EXTREME HAIR STENCH / BIG FIST JOHNNY SPLIT

Noisecore split on Housepig records. Extreme Hair Stench is one guy from Germany, who has for years been creating and releasing earbleeding Noise. The two tracks here are each just under 8 minutes, and run an interesting and audibly painful gamut of sound, from crisp analogue sounding waveforms to warped tape delay garbage. These sound scapes are harsh and live sounding, mouldy and organic. A nice counterpoint to Big Fist Johnny’s apeshit Noisecore farce. With a lineup of Grindcore/Noise veterans, these three crank out 54 tracks and maybe nearly double ‘songs’ of pure unadulterated Noisecore; short blurts of uncontainable aggression and indifference. Although this recording was plagued with technical errors, the mix is actually perfect, with everything sounding murky yet white hot and in the red. The blast beats are crazy(as you might expect from Jon Engman), the strings are utterly mangled throughout, and the vocals are SUPER pissed. This is actually one of my favourite Andy Mortville vocal recordings ever; no one has ever sounded so furious and jaded at the same time. Both sides of the record have excellent cover art, although I couldn’t find a decent image of the EHS side. Essential!

Housepig

THE MASTERS OF DEATH – ‘STARRING IN…SHAPE SHIFTING HOLOGRAPHIC REPTILLIANS’

Old school shanty town Hip Hop excellence from the States. Beats and bass like sheets of corrugated iron, rusted and jagged, smothered in creaky movie soundtrack refrains and corny melodies. Dusty, musty old school Hip Hop with an awesome aesthetic. The vocal here is laid back and lean but impassioned, perfectly suited to the beatwork finery beneath. An obvious comparison to Wu Tang can be made here, but to my ear this is closer to 90’s Jedi Mind Tricks in terms of production and sound, with those contrasting downcast/empowering melodies and calm yet threatening bars. Ill, skilled and dangerous. So good.

Bandcamp

YASUHITO FUJINAMI – ‘FORMLESS’

3 screeds of cold Electronics from Yasuhito Fujinami. Combining elements of cut-up and textured wall passages, Fujinami creates three sheets of tactile Noise that feel brittle, frigid and jagged-edged. Harsh rumble, endless scraping low frequencies, climactic events within the timeline of each piece erupt from building peaks of sound. Enigmatic, ice cold and tectonic. The tracks are nicely timed, each being a short-ish journey, and each feeling distinct and dynamic throughout. You’ll like it.

Bandcamp

WADGE – ‘SCREAMING FOR TIKI’

Wadge take a slight detour on their most recent record, taking huge influence from the 80’s posi Hardcore scene, blending in major chord progressions and a fearsomely upbeat attitude to create… well, a great Wadge record! Totally rad Tiki worshipping Hardcore influenced Wadge, lightning fast Grindcore parts, thrashin’ posi pit-clearing choruses, and Paulo mixing up youth crew yelling vocal with the usual Wadge vocal crush. Goofy and impassioned, angry and silly in a way only Paulo can pull off. I can’t tell you how fucking good this is, just download it already. I really have nothing else to say, other than perhaps fuck Krishna, HAIL TIKI. Oh, and excellent cover art.

Mortville Noise

JVSS – ‘II’

7 tracks of Guitar Noise scree from JvSs. This release has a very spectral, spacey feel,  sounding like mood music form the BBC vault. The subtle effects used and the way they layer over one another create a very otherworldly yet kind of corny sound, at once unsettling and kind of kitsch. These are the sounds of the cardboard Mothership. I’d say this stuff occupies a space between Noise and sound scape; very minimal, sparse and spacious, rather unassuming and altogether enjoyable.

Mortville Noise