The Experimental Thread
Oval - "94 Diskont" (1995)
These Germans were pretty much responsible for putting the niche electronic subgenre of glitch on the global music map with this, their third full-length album. I have to admit that, despite enjoying other glitch releases over the years, I've struggled with "94 Diskont" this week & it's been more about the format of this music than the quality that the record contains. You see, all five tracks included are well produced but they sound very much like the subgenre title in that they could well be a computer glitch that's been allowed to play out for an extended period & I simply can't find enough conventional melodic or structural reference points to find actual enjoyment in it.
For fans of Fennesz, Tim Hecker & Alva Noto + Ryuichi Sakamoto.
3/5
The Gerogerigege - Instruments Disorder
Genres: Harsh Noise
Listening to noise albums helps drown out unwanted sounds when doing outside work, so I've kind of forced my subconscious to become interested in critiquing noise music. Just started this iconic one, and it's not the first of their albums I've heard. I heard a couple of their "Senzuri" ones ages ago in prep for this and later forgot.
Current top 10 noise albums (not including noise rock, pop, punk, etc., unless the album falls under both straightforward noise and one of these genres.)
1. Uboa - Impossible Light (100)
2. Full of Hell & Merzbow - Sister Fawn (100)
3. Man Is the Bastard - The Lost MITB Sessions (100)
4. Uboa - The Origin of My Depression (97)
5. Cabinet - Hydrolysated Ordination (96)
6. Full of Hell & Merzbow - Full of Hell & Merzbow (96)
7. The Caretaker - Everywhere at the End of Time: Stage 5 (95)
8. Lingua Ignota - Caligula (95)
9. Uboa - All the Dead Melt Down as Rain (95)
10. Alder Deep - Chapter 2: Kobolds, Goblins, Cretins, Fiends (95)
WHOA. Didn't think I had ten five-stars.
Ground-Zero - Consume Red (1997)
Genres: Drone, Exp. Rock, Noise
On my noise ventures I had been putting off an album I've been needing to get to for a while, Ground-Zero's Consume Red. Now I've heard one of their albums before, Revolutionary Pekinese Opera Ver.1.28, and despite giving it a perfect score, I didn't go back to any of their other albums because it seems that each album goes for a different collective of genres. And I also put this one off during my noise studies because I wasn't sure from the genre-tagging that it would start out with the noise I needed to drown out certain outside work. But just look at the RYM tagging for the secondaries: Turntable Music, Free Improvisation, Noise, Korean Folk Music, Fusion Gugak, Sound Collage, Sanjo, Totalism. All of that in an experimental hour? Sounds like heaven to a Zappa fan like me!
At least the idea did. The first twenty five minutes are dominated by the abuse of the same few jazz notes over and over and over again with only slight instances of noise building up overtime. It got so utterly infuriating. And then finally, almost halfway through the album's single-track hour, it finally brings in a lot more noise and some rock drumming. Now at first they're welcome additions, but them the combination of the three practically refuses to change pace once the three are in place, so once again I'm stuck with a drawn-out work that completely fails to utilize the best of Ground-Zero's proven experimental prowess. You can barely even hear the fourth major component, the shamisen. For twenty minutes this goes on until around the 45-minute mark, where it mostly becomes a noise album.
I was really hoping for something much more insane and much less repetitive, but I didn't get that. This feels like pussy when compared to Ver. 1.28. How did this get nearly a 4.00 score with almost 7,000 on RYM? I certainly don't know, but it failed to be an atmospheric experience and only got to the mania in the last 12 minutes, so I left largely dissatisfied that the genre-tagging caves in on itself via the repetition and annoyance.
58
Merzbow - Metalvelodrome
Genres: Harsh Noise
On my noise ventures I found myself mostly driven by the challenge of finding truly artistic music from the more extreme variants: harsh noise and harsh noise wall. And I've found some that I've liked, but mostly when it plays with other genres like a Uboa album. But this 4-hour Merzbow album is at the top of the RYM harsh noise charts. Was that a good sign, or is this an album that only the ones who would listen to four hours would finish anyway, thus allowing less people who see problems with it to even rate it in the first place? Since I have the capacity to enjoy noise music and am mostly a rocker, I felt I had to say something.
And this is what I have to say: it's definitely the latter. If Merzbow, a man who had been doing noise albums for 15 years up to that point, wanted to make a 4-hour behemoth of ugly sound, then he should've done more to play with the sound. By this point, the vast majority of noise tricks pulled in these four hours can be done by literally anybody if you ask me. I've heard imitators that were much more intriguing. It starts out cool, but the entire first half is just generic noise music at this point. Now a lot of wacky and cool ideas are played in the 45-minute track, Another Crash for High Tide. The weird sounds, the vocal effects, it's all pretty cool. But there's so much packed into it that most of these ideas only get about 20 seconds of album time. And the worst part? THIS SONG STARTS AFTER THE FIRST TWO HOURS ARE OVER. In other words, it's two hours of generic noise before creativity has a say. Why the hell didn't Merzbow flesh all of these ideas out into better songs throughout the whole? That's pretty infuriating, especially since it goes back to generic noise for the rest of it, mostly.
This four hour behemoth needs a serious re-evaluation on RYM by more serious and diversified explorers. This is a pretty standard noise album for most of it with some creativity attached, going into unholy lengths to get 1 job done for three out of the four hours. Merzbow would do much better in the close-by following years, so while this album shouldn't need to be heard, historically speaking, it doesn't deserve to be the highest rated harsh noise album on RYM at all, let alone any website that covers noise music. If you wanna hear REAL Merzbow music, try Electric Salad.
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