom is a silent guide of sorts, initiating the recording process for each track but remaining both physically and sonically removed to direct emphasis toward the artist in focus, and thus we end up learning a great deal about all of them. Bbangdol is first, a quiet and determined contributor who effects various subtleties all drawn into a trotting forward momentum, barely audible breath and gentle jingling pulls of the leash and pitter-patter feet on wood and concrete (“Jazz & Dinosaur” is positively gorgeous). Yeonhee is more vocal, scattered, active: loud, breathless panting and the click of toenails on the ground dominate most of the two parts of “Ballad in NATURE,” in which there are great moments of connections with other dogs barking and howling in the distance; and the free, unconfined bounding and curious scrabble of “Without Leash” are wonderful. Pensive soundscapes featuring various birds and the pigs Saebyuk and Jandee follow, and if you weren’t spellbound already, the closing “A Companion Songline” diptych is a stunning exercise in everyday concrète collage that concludes by closing a loose, wide loop. A beautiful and important work of art.