When complex musical works are produced with befuddlingly simple and explicitly stated approaches, it makes my job more difficult because then I’m not off the hook for not describing what’s actually going on; I can’t turn to listing novel techniques or speculating about the mysterious host of materials used to avoid doing the heavy lifting when, as in the case of .dots, the release’s humble sources are laid so bare: “a tuneless piano and a random signal generator.” Turning to truly face the actual content of this cotton-candy packaged delight from Matteo Berghenti’s project Konakon, rather than just letting its sharp, saccharine fidgets wash over you, is an intimidating task, because despite Berghenti’s tendency to turn toward more conventional electronic idioms in crafting this music, .dots is pretty damn odd. The piano that’s used is, as the doctor ordered, quite tuneless; any harmonically pure chords that are played are soon transformed into dissonance by a disconcertingly offset extension, while in some tracks like “.06” one can barely discern the presence of a piano at all. The album seems to hover in and around a gossamer partition between tactile and artificial sound synthesis, thought it certainly drifts more toward the latter as it progresses, culminating in the lethargic digital haze of “.07” and spidery chaos of “.08.” Would .dots still be such a fascinating release even if its origins weren’t so pleasingly minimal? Probably. Does it help? Definitely.

“Overtime Liquor will make you sloppy. It will make you unruly and no doubt will take you out of your head. Drinks on us.”

Other Plastics, the duo of NYC artists Hunter Brown and Dominic Coles, embody a continuation of irreverent, DIY-focused actors in the 21st-century improvised music scene like Joe Foster & Bonnie Jones (English), GOD, or Cremaster into the new decade with their debut release Overtime Liquor. Like these artists, Brown and Cole refract spontaneous actions through an arsenal of repurposed electronics, which may include anything from laptops and complex synthesizer routings to messes of frayed cords and broken-open devices. Opener “Dommy Speaks,” in a short and raucous flurry, displays the distinct palette of artificial emission and erroneous electrical chaos with which they will be working over the eight successive tracks; the austere blasts of caustic digital noise and budget sine tones are certainly in a similar vein as the work of other more “academic” electroacoustic improvisers, but there’s always a unique freedom to Overtime Liquor, a barely audible but persistent whisper of anything goes beneath the plastic folds. I find it difficult to accurately express what I so intensely enjoy about this album without sounding insulting (although I’m sure these adventurous musicians will understand). There’s this… not cheapness, to the music, but a sense that the artists don’t discriminate between the sounds they generate, an implicit marriage of indeterminacy and improvisation that can only come from the use of such haphazard materials. It’s like Voice Crack; I often feel like I’m more listening to a humble experiment than a considered interaction. And that’s what makes this album so uniquely infectious.

After nearly four years of silence since 2016’s Northern Ascendancy 7″, DIY black metal duo Axis of Light returns with their first full-length release. The self-titled cassette (physical copies are forthcoming from Pristine Blight) is a cathartic and invigorating dose of raw melodic magic. Much of the low- to mid- end has been either scooped out or disregarded entirely, leaving the razor-sharp remnants to reach for the heavens, crunchy major key tremolo and barely audible blasting creating a luminescent current of exultation. While all of the instrumentals are provided by one half of the duo, T.L., the other, A.B., handles all vocal duties, channeling every ounce of their energy into achingly affecting shrieks that tug and tear at the confines of their low-fidelity capture. The immediately affecting emotion and reverent dedication to the craft present on Axis of Light reminds me of other raw, high-energy triumphs like Graveflowers’ The Hyacinth Garden or even Nattens Madrigal, and I would say only with slight hesitance that it stands shoulder-to-shoulder with both.

Tom Soloveitzik’s Air 2011 is an ode to human insignificance, a love letter to the cosmic confusions that rock us every day, a deconstructive distortion of time and space. The recordings were precipitated after a strange experience Soloveitzik had upon returning home to London, in which he “was thrown back to the memories of moments and sounds from [his] first stay, as if [his] personal timeline had shrunk and time had folded into itself.” Shrinking and folding are just two ways to describe the forcefully structural actions Soloveitzik performs on his sound materials, which largely consist of an arsenal of saxophones and portable recorders. Brief opener “Two Jets Over Tahrir square” works with a Seth Cooke-like polarity of external exhalation and interior electronics, while “B-Park Blues (for Toshiya Tsunoda)” echoes works by the title-honored artist such as Snared 60 Cuts or Ridge of Undulation as a closely recorded noteless saxophone breath mimics claustrophobic urban wind currents atop the spacious sonic environment of an outdoor park. The disparate and opposite are forcibly affixed to each other, creating stubborn paradoxes while our minds attempt to reconcile yawning gaps in the physicality of the recording: the dark, bottomless, uncrossable chasms between our selves and the universe.

I recently read something in one of Bandcamp Daily’s This Week’s Essential Releases columns that really struck me as inaccurate: the claim (in the context of I and I by A Pregnant Light) that “the vast field of one-person black metal bands isn’t exactly known for experimentation.” In my experience, some of the most subversive and unusual material I’ve encountered in this genre has been generated by solo projects, from the solitary woodland blackgaze of Petrychor or innovative folk-music substitution of Kaatayra to the abrasive nocturnal misery of La Torture Des Ténèbres or power-noise mayhem of Gnaw Their Tongues. One-person acts display a unique trend of reverence to the black metal tradition while allowing for diversity and adventurousness, something exemplified by the recent self-titled release from Lepidus Plague’s Kommodus. With a rich tape recording by “Count Hoggeth Palmeri” and contributions from the “Kommodus horde” (which apparently includes Burier, a Noise Not Music favorite), Kommodus is the first full-length studio album from the project, stuffing its ample 63-minute duration full of incendiary riffs desperate howls, and punishing brutality. Things start off innocuously enough with the short “Black Evangelion” introduction, but Plague soon displays the viciousness in store for listeners on the following “Where Iron and Blood Converge,” a lengthy and punishing track whose heavy-hitting rhythms draw from both hardcore and thrash. The group vocals really add an important angle too, evoking the howling winds that swirl around desolate mountaintops or the echoes of agony from distant hells on “Heir to the Line of Wolves.” An excellent release; nothing shockingly revolutionary, but certainly still more than “turn[ing] the treble way up, turn[ing] the bass way down, press[ing] record and sound[ing] demonic.”

A note from Jack: After four straight days of protesting I am exhausted, badly sunburnt, and still aching for the injustices experienced by my Black neighbors and those who stand in solidarity with them. I am resting today for my own health and I feel a need to return to some semblance of my routine, so for now I’ll be back to publishing reviews. Know that my head, heart, and soul are always with my fellow Americans.

---

With a world in nigh-unprecedented turmoil, creative works that deal in immersive escapism are more valuable than ever. Water sounds aren’t everyone’s bag when it comes to phonography, but I’m not sure even those listeners will be bothered by the 26-minute recording that comprises a significant portion of Annina Boogen’s “synthesis report” for her Operation Beton project, which “deals with the relation of energy infrastructure and its surroundings, the alpine landscape.” Boogen used a variety of collection approaches to acquiring information and understanding of this relationship, from the use of hydrophones and standard mics to gathering relevant “image and text material.” The latter are presented in a booklet that is not available on the Bandcamp page, but the LP recording offers up more than enough opportunity for thoughtful consideration as it gently moves from trickling water currents to clattering flagpoles and distant conversations. The progression throughout the A side seems to perfectly encapsulate the purpose of the project as the detailed, mechanical interiority of the dam recordings give way to the openness of the countryside.

I’ve been a fan of Berlin-based improviser Ignaz Schick ever since I first heard Live • 33 • 45 • 78, his superb duo recording with fellow abstract turntable virtuoso Martin Tétreault. Schick is a fascinating contributor because its impossible not to try to visualize the vast array of motorized devices, objects, repurposed instruments, and turntable preparations of which he makes use during his performances, his crowded table setup emitting carefully constructed currents of switch-flips, whirs, and mechanical drones. Noise of the World documents more of an unusual pairing for Schick’s approach: that of Amine Mesnaoui, an African sound artist and traditional music performer who shares Schick’s love of subversive forms and Moroccan traditional music. Both of these predilections are present in ample quantities on the pair’s debut release, which filters Mesnaoui’s Gnawa sensibilities through an “untuned” Fender Rhodes and grand piano while Schick injects a wide range of textural and rhythmic elements, from struck organ pipes and Shruti box to agitated surfaces and tonearm abuse. Though the two musicians’ improvisations wander into various stylistic locales, from the relatively classic improvised approach on “Nat-Nat” (Mesnaoui’s chords remind me a bit of Tilbury) to the meditative polyrhythms and mysticism one associates with African music, they are always incredibly engaging.

Rituali Selvatici is one of two inaugural releases by newborn Dutch label El Mondo Niovo, which will exclusively release recordings of experimental music that are “focused on a specific sound-space, technique, instrument or praxis.” The nearly half-hour, single-track album is (to my knowledge) the first official release by Gandum, the duo of Hague-residing sound artists Darina Žurková and Riccardo Marogna, and continues the techniques and approaches explored in 2019’s Dingen performance. True to the EMN mission statement, Rituali Selvatici is largely based on the unusual timbres of Žurková’s prepared zither, a wondrously versatile sound-making device used here to conjure crystalline drones comprised of sharp metal edges and almost sonorism-esque atonality. These enrapturing textures get the piece off to a strong start, immersing the listener so thoroughly that the gradual entry of supplementary elements like synthesizer patches and electronics goes almost unnoticed; all the parts are so seamlessly integrated that the entire track flows like the hypnotic flow of molten metal being poured into a vat. Even the most drastic alteration that occurs around the halfway point is executed flawlessly, the gossamer ambient unspoolings naturally giving way to a lush garden of delay-affected clarinet and subtle string clatter that slowly becomes more complex. Rituali Selvatici may start off sounding a bit… difficult, but stick with it and witness the careful unfurling of a beautiful, detailed soundscape.

There aren’t many musical releases (good ones, anyway) that can be accurately summed up with a single sentence. Maybe it only takes a few words to communicate a defining feature, a unique approach or lyrical preoccupation or historical context, but inevitably such a succinct description will fall short of truly representing the multitude of things that actually happen within the confines of the release. Sound artist Johnny Beaver’s newest work under the alias WELP., however, doesn’t have this problem; one phrase is enough to convey the entirety of the contents of Emergency in Six Movements, and it is very helpfully provided on the Bandcamp page: “This is a cover of the original US emergency broadcast system tone.” Yes, that is all that this nearly two-hour, six-part odyssey contains: a single, completely homogeneous, stubbornly static tone, and one that has motivated many an American to screw up their face in discomfort and plug their ears to boot. Stuff like this often makes music enthusiasts (purists might be a better word) angry—just look at reactions to some of Sachiko M’s more extreme releases like Sine Wave Solo and Bar さちこ, compared to which this might be seen as even more “difficult”—with phrases like “shouldn’t exist” or “not even music” frequently cropping up in the large volume of, erm, very respectful and thoughtful reviews. But isn’t it so much more fascinating to avoid normative, opinionated assessments and just examine something for what it is? It doesn’t matter if it “shouldn’t exist,” because it does, so what does that mean? In my opinion, Emergency in Six Movements is a piece of music that will most likely tell you more about yourself than the other way around. You’ll question the way you hear and process sound; you’ll find yourself at the mercy of your own mind as it tries to reconcile something completely stagnant, coaxing out overtones and harmonies that couldn’t have been there before (they were); you’ll evaluate your own capacity for patience, maybe even realize that your time isn’t worth nearly as much as you think it is. Check this out and come out the other side with a perfectly uniform hole drilled through your brain. You won’t even feel it.

Or, an alternative opinion, also provided by Beaver: “‘I would rather drink paint than listen to that entire emergency tone album’ – Jonathan Weinmann.”