Mod sounds for new plastic people, or something like that. I'll lay mah burden down right now and confess that the only reason i have any interest in IAS at all is because of the presence of Robyn Iwata (credited here merely as "cup," how cryptic), former guitar goddess of the almighty Cub. But this sounds absolutely nothing like Cub. In fact, Robyn doesn't even play guitar in this band. I'm not sure exactly what the hell she does play, but it's definitely not guitar. The band's forte is gruesome digital synth abuse, theoretically in the name of dance music, but the sound's usually so droning or chopped-up that i can't imagine how you'd dance to it. (Their remake of Berlin's "The Metro," called "Where Do the Words Go?" and sporting vastly improved lyrics, is an exception.) They have an obsession with getting alien, machine-like sounds out of their gadgets, and they are not afraid of digital clipping, which makes some of their sound occasionally hair-raising. "Clocks Grow Old" starts out in waves o' drone, but eventually turns into dance muzak like a slower, updated version of (pick yer 80s synth band) with occasional bursts of grotesque synth-generated white noise. "Infinity Limiter" is mostly an excuse to make the synths sound like vomiting motorcycles and stuff... lots of Casio bleeping and blooping and warbling synths... i dunno, it's not moving me... fortunately their cover of "The Metro" is pretty swell, especially since Robyn (excuse me, "cup") sings. The remaining two songs are more exercises in art-damaged synth abuse. I'm still figuring this one out....

Ice -- CODE: QUARANTINE (ep) [Carcrashh]

Um... if i weren't such a charitable soul and really, really jazzed on Ice's main album UNDER THE SKIN (from which two of the three remixes here were pulled), i might... mind you, MIGHT... think i got ripped off here. Because what we have here, children, are three remixes -- two from the aforementioned album and one of "The Dredger" from the ISOLATIONISM compilation that are merely okay. "Juggernaut Kiss (Deaf, Dumb, Blind)" does remain interesting by attacking the song from a different angle, making a lot of really splintered noises previously hidden suddenly more prominent; whether it outclasses the original track is another question entirely. (It doesn't, in case you were wondering.) "The Dredger (Titanic)" has an interesting middle section dominated by fuzzy bass and drawn-out flanger madness, and it's different from the original, but not necessarily better. Ditto for "Implosion (Flying Machine)," which was never my fave track on UNDER THE SKIN anyway. It's inexpensive price makes it a cool "starter" of sorts, tho... assuming you keep in mind the caveat that the actual album makes this look positively puny by comparison....

Ice -- UNDER THE SKIN [Pathological]

[NOTE: This review is respectfully dedicated to the ass-licking dilholes who passed the CDA. Once again, DEAD ANGEL regrets that it's tragically illegal to set politicians on fire....]

THE SCENE: Some back room buried shit-deep in the bowels of the Senate
THE PLAYERS: A bunch of shit-eating maggots in expensive pin-striped suits
THE STAKES: Your fucking freedom
THE WINNERS: Not a single goddamn soul
THE LOSERS: Everybody in the whole fucking world

FNORD: All names have been changed to protect the GUILTY. (Fuckers.)

[Fade in on maggots writhing in pinstripe suits]

SENATOR DILHOLE: Aaaaah, that was GOOD! The Bill of Rights -- mmm mmm, put a li'l SALT on it and it just HITS THE SPOT!

SENATOR TINYDICK: Yes, and just in time for the election year, too! We'll look so suave SAVING THE CHILDREN FROM THEMSELVES one more time! HAHAHAHA!

SENATOR ASSMUNCH: Ah, an easy thing for us Washington insiders. Ha, carving up the First Amendment, now THERE'S a meal for you. How you do like how we did the business to the internet?

TINYDICK: Oh, that was GOOD! Right up the poop chute!

ASSMUNCH: Yes, we HAVE done a good job... and now... it's time to CELEBRATE. [drags out a briefcase and lays it on the table] Guess, my friends, what I have in here?

DILHOLE: Uhhhhh... dresses?

TINYDICK: Drugs? In massive quantities?

SENATOR DUNGBEETLE: Might it even be -- VODKA?!?!?!

ASSMUNCH: Oh, it's even better that that. [Opens briefcase and retrieves one small item] Feast your eyes upon THIS, my fellow maggots!

[Collective "oooo" as they see the Ice CD]

TINYDICK: Oooo, we'll be quakin' and writhin' on the floor NOW! Play it! Play it! PLAY IT!

[He does so. Soon the Senate chamber resounds with the throbbing, deep-dub hell of fuzzy bass guitars and fucked-up flanging noises buried in mountains of samples, noise, and assorted sonic debris.]

DUNGBEETLE: Oooo, this opener "Juggernaut Kiss," I LIKE this one! What an ass-shaking groove! I want to take this home and beat my wife to it!

TINYDICK: Forget that, I want to hear "Out of Focus" -- that's the slow burner, the one that starts with just one bass riff that stops, starts, stops, starts, and then eventually all the other shit kicks in, like a bad dust hallucination... God, those echoes swimming in and out of the mix... this is the one I always put on when I have to shoot up and tie up my wife and sodomize her, you know, just like a good Republican should! Sometimes I can even get her to scream IN TIME WITH THE BEAT!

ASSMUNCH: Hell no, we're going to settle in and get down with ".357 Magnum is a Monster," you whining little shit. The thunder of those drums at the beginning, the bass that sounds like it was excavated from the center of the earth, the shuddering wall of filth -- how can you go wrong with this one? It's named after a GUN, for God's sake! Surely the NRA would approve!

DILHOLE: Funny, don't you think, that it was written by men who live in a country where you can't even own guns... can you own a gun in England?

TINYDICK: Shut the fuck up, you moron. [Lunges for the CD player and fast- forwards to "Skyscraper"] Hell, here's another ass-shaker... imagine that stripper down at The Gentleman's Club, you know, the one with the really HUGE tits, the redhead that Senator ASSMUNCH is always sucking up to hoping she'll blow him even though he hasn't got a hope in hell... hah, imagine her doing the bump and grind to THIS! Makes the mind reel....

ASSMUNCH: Don't be dissin' my stripper, shithead. We're gonna hear "The Flood" now just for that munched-out guitar and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. Love that shouting shit, too. Reminds me of the glory days when I still had the lung capacity to shout through a 36-hour filibuster....

TINYDICK: Oh yeah? Well, maybe I'll just kick your scrawny old ass!

ASSMUNCH [laughing]: I'd like to see you try with that gimpy arm, old man!

DILHOLE: Well, at least HE doesn't fly the flannel in the presidential election while living in a million-dollar home in a bogus attempt to get down with the blue-collar vote....

ASSMUNCH: You got a PROBLEM with that? At least I'm not having to fire campaign staffers left and right every day! Or spouting off about building goddamn chain link fences around all of Texas! Yi! Use your goddamn HEAD!

DILHOLE: You know, if it weren't for the lumbering bass vibes in this song "Stick Insect" lulling me into a hypnotized state of non-aggression, I'd have to beat the living shit out of you. Fuckhead.

[much scuffling as the senators beat themselves about the head and shoulders with their spiffy shoes that cost more than you make in a month even as they try to raise your taxes]

ASSMUNCH: [sounding wounded] Does that mean you didn't groove to "The Flood?"

DILHOLE: It was all right. This is better. But now that it's over I'm going to whip your ass, nancy-boy. [starts rolling up his sleeves, but hands the gold cufflinks to his fawning page]

DILHOLE: [to page] Don't lose those, boy. And be READY, 'cause you know fighting makes me HORNY... and dammit, don't forget the K-Y this time, they could hear you all over Pennsylvania Avenue last time.

PAGE: Yes sir.

ASSMUNCH: Shut the fuck up and fight, sissy! Your ass is MINE!

TINYDICK: Hey, I want his ass too!

DUNGBEETLE: Me too! ME TOO!

[The Senate chamber resonates with the sounds of breaking bones and ugly shtupping noises as various members of the Senate take turns beating up on ASSMUNCH and poking him in the ass while "The Swimmer" clonks and burbles in the background....]

It took them long enough, but the bad-ass bassfuckers known as Ice have RETURNED. And this... this, mon, is one nightmare of a disc. Slow and hollowed out, buried in ten tons of subhuman dub bass, it sounds like a bad angel dust nightmare in the cellar of a dub factory. For those not already enslaved by the chilled-boot thuggery of Ice, the band is essentially Justin Broadrick (Godflesh, Final, Solaris B.C., Techno-Animal, blah blah blah) and Kevin Martin (God, Bug, Techno-Animal, etc.), and a couple of other freaks (mainly bassist Dave Cochrane and drummer Lou Ciccotelli). This time they're assisted by a fair-sized cast of guest miscreants: DJ Vadim scratches on "The Snakepit" and "When Two Worlds Collide," Blixa Bargeld (Einsteurzende Neubaten, natch) contributes "vocalisms" to "X-1," "The Snakepit," "A New Breed of Rat," and "When Two Worlds Collide," and various others (Scott Harding, Toastie Taylor, Priest, etc.) make contributions here and there as well. The seven tracks here all basically hew to the same general formula: lay down monstrous speaker-quaking bass, add fucked beats, sprinkle with warped noises and samples, baste with hallucenogenic and paranoid vox, then shake 'n bake smothered in piles of reverb. The whole disc wobbles and weebles but it don't fall down, brutah. There's a brief respite from all the brutality on "Trapped in Three Dimensions," which is almost technoish (El-P provides the rap, whoever the hell he is) for the first couple of minutes until it all slows down to a crawl and gets eaten whole by the subterranean bass hell. Guitars like distorted saxes wail and drone through the sludge but no light escapes. "A New Breed of Rat" has a rumbling bassline that more or less leaves off where the previous album's "The Swimmer" ended, but the rest of it is just sheer buzzbomb guitar weirdness and slo-mo dub swirl, kind of like Scorn in hell at half-speed. As with the previous album, it all just blurs into one big avalanche of filth after a while. You need this album. You need it, in fact, more than food or cigarettes or sex or life itself. Hunt it down and see if i'm not right.

Given its history, I'm surprised that there aren't more metal bands from Ichabod's home town of Salem, MA. Then again, maybe not. This disc features an uncharacteristically clean production by Steve. "Mr. Brutal" Austin. The songs are tight with a lot of nice chugging "ass-stomp" kind of riffs. When I get a disc I can generally place it within some sort of context within a couple of minutes. LIVING... threw me for a bit. The riffs are metal, but the overall vibe of the disc is much deeper than your average metal band. You can hear a bit of BEG TO DIFFER / CLEANSING-era Prong in the arrangements. I also hear a touch of Exhorder (a fairly obscure New Orleans band from whom Pantera basically lifted their entire latter-day sound.) The vocals bring to mind Acid Bath's Riggs and Life of Agony's Keith Caputo. I think if this disc had hit in 1996 or 1997, they would have been huge. I'm not sure where they fit within the nu/post-metal climiate, but I am looking forward to checking out their new disc, due sometime late this or early next year. [n/a]

Well, this is kind of interesting... a sick mating of grindcore and pure hopeless doom, like early Black Sabbath (before they got lost in the hills o' coke) with grindcore's fizzy high end and old-school doom riffing. Singer King MacKay often sounds like a Dixie-fried answer to early Ozzy and the rest of the band is pure blind old-school doom. Seismic basslines pound away behind endless, grinding riffs like Warning doing battle with Godflesh over a constant mid-seventies metal vibe. As far as these guys are concerned, piddly stuff like punk, new wave, nu-metal, skater rock, and the like never happened, which is maybe not such a bad attitude. (Okay, they do achieve a punk velocity of sorts on "Ceramic Bulldog," but it just sounds like Black Sabbath on 78, so I'm not sure that means anything.) Subtle off-kilter rhythms, abrupt mood swings and tempo shifts, constant waves of sinister riffing... this sounds like a band that rehearses a lot, always a positive development. They make me think of Warning a lot, only these guys are nowhere near as slow and distinctly American (they're from Boston, if you're keeping track of these things). The eight songs on this disc were recorded by Steve Austin of Today is the Day, so you know it sounds loud and heavy and the drum sounds like a real fucking drum instead of like some dazed art collector hitting a toilet bowl with rocks (Bob Rock and Lars Ulrich, are you listening?). When you go back to the music store to return your shitty-sounding copy of ST. ANGER, you should get this instead. You'll be making a wiser investment.

Aside from some quibbles with the mix and the drum sound (issues endemic to a lot of self-produced stuff coming down the pike these days), this is a pretty happening, propulsive slice of Hawkwind and Chrome-influenced space rock. They have the symphonic mid-tempo pop-drone down perfect on tracks like "Throw," "Interlude I," "Voice," and "Interlude II," and everywhere else their cryptic sheets of electronica-influenced drone, more Krautrock than anything, has plenty of swank moments to recommend. The album would benefit greatly from better production, but there's nothing wrong with the songs, which combine the space-rock groove of Hawkwind with lessons in uberfuzz, efx abuse, and pure density of sound from Chrome, My Bloody Valentine, and others of more recent and techno-friendly vintage. Even while sabatoged by an overcompressed mix, they offer much potential for interest....

Icon of Throat -- STATIC [Tracheotomy 13]

The opening death-dirge makes it clear: Icon of Throat, for all intents and purposes, is secretly the evil twin of Vertonen. Looped segments of electro- snippets anchor shifting keyboard lines on "rust slave," like a corrupted (and static) repositioning of dance music minus the movement; "angelic," by contrast, is a wailing, almost-ambient drone punctuated by occasional piano (?) notes and weighted down by a subhuman, crawling beat, like an ambient cross between Eno and early Swans. The Icon returns to static loops on "wounded," where the unchanging beat clatters over droning synths. Soothing yet disturbing. The wind noises that open "tunnel" are soon overlaid with droning washes of devolved synth, which are then pummelled into submission by a crackling electrobeat, rendering the track both hypnotic and highly relentless. The final offering, "electrode," begins with a set of loops (one of which sounds like a needle tracking a very slow lockgroove) that grow in volume so slowly that the change is difficult to discern unless you're paying attention. Gradually other elements are added -- the sound of running water, odd instruments -- as it builds and builds, until abruptly falling away to the sound of one faraway violin before returning even stronger than before. Powerful, unsettling stuff -- like mantras for twilight sleep. A must for ambient/loop devotees.

Illusion of Safety -- FROM NOTHING TO LESS (Complacency)

One never knows exactly what to expect from the noise collective known as Illusion of Safety. Having released numerous documents of their work over the last decade and appearing on every other industrial compilation, IoS have touched upon and experimented with most manifestations of post- industrial music: techno, ambient, creative sampling, "isolationism", media manipulation, avant-garde improv, etc. In a sense, IoS is whatever the members of IoS want to do, with no regard or apologies for what has occurred before. "From Nothing To Less" compiles a tour Dan Burke and Thymme Jones made of the Eastern coast of America in May of 1993. Having heard many of their prior releases, this presents IoS at their most concrete. By this I mean no synthesizers, samplers or guitars, and a focus on material instruments, bowed metal, wine glasses, contact mics, lo-fi electronics. In this respect, FROM NOTHING TO LESS is similar to my favorite IoS release CANCER: both build very tactile sound constructions in graceful and intelligent ways. The six minutes of near-complete silence of one piece (they are all untitled) might convince some that Jim O'Rourke, who has been on numerous IoS records in the past, was sitting in on this number, but I'm pretty sure that is not the case. I've been listening to Bernard Gunter's two records, which also employ ultra-quiet subtle sounds, and I've been searching for music of a similar nature. Another piece starts with what I guess is the prepared auto harp mentioned, sounding very much like a piano playing very punctured notes sostenuto (I just learned what this word means, and I'm dying to use it...). Soon high pitch squeaks, bowed metal?, creep in. The auto harp abruptly stops to be replaced by the patter of footsteps. The crashing of metal objects slowly builds from silence to a jolting climax. There is a droney, hypnotic piece, that uses quiet radio searches over a low-pitched drone and a repeating glissandi of metal on strings, that slowly fades into a blurry pulsing rhythm and a recording of more footsteps and crowd noises. All in all, this is an outstanding, attention-to-details record, and I enjoyed the quiet abstraction throughout. [jr]

Now this is mind-bending stuff. Zzaj Rotcod beats away at his keyboards while reading indecipherable poetry with great gusto as Peter Tomshany (guitars, Moog) and Harlan Mark Vale (synths, drums) make floating voodoo lounge music behind and around him, exotica-style. This is almost as out-there as some of Sun Ra's weirder stuff, and just about as mysterious. It's obvious that they're really into it and having a good time, too. There are six long tracks here of music that sounds mainly like what you'd expect the courtyard musicians at the Palace of Ra on Saturn to be playing -- space music drifting and weaving in all directions like running water. Good-time music of the stars, perfect for that space-age bachelor pad where the good boys 'n girls of the Interstellar Youth Overdrive go to get their groove thang on. Leave this out where the robot housecleaners can find it and you'll find it unexpectedly on the stereo again.

The latest album from Finland's death/black metal band voted in Boot Camp as Most Likely to Stab Themselves While Drunk (seriously, every other picture in the DECADE OF DECADENCE booklet features them drinking, playing with extremely large knives, playing with knives while drunk, etc. -- remind me never, ever to disagree with these guys about anything when they're liquored up). I personally don't understand how anybody who supposedly drinks as much as they do can play with such maniacal precision regardless of the speed, but hey, they're hardy Finns... these are people who toddle out barefoot to get the paper when it's twenty degrees below zero. Maybe all that booze is necessary just to keep them from freezing up -- a little bit of the devil's antifreeze and a good, strong knife to chip off any ice that may form, and you're all prepared....

So anyway, they have a new album out, and it's pretty fucking brilliant, although tragically Osmose's US distribution has fallen through (again) so for the time being if you want it, you'll have to pay import prices for it. But it's worth it, definitely. There's a wide variety of sounds and approaches on this disc, and they're all heavy. Some songs are just heavier than others. There's also been a lineup change, in the guitar department i think (supposedly a big improvement, but don't they always say that? "Oh, this dude is so much better than the guy we just kicked out, blah blah blah," right up until he gets kicked out and they say the same thing about his replacement...), but their core sound isn't all that far removed from the first album. Their drummer is still more like a lightning-fast drill press than an actual human being, Mikaakim is still one of the best extreme metal singers of all time, and they remain one of the few black metal bands who know how to use creepy keyboards effectively without overdoing it. The fact that a couple of the songs ("Never Forget" and "The Madness Behind") are actually sort of, uh, catchy doesn't hurt either. (Of course, their nasty lyrics pretty much obliterate any hope they ever might have had at getting radio airplay, but somehow i don't think that worries them much.)

One of the most interesting things about the album, though, is an accident of fate -- you couldn't ask for better timing for this album, which was recorded before 9/11 but released afterwards. The very things currently taking up all the media's time and attention are often subjects covered on this album, and "Never Forgive" strikes awfully close to the heart of the US reaction to the terrorist attacks (probably not quite what they intended, but there you go). When you realize that these songs were recorded before the attacks, it makes them look absolutely prophetic. So they get bonus points for being visionaries. Extra bonus points too for prominently displaying cutlery sufficient to dismember oxes and lots of lurid, near-pornographic pix of the girl with the bullet belt featured on the album cover. Supposedly she's a famous Finnish porn star -- obviously i need to start looking into the process of procuring Finnish smut....

This is an interesting take on noise and the deviant use of efx, all right. Recording live on KDVS in Davis, CA in September of 2000, the four members of this unit lay down spaced-out washes of noise and rumble as a heavily-reverbed piano (or is it?) makes nearly random spikes and runs while a lot of shouting goes on in the background. Contrary to what the band name implies, this is not strictly harsh noise at all, but more atmospheric and unnerving, like listening to a band rehearsal down the hallway with the front door open and traffic noise spilling in... all while peaking on really powerful windowpane acid. There are some bursts of harsh sound from time to time, but mainly it's a flowing drone punctuated by odd sounds and occasional bursts of rhythmic noise. Far more interesting, in my opinion, than the average power-electronics outing. By the time sound samples start turning up (looped and processed into near-unintelligibility) it starts bringing to mind the style of Telepherique and Contagious Orgasm. They have a really nice sense of flow and dynamics, something often missing in the noise field, where too many people just turn it up and let it sit on full-tilt. I don't know how long they've been plunking away at this, but they bear watching (of course, with my luck they've probably already broken up or soemthing). Oh, bonus points for the Asian goth babe fixation in the graphics....

Incapacitants -- NEW MOVEMENTS IN CMPD [Alchemy]

I've never read or given a poor review of the Incapacitants. And I'm not about to start. For good reason: Mikawa and pal, for all their flaws, have never once strayed from the Path. They defined it, they improved it, they perfected it. You too can be perfect if first you take the necessary coffee break to define what perfection is.

At 70+ minutes, CMPD represents just another chapter in the continuing history of noise perfection. Am I exaggerating? Hardly. The Undynamic Duo have been filling hungry earholes like mine to capacity -- and beyond -- since before Noise was born. Their sound consistently achieves a certain unparalleled dual quality: on the one hand, it washes over at a perfect, frozen, standstill; on the other, it rushes about at an infinitely, impossibly, fast rate. Continuous dynamic fluctuation happens way beneath the surface; or it doesn't happen at all.

No one else has ever come close to achieving the same effect. And if so, with nowhere near the same degree of consistency. Noise is all about consistency. Ironically, as part of arguably Incapacitants' best work ever, the first track fails to produce the above mentioned totalizing effect. The title itself speaks to us all: "20 Years of Corporate." Yeah, fucken tell me about it. Unusually fragmented and stripped down, "20 Years" throws both high-end scathe and low-end rumble into the background, and foregrounds the concrete sources: voice, shithawk screeching, single unprocessed feedback waves, unidentifiable crumbling brick structures, and other crackling intrusions. Harsh is in your face; not an impermeable wall, but a constant, obnoxious reminder. I suspect Mikawa's been taking pointers from Borbetomagus.

"High Yield Cult" sounds fucking amazing on a high-quality system. Elsewhere, it'll sound pretty minimal. Like other recent Incapacitants, this one equalizes the high/low-end relationship and attempts to simulate the sound of speakers getting shredded by overblown, maxed-out, shriekfest. It's a sound all noiseheads are all-too-familiar with. Crackling overamped blisterscorch makes a concerted effort at shredding its way through overindulged layers of cannibalistic low-end compression. Now Mikawa's been taking lessons from the American noise contingent: total deep shelter holocaust, confused railing infidels, and a surplus of black 'n decker drillmongers. Voices are again unusually clear and whiny, matching simple undriven feedback tone-for-tone; and probably constitute the low-point of the track.

Which leaves us with the final supplication: an unbelievably blissful 30-minuter that poses the question "PT Team, what's that?" First, the usual highly dramatic introduction: whining voices crown the surface and set the bleechbath tone before the beast awakens, burbles to life and roars into a furious rage. (Can you blame it?) Ultra high-end, brutally beatific delirium unloads layer upon layer upon layer of what amounts to some of the most amazing blowout ever recorded. Who has Mikawa been taking his cues from this time? Odd as it may sound, "PT Team" is probably the closest they've ever come to paralleling CCCC. Kosakai seems to be getting some room to manoeuvre for once, throwing in shimmering, multilayerd midrange whitewash while Mikawa provides an intensely brutal high-end perimeter. The results are astounding. The sound is inescapable; it is truly overwhelming, massive -- and of course exceedingly 'harsh.' Can one ask for anything more?

Sure: more of the same. Please. [jk]

Infant Mortality Rate -- PUER ETERNIS [May Day Records]

All right -- he gets bonus points right off the bat for all the nifty angel pix on the cover and scattered throughout the booklet. He also gets bonus points for his demented sensibilities: the disc opens with "Twee 1.25," comprised of frantically skipping CD sounds mixed in with an extremely devolved and fractured recording of some woman singing the "Star Spangled Banner," probably taped off the late-night TV signoff. THIS is what the Null/Disc offering reviewed later this issue should have sounded like. "Daddy," with its heavily repeated samples of "bad dreams" and "i want very much to stop dreaming" running atop a crazed pile of crowd noises and other bizarreness, comes off like a disturbed cross between early Pain Teens and Butthole Surfers. Some of the samples appear to have no connection whatsoever to the main thrust of the piece, which only makes it even more surreal. Then there's "Norweigian Wood," not even remotely connected to the Beatles song of the same time -- no, it's a demented phone conversation between what sound like two hillbillies from the set of DELIVERANCE that abruptly segues into peculiar rhythms and a woman asking "Do you mind if I take my sweater off?" Now -- now, i'm just guessing here, but i have a feeling this jolly fellow had a problem with his attention span when he was a young lad....

"The More You Struggle, The Tighter It Gets" is a burbling drone-o-thon with more bizarre samples (this time, it's someone reciting his multiplication tables, among other things), while "MIght As Well Wish For It" is a slowly approaching wall of white noise that suddenly transforms into some guy moaning over a crippled breakbeat. On "Dogmas of the Quiet Past," wailing klaxons, rumbling noises and other weirdness slosh around while various people chatter and wail. About this time it becomes obvious that, as with early Butthole Surfers material, this might be bullshit, but it's good bullshit. (Bad bullshit would be, say, movies starring Steven Seagal; good bullshit would be Jackie Chan movies. The same ratio applies to music, too. Or anti-music, as this may be. One never knows. You'd have to dig up Freud and ask him. Just don't do it while holding a banana. Am i making sense? No? Good. Excellent, even. Being obfuscatory is a dangerous business, dammit, but someone has to do it and it might as well be moi.) The looped skipping-CD noises show up again on "My Rat's Food," but once again they're employed to much better effect here than on the Null/Disc CD. The skipping sets up a hypnotic rhythm over which he overlays lots of other weird loops, drones, and puzzling bulldada. Swank, mon, swank. "Twee 0.40" and "That's Not My Handwriting" are also heavily reminiscent of early Pain Teens, as they're built around endless loops of nonsensical observations with lots of damaged noises happening in the background (think "Shotguns" or "Secret is Sickness"), which i suspect is not entirely coincidental, since IMR is from Houston and has connections to Austin Caustic, one of the original tape manipulators associated with Pain Teens. More devolved tape frippery shows up on "Odo," a deliberately garbled conversation (apparently on the subject of law, although volcanos are also mentioned, so maybe not) that's been subjected to a fair amount of tape mushiness; a relentless skip-rhythm runs through the last part to an ominous monologue that's eventually overtaken by the skipping sounds.

While IMR isn't exactly breaking new ground here by any means, his means of manipulating stacks of tapes is generally more interesting, and certainly more humorous, than the work of most of the splice 'n dice contingent. Plus he does have the exquisite good taste to shovel on lots of angels in the artwork. I say it's worth investigating....

Indian Rope Burn: SEX PARTY (GGE Records)

Here we have a four-piece band from Ohio mining the electro-industrial minefield with fairly impressive results. They strike a promising balance between pop and aggression while actually showing signs of a sense of humor (!), particularly on "Sex Party." You can dance to it without being totally crushed or repulsed by unecessary wimpiness, in other words. They manage to get funky without being utterly ridiculous, and the singer Clay Animation (gee, do you think that's his real name?) snarls with the best of them. Ah, a most entertaining time indeed....

"Ecstasy" comes across like Ministry crossed with Helmet and locked in a sick funk groove, possessed to dance while Rome burns; we are talking one catchy sumbitch, ok? "Red Light" immediately follows in a weird fashion, with an almost cabaret-style feel, while the singer growls about all kinds of semi-perverted red-light district stuff (he even mentions foot-fondling! YES!). He manages to sound humorous and totally crazed at the same time, no small feat (in fact, he sounds like this all over the album). "Techno- Boredom" incorporates a lot of interesting samples about TV and vapid technology, and "thrownonthealter" opens with a blackly funny and "borrowed" testimonial from a disturbed youth about religion that's blackly funny before seguing into a more standard electro-body rock pulse that includes cool female vocals in the background (sampled? who knows?). In "Crying Muscle," the aggressive stuff gets blunted a bit by mellow synth lines and the occasional piano, but it's still not Barry Manilow by any means. Apparently "Decide for Yourself" is the "anthem"-type song, with lyrics like "don't tell me what you want me to be/ when you can't decide for yourself," and it's a pretty happening one; intense drumming and a solid, marching beat give it a just the right sense of menace and urgency.

One of the best things about Indian Rope Burn is that they not only have great songwriting skills and the technical chops to make things happen, they manage to assemble it all into a package that's uniquely their own. They have an instantly recognizable style that sets them apart, hard to do in their chosen field. Will there be more to come in the future? Only if we're lucky....

Inferno -- PSYCHIC DISTANCE [demo]

Well, this is SORT OF a demo... it's actually available on Massacre Records in the UK, but not over here, so it falls into that "gray area".... Nevertheless, it's pretty swell, assuming you have any liking for the "progressive metal" discipline. Nice to hear something from Florida for once that doesn't sound like it was recorded in a sewer....

Main influences happening here are the likes of Queensryche, Pink Floyd, Celtic Frost (operatic stage), Rush, mid-period Metallica, Slayer, and about four million other things. In other words, they shift gears a lot, OK? Besides, I HAVE to like a group with a singer who sounds like a bizarre cross between Geoff Tate and Tom Warrior (of Celtic Frost).... The sound is crystal-clear and the playing uniformly excellent, which is always a plus (and pretty much a prerequisite for this style of music), although the guitarists shine the most, particularly on tracks like "Sancrosanct Delusions" and "Malice Domestic." On former, the playing shifts from sustained guitar lines to manic riffing and back again, most cool. The strings on "Cloaks," one of the best tracks, are a nice touch too. The four-part "Malice Domestic" flows nicely, no small feat given the amazing number of changes taking place in the tempo and arrangement. The closing track "Psychic Distance (part 2)" has a laid-back, almost jazzy feel to it most of the time, a little bit unconventional for this genre, which I especially like.

In fact, the only real problem I have with any of this is the same thing that I notice in lots of progressive bands -- the lyrics read like WAR AND PEACE and are a bit longwinded for my taste. Now, I'm just as guilty of this in my own band from time to time, so I'm hardly one to talk, but in many places the flow of the lyrics would have benefited from being trimmed back a bit. But this is a mild quibble; the rest of the tape is great, one of the few progressive metal albums I actually like. I'm definitely interested in hearing what comes next....

Inferno -- ARCHITECT [DEMO]

More progressive metal from these Florida natives, this time in the form of a five-song quasi-demo (i say "quasi" because it's actually available as a regular EP overseas, but since the band has no U.S. deal, they have made this available as a "preview" of the album they're shopping around for a stateside deal). One of the songs is actually a 34-second interlude that may be expanded on the finished album), but the other four are fully realized and quite good. The sound is excellent and the band displays considerable expertise, coming across kind of like Rush and Queensryche after listening to lots of highly technical speed-metal. Nods to King Crimson pop up on "Staring Into Chaos," and classical guitar stylings cut through "Drawing Lines" even though it's the hardest-rocking thing here. There's a lot of texture in the songs, a lot of submerged activity happening beneath the main guitars, which is nice; details are everything. "The Second Hand" is nominally the best one, with more King-Crimson styled guitar lines and a surging bassline gives the song a weird tidal motion.... It's also good to see that vocalist/lyricist Jay Peele has trimmed the lyrics back to something more manageable (the lyrics on the first demo tended to read like WAR AND PEACE and made for some severely awkward phrasing in places). Most likely of interest to fans of harder-edged progressive bands such as Queensryche, Rush, etc.; King Crimson fans might even like this....

Infinite Ego is actually one guy with some studio gadgets and a guitar who really likes to shred. Think Hendrix, Praxis, Vernon Reid, Satriani, all those technically impossible 90s albums by guys with really long hair and funny clothes playing impossibly fast runs and mutant scales on pointy guitars and all becomes clear. The main difference here between IE and the aforementioned shredmasters is a) he favors technoish background music over which to ply his atomic shred and b) his songs are relatively short, which is good -- blazing shred gets real tiresome after a while, and is best appreciated in short bursts. Some tracks, like "The Foolhardy Schemes of Vintage Meat, Inc.," are actually closer to ambient techno with tricky guitar. He gets a really swell guitar tone, and the songs are not totally overrun with shred fury to the exclusion of all else, so he at least has that much more sense than, say, the doofuses you always see pimping shred albums in the back of GUITAR WORLD. (My favorite was always the guy with the double-necked axe that twirled on a belt so he could play it like a wheel -- nifty, sure, fun to watch, i'll bet, but the stuff actually on the album... um... well.... let's just say Solmania the guy was not. And Solmania had the double-necked axe thing going first.) Titles like "Lawn of Juice" and "Terrapin Trousers" lead me to believe he has a sense of humor, which is more than can be said for most of the shredmasters (can we say Yngwie the Eternally Uptight?). This is a demo, yes, but it's a really well-done demo, and if you favor the ubershred genre, you should definitely investigate this.

Every once in a while I get a disc in my review pile that stumps me. Generally these discs are by bands who are really good at what they do, but for whatever reason, just don'tt grab me. It could be something by an old-school thrash band or it could be a psychedelic pop band like the Insomniacs.

The Insomniacs play music that brings to mind terms like "sun-drenched"; a lot of the songs have that hazy-fazy Byrds thing going on. The two best songs on the disc, "Somewhere" and "Leave," have Sloan-like vocal harmonies riding on riffs that bring to mind the Screaming Trees at their poppiest. And that's what throws me, the "pop."

Pop music does absolutely nothing for me, no matter how well it is played. That being said, given the choice I'd MUCH rather hear The Insomniacs on the radio than Maroon 5. [N/A]

The "band" with the intimidating name here (the name is Italian for "noise intoners," a name for machines built by the Futurists in the early 1900s; the machines were designed to recreate the sounds of the industrial age) is the musical vehicle for Kevin Goldsmith, nominally a cellist (i think), but obviously many other things as well, judging by this disc. My perspective on Kevin is somewhat interesting: I have known him for years as the guru behind Unit Circle, but was totally unaware of his own musical endeavors until he appeared as a guest on a Mason Jones track from the first album released on my own record label. Goldsmith's contribution to the track in question (it's called "a slow, wide vibration" and it's on the album MIDNIGHT IN THE TWILIGHT FACTORY; feel free to go buy a copy if you're so inclined and hear the droning soundscapes yourself) was sufficiently of interest that i became curious to hear more of what he's all about... and lo, here he is. Witness how the black hand of fate weaves its forbidding death-snare....

I don't know much about Italian "noise intoners," but from the droning, reverbed sound of "GTR" alone i can see why Mason was keen to work with Goldsmith -- this is trippy, disorienting stuff without the hippie trappings that sometimes makes psychedelic music mildly annoying. Intonarumori supposedly "combines elements of post-classical, experimental, ambient, and industrial music," and i'd largely agree with that (especially the classical and ambient elements), although i'm not too sure about the industrial part. "GTR" opens with clear, bell-like guitar (???) tones and gradually branches out into shimmering drones punctuated by odd background sounds, ambient tones most likely generated by cello, and other stuff too opaque to classify. Layers of sound come and go, and eventually the drones and chimes subside to make way for an actual cello movement that fades into nothingness. Similar effects appear in "CEL," which could be seen as another movement in a larger piece. "E2E," the third solo Goldsmith effort, inverts some of those elements and adds distant percussion of sorts, spreading the sounds out in the mix to impart a vastness of space; the effect is something akin to listening to experimental musicians rehearsing in a cave beneath a railway station.

The remaining four pieces on the disc -- "Black Milk," "Where I," "Go Blink," and "Discus" -- are all part of a larger piece ("Paul Celan Suite"), and employ additional musicians, although i frankly have no idea what the others are actually playing or who is singing (the words are by Celan, hence the title). The piece opens with a forbidding drone that anchors the seemingly random sounds dropped in from time to time and the wailing, layered voices that chant and sing. Bell-like tones and percussion appear again in the second part, along with actual rhythms from the cello (well, i think it's the cello); here the vocals are less layered and more droning. The third part opens with minimalist sounds like rhythmic heavy breathing and a woman's spoken words; as she speaks and the rhythm continues, drones fade up into the mix, only to die away soon after she stops speaking. This leads into the fourth part, a chaotic assembling of cello grunts, strange sounds, and an evolving sense of song structure once the vocals enter the picture... sort of like AMM with modified instrumentation, possibly.

My only complaint with the album -- and it's not so much a complaint, really, as a wish -- is that it would have been nice to have liner notes delving into the meaning/inspiration behind the suite. I'm so ignorant i only vaguely know who Paul Celan is, and i could have used some education. Then again, perhaps the intent was to provoke the listener into seeking out the information independently, so perhaps the lack of notes isn't so bad after all....

This CD, the second by this "band" that is mainly one permanent member (Kevin Goldsmith) plus others who come and go, is pretty much what the name implies: a collection of ten years of scattered tracks originally appearing on various cassettes and compilations between 1991 and 2000. The thirteen tracks here aren't presented in strictly chronological order, but there is a definite progression of ideas and obsessions. The first track, "Uniform Random Variables" (from 1994), is a complex sound collage of music and found sound (noises, tapes, samples) with enough ideas and structure to remind you that the entire tape-noise culture originally descended from people in academia who actually knew what the hell they were doing. Goldsmith knows what time it is. "Layer Parallelism" (1996) is a considerably more drone-oriented affair, with everything -- instruments, tapes, voices -- fed through cascading layers of drone-o-tronic reverb. Notes dying away sound like avalanches in the hills, everything sounds like it's coming from far away through layers of smoke as machinery pulsates.... "DLY" (2001) is, as its name implies, the sound of experiments in delay. Delayed notes reverberate, growing in intensity, until a minimalist keyboard drone enters, suspending the track somewhere between ambient and experimental music. "Focus & Decay" (1995) is also squarely in the ghostlike ambient camp, with overly reverbed drones and strange wails and shuddering percussion in the background. "Home Base Variation 2" (1996) is nothing but a brief (but nice) piano melody soaked in reverb. The brooding drone-o-tron returns (actually, it never really goes away for long on this album) in full force on "OS2," flanked by all sorts of near-random noises happening from time to time in the background. It's interesting to hear "Live at the Mercury" (2000), recorded in Seattle, WA, where everything has to be done in real time -- the results are a bit more minimal at times, but certainly no more predictable. Strange, alien sounds so thematically and organically linked that you'd never guess the tracks were recorded years apart. A good place to start for the seeker of sounds.

Intrinsic Action -- SADO-ELECTRONICS [Tesco Organisation]

Ah, the band that begs the question: Do we really NEED a second Whitehouse? Seriously, this duo from NYC have the Whitehouse formula down cold -- fizzy "hard" electronic filth pulsing in ugly waves, immensely repetitive rhythms, distorted vocals, pink noise, incredibly silly lyrics, etc., etc. One would think that Whitehouse would come smack them around, but since the two groups have toured together, I guess Whitehouse APPROVES... maybe they're getting a kickback or something....

So, you're probably wondering, "What does the album sound like, fool?" (Or more likely, you're wondering something else entirely... like whether to have a glazed or chocolate donut with that cup o' joe on the next coffee break... you know, something IMPORTANT.) Well, it sounds... um... like Whitehouse. For the benefit of those who haven't heard Whitehouse, this means each track is basically one or two synths droning on the same one or two notes (with the machine soundwave set on "kitchen-sink") while Mark Solotroff rants in a vaguely-distorted voice about pain, control, torture, murder, being tough, blah blah blah. Suffice to say that the overall effect is unintentionally humorous. I'm sure they're trying REAL HARD to convince you of how "evil" they are, but it just comes over as ridiculous, particularly where the lyrics are concerned. I'd reprint some of them, but I'm afraid of causing mass urination as people lose control to their helpless laughter.

The CD also contains an 20-minute ep called SURGICAL STAINLESS STEEL, which is divided into 11 short "movements" and is apparently about raping, killing, and dismembering women. You'd think such a rude topic would at least be kind of INTERESTING, but nope... just more of the same frippery electronic sludge....

This is subtitled "Manhattan Power Surge"... "Manhattan Power Brownout" is more like it. "Sado-Electronics" manages to sound even LESS live here than it does on the studio disc, and the music is mainly one (that's one more than zero but one less than two, for those of you who spent your time in math class playing footsie with the tight t-shirt hothead in the seat in front of you) trilling keyboard note with some... um... are those belching noises in the background? Well, they're SOMETHING, but not much. Over this exquisitely lo-fi minimalism we are "treated" to the joy of Mark Solotroff ranting inanely about "sadism! electronics! SADO-ELECTRONICS!" in what i would assume is supposed to be a real menacing fashion. "Feel the Bite" at least has a bit more heft, but then Solotroff has to go and open his mouth again. Too bad. Somehow i'm not really surprised to find something this inane on a (supposedly) white-supremacist record label. Ugh... i can't believe i passed up the TETSUO soundtrack for this useless pap....

So much stuff in this issue that's hard to describe... this certainly fits the bill. A noisy jazz approach to sampling, perhaps? Hard psychedelia for the machine age? Whatever it is, it's certainly loud enough.... The basic "formula" at work here is for a couple of guys to lay down "beats" with a drum machine, turntable, and bass, but then a cyclotronic guitar and saxaphone (both wildly pushed to the extremes of reverb and delay) swirl around the machine rhythms like UFOs searching for cattle to steal. In a very weird way this approaches, especially on "Adapt," a form of cybernetic psychedelia... the sound of what happens when the ghost in the machine eats too much acid, i suppose. Lots of heavily processed sound, reverb-of-death guitar, almost unrecognizable sax squeaks... strange and disorienting, but nevertheless intriguing. Likely to induce tinnitus at high volume, so watch out.... "APE" is similar, but not quite so crazed in its tinnitus-glory. The rhythm has been processed with a lot of "dirt" to make it sound destroyed, like decaying motorworks grinding for the last time; ambient wails from guitar or sax or both wind and unfurl above the machinery. The lengthy (nearly ten minutes) "Maga-zine" opens with reverbed clattering sounds and wind/machines in the distance; after some time extremely noisy instruments (so distorted and reverbed there's no way to tell what they are) start creeping in. Some of it sounds like what Sun Ra might have done while doing really evil heroin -- the interstellar sounds of entropy, mon. I don't think they're going to the top of the charts with this approach, but it's definitely unusual and interesting to hear... more tunes are required for further study....

AAAIEEEE! Death-defying bushido jazz, watch out! Inu-Yaroh are clearly honing their mad science as one of the most unusual combos around, Japanese freejazz improvisationists working with traditional instruments and not-so-traditional instruments, like a traditional freejazz combo playing in tandem with a noise posse. They open with "The End of Jazz Virus," which is just deranged -- a crashing, harrowing burst of mad shouting and making of much noise over a seemingly oblivious combo improvising "loosely" (to say the least). Imagine noise hooligans breaking into a jazz session and kicking everything around and making weird electronic sounds as the band plays on, sort of like the Boredoms crashing a Mingus session or something. "Sax Battle: One Stroke Two Beat" comes across like a really alarming cross between experimental guitar and pure frothing death metal, whereas "Sonic Love" is more in the vein of free jazz enshrouded in a cloud of psychedelic electronica. The death metal vs. defenders of free jazz battle resurfaces in "18 Strings God," which sounds far more evil than anything you'd normally expect from freejazz, and "Guitar Noize -- Apok 99" builds from guitar static and trilling sax to a swirling vortex of unpredictable white noise and shouting before dying back down into droning sax and the occasional burst of sound, then it winds back up again into noise and chaos and pure rumbling bushido fury. Not for the faint of heart, to be sure....

The Invincible Czars have a secret weapon giving them a leg up on all the other bands out there: They have a trumpet player. He's pretty good. They also have an accordionist (yes, those big squeezy things, if you lived in a civilized place like Austin you'd know this already, wouldn't you?). Her name is Shirley. She's pretty swell too. The rest of the band (drums, guitar, bass) consists of members of the Golden Hornet Project, Stinky Del Negro, and The Big Orange. What they play is the kind of thing you only see in places like Austin, Chicago, and New York (sometimes) -- a dizzying mishmash of genres and styles, played exceptionally well and with eccentric flair. The three studio songs on the ep ("Bar Mitzvah in Ghost Town," "Iron Fist of Stalin," and "Mursketine") sound mainly like a jazz combo hyped-up on way too much coffee and reinventing Shellac; the two live tracks ("Fanfare of the Imbeciles," recorded at the Carousel Lounge, and "Iron Fist of Stalin," recorded at Emo's) prove that they can walk the talk just as well (and much louder!) live as in the studio. It's always nice to hear a rock band that actually knows what to do with a trumpet....

irr. app. (ext.) -- AN UNCERTAIN ANIMAL, RUPTURED; TISSUES EXPANDING IN CONVERSATION

This immediately gained my attention when it arrived due to the staggering cover art -- mutant pictures of bodies mated with shells, skeleton shells expelling peculiar beanlike fetiuses, and stuff on the inside far too bizarre to accurately describe. Turns out the disc itself is every bit as intriguing as the art, although just as difficult to describe, natch. Suffice to say that if you're familiar with the likes of Nurse With Wound, the Hafler Trio, Organum, and maybe even Illusion of Safety, then you might be prepared for the strange assembling of looped sounds, brief musical interludes, and devolved conversation that form the eleven loosely-defined tracks here. Most of the tracks are built around incidental background noises that grow and diminish in volume while loops occasionally appear then go away, weird sounds/crashes/screams/gurglings suddenly leap out to signal transitions, and unintelligible snatches of conversation rise from the chaos only to sink back down again. The attack is not particularly unique (at least for this genre of snippet-soundscapes), but the execution is far better than it is with most practitioners and the end results are more consistently interesting. The pronounced Organum influence (much of this material falls into the same category of slow-build-then-release dynamics as Jackman's work) may account for that, although the sheer variety of sounds in use points more to Nurse With Wound or the Hafler Trio. Regardless, it's a fine (and eerie) disc of exotic soundscapes and hopefully this is only the beginning of a dynasty to match Organum's. (Just so you know -- the disc is actually being released as a split between Errata in Excelsis and Fire Inc. , the latter of which is also responsible for the release of the split CD with Stilluppsteypa detailed later in this same issue.)

irr. app. (ext.) -- DUST PINCHER APPLIANCES ep [some]

Ah, the indescribable joys of more from this enigmatic Cali sound-manipulator, the American heir apparent to the increasingly remote Organum, whose recording schedule of late has fallen somewhere between sporadic and nonexistent. I find it really interesting that all the reviews i've read about the previous disc (AN UNCERTAIN ANIMAL....) have made so many comparisons to Nurse With Wound, when it's pretty obvious to me that M. Waldron really worships at the shrine of David Jackman. But then again, Organum is nowhere near as well-known as Nurse With Wound, even by record critics, and i suppose people have got to go with what they know, so....

For those who have heard the aforementioned debut disc, this 10" vinyl EP will not disappoint. Same weird approach to artwork (this time, ugly mutant angels removing a giant onion from the chest cavity of what appears to be a giant turkey with a penis head), same cryptic and obfuscatory liner notes (this time about dust, still written in a sly variant of lawyerspeak), same penchant for longwinded titles... but the sound is a little bit different. The tracks here are a wee bit more "cohesive" in the sense that they have less wildly incongruent elements dropping in at all times, and evolve in a bit more organic fashion. Still, the immense power-drone that ushers in "a full desirous body, rendered disjecta membrana through the application of dust pincher appliances" is pure Organum, and while the drone builds and layers of sound are added from time to time, it all comes to a head with a jarring crash before moving in a different direction. So maybe the sound's not that different after all.... But then you come to "antedelirational music box," where a growing cluster of plinky-plinky noises grow into an army of mad, dancing notes backed by looped and reverbed snatches of what might be grotesquely overmodulated conversation (or might not; it's hard to tell). With "a distended particular," it takes a while for everything to get warmed up; in fact, it initially sounds like someone slapped an old 78 onto a turntable and then turned it on, causing everything to slowly but surely build up to the proper speed. A wobbling low-end noise meanders through the piece, as tiny fragments of guitar, etc. float randomly through the background, barely audible over the sounds of someone bumping about the room, opening and closing doors, walking, and so on. A low-key piece that never really goes anywhere, true, but the balance of sounds makes it interesting. The shrill cheep of mechanical birds opens "subsequent to dust pincher appliances: breath listing towards eternity, bones rattling around oblivion," as drones build and grow around the odd sound of space-age birds. The birds continue their strange mating call throughout the track as drones rise and fall around them, creating a most eerie kind of ambience. After a while the birds and the drones go away, replaced by intense conga drumming and clunking noises in the background. Bizarre stuff indeed. I'm looking forward to more of the man's quirky sound experiments, yes indeed.

As far as i'm concerned, this peculiar sound concern from Cali has taken up the ball that David Jackman's been in danger of fumbling at the five-yard line for some time now and has run for the touchdown. Not only is irr. app. (ext.) far weirder than Jackman, but while working in the same sound-manipulation genre, he (i.a.e. is basically one guy) has found new and immeasurably more interesting things to do within the given framework of assembled sounds. The (ext.) always seems to draw comparisons to Nurse With Wound, but i say those review-droppings are the work of lazy journalists; the influences are more closely in line with the likes of Organum, Hafler Trio, and the "cut-up" philosophy of Burroughs. Droning passages littered with barely decipherable (if at all) conversations and quirky sounds give way to brief tangents lifted from classical records, rattling gusts of wind, birdlike wails of shattered glass, and sonic effluvia too devolved to even guess at. There's a sense of the melding of different cultures, even different worlds, out on some vast plain beyond the reach of typical human boundaries. Imagine if Bosch had operated with a tape recorder instead of art tools and you begin to get a glimpse of the otherworldliness at work here.

Since attempting to describe the sound of irr. app. (ext.)'s recordings is sort of like describing the utterly indescribable -- kind of like explaining the sight of a rainbow to a blind man -- let's go, then, to the packaging of this amazing item. The CD-R (this is a limited release of approximately sixty; it may appear in more conventional format later in larger numbers, minus all the elaborate packaging i'm about to describe) comes enclosed in a jewel case whose inner tray and booklet are made of black leather; the insert folds out into three panels, each of which is adorned with either a panel from the works of Bosch or a similar drawing by Matt Waldron himself (the works are virtually indistinguishable). Inside, the lengthy "notes" are written on what appears to be ancient papyrus (actually stained rice paper), several pages worth of largely impenetrable discourse. The outer tray is a mini-poster encompassing the title and a suitably eerie drawing, made to be seen through the outer shell -- two picture frames held together by Velcro. Inside, art panels with more drawings shield the CD case from the inner wood; on the other side of the frame, tiny animal bones are mounted under glass. The sheer look of the package is absolutely stupefying; as weird and exotic as it looks, the music on the enclosed disc is even stranger. How often do you get to witness such ingenious packaging that doubles as truth in advertising?

[We rejoin our heroes in the listening booth of the Moon Unit Three studio, where they are gathered together on a long catwalk high in the air, repainting the walls all the way up to the cathedral-style vaulted ceiling. As they work carefully, mindful of the thirty-foot drop, the sound of Irritate's EVERYDAY EVIL assaults them from below. The pounding roar has different effects on them, as you will see....]

TG (hoisting sheet rock): So what's the deal with this, anyway? Is there some reason we're being forced to endure this... this... what the fuck do they call this?

Pym: Grindcore.

TG: That, yeah.

TMU: Ah, this is more than mere grindcore. I'll grant that it's not immediately obvious at first, but in their slower moments they incorporate weird psych moves, and that sets them a bit apart from the competition. Check out "Screwed, Served, Forgotten," where their mondo-fast pummeling devolves into a slo-mo psych drone of sorts halfway through. Or "Take Control," which has a groove that could have been lifted from the new Zeni Geva disc, other than the fact that it was actually released a couple of years ago in Finland.

C12 (tapping foot): Actually, this one -- what's it called?

TMU: "Crawl Fucking Crawl."

C12: This one sounds like a Black Sabbath outtake, if I'm not mistaken. Listen to that semi-funky riff and those devolved proto-jazz beats... this sounds like something Bill Ward and Tony Iommi would have cobbled up while making one of the early albums.

Pym: I like this. Sure, a few of the songs are basic meat and potatoes grind, but when they swing they really swing, and there are moments of pure brilliance here and there. This makes me want to hear them an album or two down the line, to see how they perfect it all.

TMU: My favorite part is the tinky-tinky part in the middle of "Kill The Elite," where they suddenly drop down to one quiet guitar going ping, ping and gradually build back up to immense heaviness.

TG: I have to admit that this "Fed With Poison" starts out pretty funky....

C12: Does "Praise The Terrorist Act" really endorse terrorist violence?

TMU: Well, i sure get that impression from reading the lyrics....

Pym: I think it's brilliant.

TMU: I'm not sure about brilliant, but it's definitely in the neighborhood. Like you, i'll be real curious to hear their next one, if i can ever find the damn thing.

TG: Okay, okay, it's brilliant, fine. Can we listen to Judas Priest now?

Now this has thrown me for a loop -- aside from the band's name and the cover drawing (Charlie Brown with a Hitler mustache watching his kite fall, only the kite is a Jewish star), the contents turn out to be someone singing traditional Jewish chants while people behind him make deranged, psychotronic noise. This is bizarre shit, buddy. It's apparently hysterically funny if you're Jewish, too (so sez my girlfriend, who ought to know). I have to admit, I have a certain respect for the balls / madness it takes to call yourself L. L. Cool Jew and 50 Sheckel.... At any rate, the band is actually Tom Carter (of Charalambides) and various other Austin experimental noisemakers like Shawn McMillen, Blake Carlisle, and Brian Smith. I think the vocals are provided from recordings and the guys are the ones actually making all the racket in the background, but with this whole concept, there's no telling. The case says to file under "identity politics, Jewish, plunderphonics, parody, improv / psych rock," so who the hell knows what kind of dope these long-haired country boys were smokin' when they decided to get their ya-yas out with this demented work? Aside from the religious wailing, the real meat of the matter on the endless (18-plus minutes) "Life is like a cup of tea" is when the improbable chaos in the background (think Sun City Girls after smoking crack, and lots of it) finally coalesces into a dark and repetitive psych drone and eventually becomes the foreground, at which they start sounding more like One Inch of Shadow slumming with Hawkwind after smoking a lot of crack. Then they get into the deep drones and full-on psych mojo; the Jewish element may be a political statement and / or show of solidarity with John Zorn, but the sound is far more drone-oriented than the tidal pool Zorn usually wades in. Especially on "He opens his mouth," which is absolutely great shit that opens with forbidding pipe-organ drone-fu and evolves into bell-tones and esoteric (and heavily reverbed) rumbling before turning into something vaguely resembling a song being broken apart with hammers. The third and last track, "I bet the rabbi gets the last line" (12:00), evolves from a disco-from-hell beat with cryptic sampling to swell female chanting to other, darker stuff before ending up in pure psych-breakdown freakout territory. Strange stuff, enjoyable by all even if you don't get the Jewish in-jokes. Also insanely limited (50 copies), and probably only available from Eclipse Records or the band themselves.

Isabella -- POINT DE CAPTION [Xerxes]

This is twisted shit, bwana. Apparently a collaboration between Government Alpha and Positive Decadence with numerous guest appearances, not to mention the use of "power-junk noise" from Macronympha, it is deeply weird. Not yer typical noise excursion at all... For instance, if this is a Japanoise CD, why the fuck is the singer speaking in French half the time? And ye gads, the whole business of alternating soothing violins with freakout blasts of atomic-meltdown noise... eek! The track "Persona," which features the aforementioned noise junk courtesy of Macronympha, includes some chugging skipping-CD sounds that sound suspiciously like they were lifted from the "Ovencleaner" track on AMERICANOISE... hmmmmmm... or perhaps i am merely suffering from an attack of ego. Whatever. Sounds hep, anyway. Other tracks like "Defenseless" are just flat-out assaults on every orifice you can imagine, only STARTING with your ears... crazed tumbling walls o' noise shear off your high end, low end, and middle while eccentric lunatics babble in Japanese and French... shouting, shrieking, gabbing... more explosive bursts o' noise... they sick, mon, cats be out to LUNCH. My brain, it is in a FURY! Fire belches from my cortex! Sick fuck rubber woman hell! Creep the crap, i'm kicking seizure in the gold-laden hellmine! I... ah... ACK... * cough, cough *

I need a cigarette now... was it good for you too, dear?

Itch -- PULL THE WOOL (Nettwerk)

This is... ah... kind of LUNAR. But interesting. The weird quirk here that makes the band sound so different is the presence of truly demented keyboards, often drenched in distortion, sort of like Jerry Lee Lewis being electrocuted by Ogre's vocoder box. "Stress" has sardonic lyrics about Ann Landers, and "88 Hammers" -- with one piano riff ripped off from Thelonious Monk and other keyboards darting in and out with archaic noise -- manages to broadside CATS, the Beatles, Billy Joel, "Send in the Clowns," and others in a diatribe about the superiority of the piano man. More sardonic lyrics abound in "My Gang," which turns into... a piano mosh?!?!? My GAWD, these people are INSANE. Men who would mosh with pianos are capable of ANYTHING.... Anyway, "Frankenmouse" addresses the more sinister aspects of government-supported gene monkeying, and "B.F.D." not only brings back the piano mosh, it even throws in speed metal riffing. Slayer with pianos... now I know the apocalypse is near.... The liner notes contain not only reasonably intriguing lyrics, but a long, synapse-shattering rant about DNA, genetic engineering, and related gene- shuffling thuggery. I'm not sure that I'd personally sit around listening to this often -- piano is the wrong instrument to use to get my attention (big, big guitars are necessary for that) -- but I can see where those in search of something suitably off-kilter could get behind this. You certainly can't get much further out in left field than this....