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Anarchymoon Recordings PRESS CLIPS

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MuhMur link
GX Jupitter-Larsen 2011 singles review
4 October 2011
by Steve

...September saw the release of the collaboration [GX Jupitter-Larsen made] with Phil Julian (AKA Cheapmachines). "Continuous Tunnel Clock" on Anarchymoon Recordings. This 7" sounds more like a Haters single of old. No hint as to what speed I should be playing this slab o' beauty so I have been mix and matching. "Continuous Tunnel Clock" sounds better at 33rpm, it becomes a great sonic bass wall of noise, a full 360 degree sound. "Self Propelled Wrinkle" is best at 45rpm. High speed wreckage, sonic collapse. Exquisite noise. An error at the pressing plant limited this 7" to 100 copies only - on yellowy/orange vinyl.

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Foxy Digitalis link
Power/Field 2 2xCDr
February 16, 2011
By Chris Jacques

I’ve been wrestling with what to write about this two-disc collection for the last eight months. Not often do words fail me, but with these discs, they do – and perhaps rightfully so. The more I would listen to these tracks to try and find words to describe the experience, the experience itself took a back seat. Once I just let go, everything feel somewhat into place…kinda. Each time I approached this collection, I would inevitably get overwhelmed. I’d listen to it in its entirety, become confused and then shelve it. The one time I listened to it late late at night with headphones, I became so disoriented I hid it away for an entire month. These discs really messed me up. I’ve come to the conclusion that this isn’t a bad thing. If the intent of Bob Bellerue was to create an engaging, provoking, and/or mind warping experience, it is a complete success.

Power/Field is the second in what may be an ongoing series of unprocessed field recordings from a multitude of artists and sources. Its a fascinating collection, filled with interesting and challenging performances. And just for reference, when I use the term “field recordings,” I’m not talking about hissy recordings of ice cracking or gentle 20-minute epic documents of rain hitting metal roofs, it’s much more complicated than that.

The project entailed flipping the process most experimental musicians utilize in terms of field recordings inside out. Instead of collecting source sounds and mixing them into a composition or post-processing the sound beyond recognition, the aim was to take the entire recording method to the source itself, any manipulation would be done on-site and in real time, there would be no affecting the sounds on the recording once the stop/off button was pressed.

The results surpass all preconceived notions of what field recordings are by turning them into conceptual pieces of their own. Over the course of the two discs are 29 tracks with compositions by Francisco Lopez, IDX1274, Mystified, Wilt, Naplmed, Jeff Thompson, & Glenn Bach to mention a few of my faves. Some of the tracks are pretty clear representations of what was recorded while others belie no indication that they are little more than source recordings. It’s a free flowing collection of short (1:40 min) to long (11:40) presentations of grinding noise, drone, musique concrete, electro acoustic, micro ambience and so on. More than that, however, Power/Field is a transcendent collection that simultaneously entertains, confuses, and even distress the mind.

While it may not be a disc you play very often it, it will earn a place among the most vital recordings in your collection. 9/10

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Still Single link
August 23, 2010
Bob Bellerue/Jarrett Silberman – Amplified Piano Duets one-sided 12”/CDR (Anarchymoon)

Without giving much of a clue as to process or instrumentation, there’s still a bit more at stake between this duo collaboration and other PE/noise experiments of its type. There doesn’t seem to be any mixer/source abuse here; we’re led, from the title, to believe that this is a capturing of treated piano, though it doesn’t sound much like it. Excepting the possibility that the piano strings have been mic’d and processed, one normally doesn’t get this much sustain out of a piano, even if they hold down the damper pedal. What surfaces is this noisy, yet warm and somehow harmonic buzzing drone, and if I had to say what it reminds me of, it would be the sound of a tractor with a lawn-mower attachment and vacuum bagger, cutting the grass of my parents’ backyard. More than any other noise recordings, this one throws off the a late summer afternoon ambiance, with the sun dying down and dinner being readied, when my dad was rounding the back corners, and was therefore further away from my bedroom window. It shares the same consistency and tonal qualities, and sounds like it could run forever. With these memories in tow, this becomes an exceptional and meaningful piece of music, though I’m not sure if many people would agree with me on this, or could see the suburban POV from where I’m coming. One cut on the vinyl meets two more on the included CDR. 200 copies. (Doug Mosurock)

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Animal Psi permalink
Cornucopia – ‘Ultima’ [Review]
21 Jun 10 - Vinyl, Review
Another fine example of Anarchymoon’s good works and fidelity, the first LP appearance (!) of Puerto Rico’s long-running pairing of Jorge Castro and Claudio Chea, aka Cornucopia, receives a much-deserved glimpse of daylight. A modest collection of Noise without distinctions between individual tracks (though certainly comprised as such), ‘Ultima’ emerges from deep reverb seemingly called forth by a modest voice muttering a couple bars of a folk tune. Blinkering noise crashes and layers soberly mixed recall the familiar Cornucopia/Castro themes of stratospheres, secret technologies, and combat. Recorded exactly a year ago, the blistering murk which swallows the second half of side A seems to both admit the stifling air of summer and try to contain it through mimesis. The disparity between start and finish undermine attempts to imagine this release a single whole, but instead somehow a “greatest hits” come-out from an impossible to grade genre. Like the first, side B begins with an impressionistic abstract of channel-swapping oscillation and stealth steam-engine mechanics. On its own the sides is a rather routine construction allowed to carry on too long, but with commitment (and some skipping about on repeat listens), the drone which undergirds this sound appears in relief and then fades like evaporation, a deft move which then regenerates in a crackling condensation, (still only) hinting at the pair’s aesthetic prowess. On 200 pieces of black vinyl with plain, banded sleeves and insert.

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Astro/Pulse Emitter/Acre/Monsturo Split 12” EP
Anarchymoon Recordings ANOK-28

Numbered edition of 200 copies 4-way split showcasing new synth sound from a bunch of contemporary thinkers. The Astro track – aka Hiroshi Hasegawa of Japanese underground legends CCCC - literally explodes out of the gate with some roaring/phased cosmo-assault tactics that sounds like the collision of planets. Pulse Emitter is a lot more lonely, with eerie Morse patterns floating off into space. Over on the flip Acre – aka Portland’s Aaron Davis - contribute a tactile drone that is all heavy metal gravity and monolithic stasis while Monsturo move things into the realm of the primordial with some malevolent/bubbling swamp tone that could almost be a more elemental Hive Mind. Beautifully conceived and perfectly compiled, this is a fucking trip.

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Aquarius Records
Cold Fire LP

A killer four way split of extreme electronic music, ranging from deep drones to Merzbow style white noise to gorgeous synthy krautdrift, this match-up pits Astro against Pulse Emitter against Acre against Monsturo, three long times aQ faves and one unknown-until-now, each taking half a side and offering up their own bit of electronic punishment.
Japanese one man wrecking crew Astro is up first and lays waste with a blown out assault of roiling super heavy cosmic power electronics, distorted murk barraged by bleeps, in-the-red, distorted and crumbling, bordering on Merzbowish white noise but more clipped and looped and rhythmic and weirdly hypnotic.
Up next is Pulse Emitter, who finds extremity not in volume or distortion but in space, delivering a swirling spaced out sci-fi bit of synth wave kosmische drift, hypnotic and ethereal, no rhythms, just electronic pulses and swirling synths, soft flurries of melodies, floating in a buzzing expanse of near blackness, exactly what we love about PE, a single shot exploration of inner/outer space.
Acre deliver the drone, an impossibly dense and heavy sound, that on the surface seems minimal and pretty, but is somehow sooooo powerful, the layered tones seem to vibrate your skull, minimal maximal dronemusic that manages to be gorgeous but subtly punishing at the same time.
Finally, Monsturo delves even deeper, unfurling some seriously super deep lower register thrum, like an all low-end Raster-Noton, rumbling and rhythmic and barely there, but at the right volume will crumble all the buildings within earshot, as well as causing the Earth's crust to collapse sending you plummeting into its molten core. Awesome.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES. Each one hand numbered, with a printed insert, and housed in a full color paste on sleeve.

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Foxy Digitalis link
Cornucopia "Ultima" LP

This is a subtly textured, evocative album from the long-running Puerto Rican drone project. The plain black sleeve and misty jungle canopy photo in the sleeve seem to embody the two sides that Cornucopia explores on its debut full-length. This is drone music that’s both extremely naturalistic and jaggedly industrial, creating an organic sound environment that is unique in its pitting of these two extremes.

Side A’s piece is dense and very slow to change, with buzzy rising and falling drones that suggest the encroachment of industry on a forest. Full, slowly changing, it eventually falls into industrial-sounding machine tones, still with the up-and-down waves and echoes of wind. Throughout, this is sublimely evocative of industry. It’s very hard to tell what sound sources are used—they seem to be synths, but they’re not recognizable as such and couched in white noise. Finally, after 15 minutes, things get into dark ambient territory, building to a relatively quick crescendo of a rhythmic loop, perhaps sourced from modular synth.

On side B, heavily echoed wordless vocals are overtaken by pink noise loops and stabs. Filtered pounding sequences give a bit more space before vocals are again quickly drowned out by broad waves of sound with some clicking and wind-filtered noise. Sounds like a furnace, or a factory—this whole record is vivid in its textures. The side gets into white-out territory, with the saturation of the vinyl providing strong support, and some very distant siren sounds reminiscent of a violent storm, before fading out. Cornucopia show themselves to be masters at shaping textures on this emotionally rich and mysterious album. They almost seem to be saying that the lovely forest canopy in the photo is at risk. 7/10 -- Travis Bird (1 September, 2010)

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Still Single link
Cornucopia – Ultima LP (Anarchy Moon/Sonora Disc)

Oppressive, naval wall of hurricane noise/drone out of Puerto Rico, a place where the residents know from hurricanes. Side A is immense, just a gutbuster of layered white noise, while Side B adds in queasy sine wave bass beneath prop plane engine scream. Backed hard; when this sort of expression gives you visuals totally on its own, you can’t help but get lost inside of it. Edition of 200, with silkscreened obi strip. -Doug Mosurock

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As Loud As Possible, Vol 1
Redglaer "American Masonry" CD

Originally released as a 10-inch record with hand-painted chipboard sleeves and color artwork on the back, American Masonry sold out quickly during Bob Bellerue's extended cross-cross tour of the United States. The original record was a planet-sized mass of atmospheric density, a feeling like being in the furthest reaches of space, a tactile sense of all of the distant planets pushing their weight on your fragile body while the cold void surrounds you. This CD reissues the original 10-inch tracks, expanding them to their full lengths (they had to be shortened to fit on the vinyl) along with a long third track in a similar style. It's housed in a small chipboard jacket, with a simulation of the original record's painted circles on the cover reproduced in embossed black foil.

Most Redglaer i've heard has been personal and individual, incorporating shriek reed sounds from Bellerue's shenai, treated with oscillators and cardboard speaker rattle, alien junk assemblages that resemble a herd of rats transporting a box full of plastic drumsticks across the kitchen floor. American Masonry, by comparison, contains a full-spectrum density unlike the more personal recordings, creating drones of impossibly large volume, ripples from solar flares bouncing off the walls as fidelity alternates between crystal-clear and scratchy like there's a short in the electrical system.

Occasional outbursts threaten to punch the speaker cones out of your already-hurting speakers, with a dynamic range that jars the mind too much to be considered a 'chill out' recording. A superb collection of heavy drones for heavy voiding of the mind.

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As Loud As Possible, Vol 1
KILT "Snow White In Hell" LP

KILT is a noisy power trio of the south/western United States, featuring Bob Bellerue (Redglaer, Halfnormal), Raven Chacon (Cobra//Group, Dog Shit Taco, as well as his own name as a chamber / classical composer) and Sandor Finta (Democri$y). Starting in Power Electronics mode, with ultra-distorted bullhorn vox mixing with shards of flinty digital ache, the record feels like we're just in a holding pattern before the dam bursts. As the side goes on, though, the forces continue to gather outside the city walls, but no call to war is ever uttered. It is soon apparent that this album is less about straight noise destruction, and more about a thunderous take on free improvisation (a la AMM, Spontaneous Music Ensemble, and Morphogenesis). It's noisy, yes, but not strictly noise - there's a lot of narrative buried in these grooves.

Considering the three distant personalities contributing, the results are spacious and uncluttered, and individual gestures project from the melee constantly. Snow White In Hell is loud, it's forceful, but it's not especially punishing - it deliberately steps back every time an opportunity to score a hammer-to-the-skull death blow. This is not a criticism, though. This record is not a wall, but a river, a river which contains a constant supply of dead things floating in the muck for you to pull out, turn over in your hands, and toss back. As a forthright statement of forceful wishes, it's a very satisfying, moment-driven as opposed to a cascade of unchanging harshness. However, considering the group's wish to be evil and harsh, though, it might almost be too subtle for it's own good.

The record is pressed on randomly-colored vinyl (mine was gray and marbly, yours might be pink or brown or puke) and has an outstanding silkscreen cover (silver ink on front, gold on back, monster faces for all).

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As Loud As Possible, Vol 1
Various Artists "ABQ=/=LAX" 5-way split 7"

Five-way split/compilation 7-inch, with the two of vinyl sides choosing up turf in the little-known beef (?) between Albuquerque and LA. ('My airport can beat your airport!' suggests the title). It's a pretty evenly-matched battle. Raven Chacon's opening salvo on the Albuquerque side would be a blue ribbon in any other fair, with its anemic whistling mated to a strong parking-lot-at-3-am ambience, but it still manages to get overtaken by his worthy allies/rivals - no small feat for such a fine little track. Alchemical Burn, a name I wasn't familiar with before hearing this, tags in with a ferocious blast of 50s sci-fi blurt and 80s digital burn, like Solid Eye in a fit of indignant belligerence.

The LA side contains few slackers at all. Redglaer's up first, and his track is pretty outstanding. The difference between projects that rely on pedals and those that create processes is instantly apparent at times like this. Processes produce truly raw, abused tones - pedals just change the skin around the object. Bob Bellerue's processes and feedback systems send his sinewaves into the trauma ward - I've never heard sounds that wanted to ESCAPE from their tyrannical master like I do here, though none of these escaping inmates know that their jailer has attached electric shackles to their ankles…. they shan't get far. Mark Beyer (who also did the squinty silkscreened art, and is better known as the guy who did John Zorn's "Spy vs Spy" album cover) contributes a perfect track - wild balloon squeaks, oscillator garble, all manner of toolbox clatter, and just a pinch of analogue synth in its death throes. Again, I hate to give credence to idiots who can't see past 1995, but tracks like this make it hard to ignore the distinct possibility that the palette of modern sounds has become self-limited in the past decade or so, and this one-minute track opens a door to all sorts of new possibilities, all of them nasty. George Alan Ledergerber shimmers his guitar strings, reverbs them, and sculpts them into evocative melodies. This isn't the best thing here - in fact it's a toss-up between this and Raven Chacson for who gets the unenviable bottom slot, though the short duration makes it a pretty little coda. Not since the halcyon days of "Northern California Audio Document" has a locally-themed 7-inch comp so thoroughly charmed me.

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Heathen Harvest link
Various Artists - Dog Bone 2x7"
March 01 2010 by Vargr Wulf

This is a very enjoyable double seven inch vinyl release from Anarchymoon Recordings. The artwork is very striking, consisting of black-on-grey silkscreens of crossed guns. There is an insert with a picture (attributed to Lisa Bloodgood) of a very attractive young lady holding a machine gun. The white framing the image gives it the impression of looking like a polaroid. Each artist is given their own side of a record, and the tracks do all have a thematic unity between them. I noticed that this was mastered by Bob Bellerue, who was involved with a very interesting Amplified Piano Duets LP that was recently released by this same label. All of the tracks share a Harsh Noise, almost HNW feel that is unrelenting. Most of the sounds on these discs are harsh and unstoppable walls of pedal-affected electronics. The artists all blend together in a "greater than the sum of its parts" fashion, but each contributor brings something a little bit different into the mix.

The Cherry Point is a group that I have been meaning to check out for some time. Associated with the Harsh Noise genre and a multitude of excellent looking and sounding releases, TCP has been around for quite some time now. The material on this release is a live recording titled "Rachel Ward" recorded live in Los Angeles, California. It opens with a quick metallic crash sound, followed by silence, another violent outbreak, and another silence. Out of the void comes more crashing and eventually an unrelenting wall, followed by more silence. The noise is grand, metallic, and crackling, with a harsh cold feeling to it. There are creepy and distant metallic clanking sound in the background between the noise blasts, somewhat like during the improvisational sessions of the group Wolf Eyes. The harsh and abrasive ending is kinetic, and all of the tension explodes in a demonic frenzy. Very stark and artistic noise from these longtime providers of harsh violence. Obstacle Corpse sounds kind of like a bunch of elephants fighting during a concrete mixer, with strong P.E. vocals that do not dominate the mix. Pulverizing noise that does not forgive. These two tracks in particular go really well together. After all of the silence and tension of the first track, it is good to hear someone just letting loose and going all out. I would compare this to the work of the great northeast Power Electronics group Shallow Waters, low rumbling destruction with screamed and haggard vocals.

God Willing is a noise guy who has been around for a long time. I am mostly familiar with him from a split cassette that he did with Leslie Keffer a little while back. This is a really solid noise wall, with all of the crunch and power that you would require from such a thing. This guy's really been eating his Wheaties, because this is seriously tough sounding material. Completely in-the-red electronics recorded for maximum volume decimation. Occasionally scraping sounds peek in and out of this noise, but for the most part this is just a harsh solid wall. This is probably the most monolithic track off this entire release. If I saw that this guy was playing live somewhere, I would definitely want to go check it out. Crackling and almost too much for the speakers... good stuff. Privy Seals rounds this thing off with one last harsh exercise. Harsh Noise with a crunchy wall sound and some high pitched elements (maybe when the guy lets go of the instrument cable?). Really strong and crunchy stuff rounds out this exercise in pain quite nicely. Lots of feedback on this one. Good solid noise release, give it a whirl.

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Heathen Harvest link
Bob Bellerue + Jarrett Silberman - Amplified Piano Duets
April 01 2010 by Vargr Wulf

A real treat here for noise maniacs who share an appreciation of La Monte Young, Charlemagne Palestine and other experimental drone and avant garde art of that nature. Even though this has the word "Piano" in the title, you might as well throw out any immediate prejudices that instrument brings to mind. This does not sound like it was recorded anywhere near a piano, unless we are talking about a piano being sawed in half at an industrial site. The basic sounds on this recording seem to come from a disturbed manipulation of the large strings inside of the piano for drone and noise purposes. I do not know much about either of these artists, except that Bellerue mastered the recent "Dog Bone" 2x7" also on Anarchymoon, as well as having something to do with the excellent venue called The Smell in Los Angeles. These two guys put together some recordings that they had both been working with in their spare time and put them together, and this one-sided LP is the result.

My first reaction, and maybe this is the OCD in me coming out, is why just one side? LPs are expensive to make, and I would love to have heard another side of material from these guys, even an alternate mix of the single track would be interesting. But that is the sort of complaint that just says that the material on side one is really interesting and compelling stuff. The duo gets into an intense drone at several different segments on this 1/2LP, and when things really get crazy it starts to sound like construction going on. That is probably a reason why noise music is more accepted in larger urban hellholes, because of the similarity to construction sounds. This music is downright destructive. It is hard to believe that it is two people bringing together separate solo efforts, because this release seems to have a very intense dedication to a monomaniacal sound. Bellerue and Silberman come together as one artist on this recording. If you asked me what this was made with, rather than guessing a piano I would have more likely guessed some sort of electronic oscillator.

The photos on the cover (a black-on-orange xerox of dying/dead sunflowers) does not do justice to the sounds on this collaborative LP. This is a raging noise one-sider that brings to mind the more drone-conscious efforts of groups like the Haters and the New Blockaders. An intensive drone noise workout that comes out of left field, threatening to completely obliterate your speakers. For the most part the sounds come together to make one single weirdly treble-y drone sound that is quite unusual. Eventually the sounds will build up into a more oppressive and throbbing rhythm. Brief and super-intense, this is pretty different from any other drone that I have encountered, and the vinyl format accurately delivers the brutality at 33 revolutions per minute. Sounds just like fresh-cut grass! Awesome.

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Foxy Digitalis link
Hector Cuvelier & Emile De Potter/Bob Bellerue "split" 3'' cd-r
28 July, 2010

Great split on the Anarchy Moon label, featuring Belgian duo Hector Cuvelier & Emile De Potter and Brooklyn musician Bob Bellerue, both of whom play harsh noise. What makes this release more interesting than the average split is that the artists on this recording complement each other nicely. There's a fair bit of continuity between the two CDRs, as both groups share quite a bit in common sonically, but this release also allows both groups to display their own take on noise.

The first CDR contains two pieces by Hector Cuvelier & Emile De Potter. “Rance,” the stronger of the two tracks, starts off with shouted vocals and white noise, but gets gradually more quiet as the track progresses. By the end of the track, the noise has almost completely abated, leaving the listener with a few seconds of relative silence before the next track starts.

On a related note, the term “Rance” may refer either to a river on which the first tidal power plant was built or the perverted titular character of a long-running Japanese RPG series in which the goal is to have sex with as many women as possible (pretty raunchy stuff; one review for a recent entry in the series advises one to stay away from this title if one is bothered by the idea of rape). No idea as to whether this piece is meant to soundtrack mankind's attempt to domesticate nature or the exploration of his perversion, but honestly, are the two really that different?

Bob Bellerue's contribution to this collection is a single track, “at Freak's End”. Bellerue's composition includes samples from more “organic” sources set against a backdrop of noise. This juxtaposition of noise with more “normal” sounds challenges the conventional understanding of noise as something unusual. Instead, noise is something conventional, sound one is as likely to hear as piano music.

In any case, this release contains some of the better noise music that I've heard this year. Packaged simply, yet elegantly, and limited to 50 copies, this is a recording that I would recommend picking up, and quickly. 8/10 -- Jonathan Rahardjo

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Animal Psi permalink
Hector Cuvelier & Emile De Potter/Bob Bellerue split 2x3" CDr - Anarchymoon
31 May 10

Perhaps it is the perpetuity of southern California’s climate which inhibits wanton change as Los Angeles proves a lasting epicenter for noise music, so dutifully shepherded by Bob Bellerue and his Anarchymoon label. Beyond the form of noise itself, selecting sleeves, projects, and editions which show little-to-no economic foresight, Bellerue has exhibited true dedication to noise music and lay experiment as others in his cohort and after drift so glibly away. Exercised as something of a clearinghouse, Anarchymoon has stepped-up at odd intervals over its 8 years to represent and rally, anticipating the summer of 2010 with a handful of CDr releases and a pair of LPs (reviews forthcoming).

Today we have a split so meiotic that it literally splits into two different discs – an adorable format of double 3”s – joining three tracks by three men. The first is a pair by the pair of Hector Cuvelier & Emile De Potter, entitled “Rance” and “Garden City”. Wasting none of its eight minutes, the former begins promptly mid-wall, stretching throughout the channels many spiky layers thatched by curvaceous bursts of noise; this construction fails as soon as it is settled, with the wall whitening through maximal doses of white noise, furious guitar work and samples. From the death tone of this sonic suicide follows the latter track, at 5 and 1/2 minutes seemingly interpreted as a call for greater density and therefore greater brutality: the suffocation of this wall noise allows few cracks through which to view behind, and the sound’s forward-movement pushes the ear back from so much debris.

Bellerue’s contribution, entitled “at Freak’s End”, is a brilliant piece of long-form noise, classically-wielded against a sampled string quartet to reveal the hot contrast between resonant, stringed bodies and lightning bolts of feedback wrenched out of vicious amplifiers. With terrifying range, Bellerue exhausts the possible combinations of shape and frequency of this single, albeit refracting beam of noise. Grey-white noise, near silence, feedback punches, mind-splitting pure tones are all present, often for fractions of a second. The strings return, distorted, just after the midway, suggesting – or reminding – their presence all the while beneath this noise, determining this noise, failing to predict this noise to the ear. Following an odd radio sample something is purged, and the sound regulates a bit in form as spikes appear across the field to cancel out much of the dynamic and force the beam into a thin vibration to end in its 21st minute. The two little unmarked CDrs share an envelope inside a miraculous two-color screened folder.

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Foxy Digitalis link
Blue Sabbath Black Cheer "DDTTNB" 12"

The title of this one-sided LP from Blue Sabbath Black Cheer stands for “Destructively Dedicated to the New Blockaders”. Beyond being a simple dedication, the New Blockader’s own Rupenus brothers actually provided “sound sources” for this prolific Seattle noise duo to use. As you would expect with a combination like this, you get fifteen minutes of some of the harshest, most uncompromising noise put to wax. Simply put, it sounds like industrial music in its most literal sense. BSBC use cement mixers in various ways to create an ear-shattering metallic din. They create a sustained, high decibel fuzz throughout the entirety of the track with clanging and grinding tones sporadically surfacing, at times vaguely suggesting rhythm. Imagine having welding work done on your head and you get a little closer to understanding what this is like. If that sounds enticing, you may need to have some work on your head space anyways.

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Heathen Harvest link
Blue Sabbath Black Cheer "DDTTNB" 12"

This one-sided LP by Blue Sabbath Black Cheer represents a collaboration between the American Northwestern Noise artist B.S.B.C. and Richard and P. Rupenus of the legendary trash noise heroes The New Blockaders. The actual members of BSBC are credited on this recording with the use of "Cement Mixer" and "Cement Mixer Frame," along with the more traditional credits of "Electronics," so you can gather what sort of music is happening on this release. There are no acoustic guitars or psychedelic synthesizer workouts on this release, just an unending barrage of harsh walls of Industrial Noise. These two artists together basically come to a sound that is a lot like the second side of the Macronympha "Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania" LP, non-stop Industrial sounds mixing together in a hellish pit of metallic obscenity.

This is a very heavy take on such things and after getting to the end of side one I found myself wishing that there was another side. I am not sure that I can actually "hear" the cement mixer (or cement mixer frame) being used, but it certainly adds a certain something. This entire piece of music is very committed to a Harsh Noise Wall style and is an extremely suitable record for driving the neighbors completely insane. Not for a moment does this track let up from extreme Harsh Wall insanity. No one particular sound dominates, however, and there is a rich palatte of screeches and crunches on this release.

The beginning of the release is more of the scraping metallic sounds, and as the track goes on it becomes more of a crunchy texture. So ultimately, this is a really short release of harsh wall noise that is definitely recommended for fans of The New Blockaders, Macronympha, and violent Industrial-machinery themed noise like that. Very minimal packaging, with a one-part cardstock sleeve that sort of wraps around the sides of the records, meant to be carried in a plastic bag. The presence of the New Blockaders source material is a sure bet, and B.S.B.C. do a fantastic job of matching that landmark group in insanity and intensity. This is an excellent example of completely scum harsh metallic noise, and will not leave your record player for a little while if that is your preferred genre. Top notch.

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2 reviews from the Sound Collector

Another release from Stan Reed and Wm.Rage, this one distinguished in two major ways: firstly it’s a one-side picture disc, printed on one side with an enormous skull using a negative and reversed version of the Demian Johnstone artwork that appears strikingly screenprinted on the front cover which is made of brown cardboard. Secondly, it utilizes ‘additional sound sources’ contribution from Richard Rupenus and P.D.Rupenus of The New Blockaders, which may account for the fact that it is much more full-on and violent than the usual BSBC episodes of close-lipped and sullen grumbling. In short this record is pretty much an unstoppable express-train of torrential noise, carrying a heavy payload of concrete blocks and extra-large cast iron anvils, and it’s mashing your body to pieces on the tracks as it runs over you. I should point out that this item (200 copies only) was already noted as sold out at source in May 2009, but may still be available from distributors.

Ed Pinsent 26/09/3009

For D.D.T.T.N.B (ANARCHYMOON RECORDINGS ANOK 27), the duo of BSBC have collaborated with veteran English noise-blasters The New Blockaders; both Richard and Philip Rupenus have brought “additional sound sources” to this party, and a one-sided LP picture disc resulted. It’s an unvarying stream of mashed data, a monotonous and sluggish death-ride. The intense, over-crowded racket is laced with many elements I’ve come to associate with the anti-pleasure principles of Mr Rupenus, and we seem to hear the very fabric of music itself being smashed, pounded and crushed in a violent and ugly car-crash, from which few survive unscathed. The gigantic skull image (by Demian Johnston) is repeated on the picture disc, and the beautifully-made cover has a sturdy card flap, making it like an updated cover for a folio of Goya lithographs.

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Aquarius Records
Blue Sabbath Black Cheer "DDTTNB" 12"

When two of your band members are credited with playing "cement mixer", listeners can safely assume that you are loud and noisy as hell. Combined with the accepted knowledge that Blue Sabbath Black Cheer is one of the most dense and monolithically HEAVY noise crews currently in existence, it won't take long before you're either running in terror or hitting the "add to cart" button. Of course, at $29 a pop, these aren't cheap, but here's a quick rundown as to why D.D.T.T.N.B. may well worth your time and money, provided this is your cup of noise: 200 copies, awesome cardboard sleeves featuring an ominous silver silkscreened skull on each side with four insectoid/Motorhead looking shapes alongside the credits on an extended flap, and, the crowning glory - a gorgeous slab of one sided pitch black vinyl with another hand screened skull displayed prominently on side 2, a work of art unto itself.
Now lets talk about the menacing tones sunk within these grooves. At first, you will probably be thinking, "It's a cement mixer. I get it." And indeed, the horrifically grating buzzing sounds are just that. But what might sound ridiculous on paper soon takes on a life of its own, and before long the mixers blend with other overblown electronics to create a pulsing, vaguely rhythmic wall of sound. Oddly enough, it becomes comforting and trancelike, and if you allow yourself to be fully hypnotized, the results are almost soothing. If you are wondering what's up with the title, it stands for "Destructively Dedicated to the New Blockaders", as BSBC allegedly worked some of the aforementioned group's material into this piece. We say "allegedly" because more than anything we were overwhelmed by the dense sheets of sound and not really too into the idea of keeping an ear out for anything resembling melody. Not that we're complaining, as this strangely beautiful record expertly harnesses harsh, filthy sounds and works them into a endlessly writhing piece of cinematic white noise. These are already sold out at the label, so you'll probably want to act fast before being forced to hit up eBay with tears streaming down your face. Don't say we didn't warn you.

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Holidays webzine link
Redglaer – Petals & Scars (third sex, 2010)
May 23, 2010

While anticipating something ambient and blissful, what I heard instead is one of the heaviest slabs on tape I’ve heard in awhile. Imagine 60 minutes of sonic experimentation that pulls all your picture frames of the walls, and rattles your glass cabinets- that’s “Petals and Scars”.

The first side gives us tons of rumbling low end feedback accompanied higher sounds of scraping and rattlings, all of which come in and out in gracious long strands with solid moments of silence between- sometimes coming in catching you off guard with each reprise of sound. Each time, the sounds become slightly more energetic, introducing more altered sounds from the same sources.

The second side begins abruptly with a thud, into a long, heavy drone. Slow, yet dynamic, the drone is occasionally accompanied by some small amounts of high-end feedback and some sporadic clanking. Half way through, the tape ceases the low-end massage and replaces it with oscillating chirps, punches of harsh noise and feedback that turns into more-so waves of harsh noise on top of more low-end droning. For a bit, the feedback ends and rather eerie sounds like that of rusty hinges, knife sharpening and random clatter begin, all concluding with more, dense harsh sounds.

By far, this is the most charming looking tape to grace my shelf. Audibly speaking, it’s- once again- one of the heaviest. I absolutely recommend this to people appreciative of sounds of a heavier nature and those interested in low-end, feedback experimentation.

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Animal Psi link
Redglaer – ‘American Masonry’
13 Mar 10
A CD reissue of the highly successful 10”, ‘American Masonry’ is the first apex in the work of Redglaer (Bob Bellerue, also of Halfnormal, KILT). Perception fails, or is never given a chance, as deep resonance in these dronal tones arrive pre-blown, obscuring the immense size and shape of the warehouse in which these live recordings were made and to which the title nods in awed homage. As ideal case of Bellerue’s micro-macro dialectic, the two tracks of the initial release synthesize two modes of noise, tectonic and rhizomic. Similar to a Pulse Emitter in object timbre and mixture of grand force with minute mechanism, the form which Redglaer casts is far more organic, pathological, and misanthropic. At 3/4s an hour, the sound of the disc breaths in the spaciousness as the author plots then executes each move methodically, releasing sorties and awaiting their return in feedback. Hardly a headphone piece, this big throw movement is easily tracked in and across both channels, with additional tonal markers flaring up here and again to emphasize the reference. In addition to longer cutsfor the two primary tracks, another 20 minutes is added to this CD version in the form of a third track: rhythmic, almost melodic, and richer in detail than the rest of the disc – and tellingly self-described as both “more human” and “mysterious” in the press materials – which sees the larger movement backgrounded while pre-literate voices babble and coo, populating the harsh space as previously mapped yet living (to the quarter-length extent they live) in what can only be qualified as terror among the slashing ceilings and trembling foundation. Pro-cut CD comes color screened in a chipboard sleeve with beautiful, black foil embossing.

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Animal Psi link
Bob Bellerue and Jarrett Silberman – ‘Amplified Piano Duets'
25 Jan 10
Bound by clique and culture to the state of Noise, Bob Bellerue (Redglaer, Kilt, Anarchymoon boss) and Jarrett Silberman (Young People, Skull Skull) cross well into the neighboring sovereignty of “experimental” with their ‘Amplified Piano Duets’. Reminiscent of the austerity found in works of no-input mixer, these piano-fed sounds strike a familiar harsh mix of monophonic mass and amphetamine frequency, vitally restricted only by the limits of the instrument; the use of piano is in all but the most important way superfluous. Vacant electrical murmur not just fills but becomes the sonic space, the ground against which these wrenched generations are figured. Mechanical, over-heated and over-fueled, the sounds constantly reflect on the theme – the acoustic grandeur of piano aggressively distorted through electronic amplification – as when a resonant whole becomes a silted storm of gray noise or the gentle rubbing of strings becomes anabolic honks like the chatter of cellular phones. Tragically-unetched, this one-sided 12” comes paired with a CDr of the complete session (recorded live at Il Corral, late 2006), broken down into three pieces which are otherwise dissected and reassembled for the vinyl, effectively producing a fourth track. In comparing the two, the vinyl is more of an appropriation, as the Noisier, more dynamic fluctuations of each bout in the CDr sessions are normalized into the smoother, schematic presentation of the edit. Between these two poles, we witness the struggle of sound versus design, not only in the act of conception with all its performative limitations and emergent horizons, but on into editorial post-production and addressing the envelope of this document. Both discs come in a heavy sleeve with underwhelming paste-on Xerox art. Edition of 200.

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Heathen Harvest
Blue Sabbath Black Cheer - D.D.T.T.N.B
Sunday, November 15 2009 by Vargr Wulf
http://www.heathenharvest.com/article.php?story=20091115084725414

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Heathen Harvest
Redglaer - American Masonry
August 1, 2008 by Bryan Babylon
http://hh.heathenhideout.com/article.php?story=20080728144144142

Although Redglaer hails from Portland, (a city with one of the healthiest experimental music scenes in the United States) this album “American Masonry” was recorded in Tulsa OK. What can Tulsa possibly offer that can not be found in Portland you might ask? A warehouse with a million square feet of empty space to record in. I asked Bob Bellerue about tis space, and this is what he told me:
“For me the appealing thing was based in the fact that I could be as abusive as I wanted in the recording environment and it didn't hurt anybody's ears..... It became musicalized from the natural reverb. I've never cared for reverb as an effect but natural reverb as an exquisite thing to combine with harsh noise. Electronic effects have nothing to add for me, though I still try to find them since it is easier than finding another million-sq-ft warehouse and a giant PA and several hours to fuck around.”

The results of this recording turned out to be a nice testament to the quiet power of empty spaces. I have to wonder if the title of this album “American Masonry” has something to do with the warehouse. Perhaps it stores products for a company called American Masonry, or has a sign that say American Masonry. I like this idea better than thinking this album has something to do with American Freemasonry!

“American Masonry” is takes place in three tracks averaging fifteen to twenty minutes each. I liked the first track the best. It sounds the way the soundtrack for Frank Herbert’s “Dune” should have. Colossal sand tides of electronic feedback and static. I imagine the floor of Matthew’s Warehouse pulsed and churned like the desserts of Arrakis when the worms are coming. You hear the sounds of the interstellar winds during space travel. This track is the sound of mathematical distances charting black holes. It swallows all light, but somehow sound passes through. The second track utilizes the same types of sounds but to me had a distinctly different fell. This was probably not Bob Bellerue’s intention, but track two totally reminds me of traditional African tribal music. I kept picking up on vague rhythms that don’t fit into western or eastern time signatures. I imagined I could hear the wailing of simple double reed pipes, and the beat and drone of ritual percussion accompanying a tribal choir. Once again there is also the feeling of vast distances and time. But here it is the sands of the Sahara, the central African grasslands, the dark heart of the Congo. I hear stormclouds rolling over the veldt. The quiet prehistoric thunder of a herd of elephants. I don’t know what it was that made this African to me, but try as I might I cant see it any other way.

The third track of “American Masonry” is the longest, but to me it had the least to say. Not that it is bad, it just didn’t conjure up such crystal clear images in my head. Track three has an overwhelming feel of doom to it. This is a scared and angry crowd waiting for something to happen. This is the sound after a car accident when everyone is crying or screaming and all the crickets have stopped chirping. It builds and builds, but we aren’t allowed the climax. Nothing ever happens for the crowd of people. The police never arrive at the accident.

I liked “American Masonry”. Redglaer has quite a few other recordings available through Anarchy Moon that should be checked out. Also watch for Redglaer on tour this Autumn!

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KZSU Zookeeper Album Review
CorralComp05 2x CDr
Reviewed 2009-11-29 by Your Imaginary Friend
http://zookeeper.stanford.edu/index.php?s=byAlbumKey&n=888879&q=10&action=search&session=
Noise. Collection of artists (many locals including Rubber O Cement and 16 Bitch Pileup). All difficult stuff, varied, from chill and glitchy to full on noise onslaughts. Not much in the way of narcotic drone. For fans of gouging their eardrums out, getting evicted from your apartment or shot by the neighbors at 3 am.
Green Disc
1) glitchy blippy as in the cd player is broken 2) quiet drone 3) metallic noise bursts, ouch 4) difficult and gutteral noise, industrial, like downtown is crumbling under godzilla’s footsteps, turns into full-on noise onslaught 5) electro drones and harsh noise 6) electro creepiness, builds and is expectedly weird 7) harsh, briefer 8) starts kinda chill, sounds organic and metallic 9) harsh layers of noise 10) insane noise, holy shit 11) more onslaught, hypnotic really
Purple Disc
1) harsh electronic noise 2) mostly chill creepy 3, 4) harsh electronic noise 5) chill 6) harsh onslaught 7) chill mostly 8) chill droney 9) onslaught of feedback and sustain, more organic 10) brief bashout 11) harsh feedback, evil 12) harsh noise with weird voices 13) layers of noise (surprise!) 14) very very quiet fade-in, ambient spacey noise follows 15) interesting hammered dulcimer improv

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Foxy Digitalis link
Bob Bellerue and Jarret Silberman "Amplified Piano Duets" LP

Like many power electronics and PE adventures, Bellerue and Silberman's “Amplified Piano Duets” offers a cluster of gonzo feedback growls, creaks, shocks, stings, and pugilistic microtonal knockouts, as well as employing silence or near-silence to their advantage. The one-sided LP is rich with sustained moments of well-constructed white light drones and thrum, expertly cut and arranged between controlled sizzle, ambient room sounds and cascading crackles, concocting a highly listenable “noise” record. In fact, the loose use of the term “power electronics” may be a misnomer, but I use it here not arbitrarily, but as a generalized critical genre for introductory purposes. So to make myself clear, when you buy this sweet little album, don't expect anything along the lines of Whitehouse or The New Blockaders.

On “Amplified Piano Duets,” I never get the feeling that these two are merely lobbing lawn darts into melody, but rather focus on the relationships of sounds both similar and dissimilar. I wish there were liner notes detailing their process, but alas there aren't. I'm at a loss as to exactly how these two gentlemen arrive from piano to the pleasant cacophony they create. Voice Crack comes to mind as a good touchstone of influences, but I only make that comparison due to the end product (not the process). Bellerue and Silberman have a knack for impromptu composition, a trait which positively highlights the sounds they produce, and though I'm almost certain these are improvisations (one can never be too sure, the record has a concrete compositional feel, with sounds merging and colliding in such a way as to keep the primarily atavistic, atonal barrage moving while simultaneously cleaving tonal relationships asunder. Hats off to the musicians for understanding how restraint makes possible the curious fluidity of the recording. Very nice job. 9/10 -- P. Somniferum (2 December, 2009)

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The Wire November 2009 "Outer Limits" by Jim Haynes
Bob Bellerue & Jarrett Silberman "Amplified Piano Duets" Anarchymoon Recordings CD
Amplified, fuck yeah! Piano, not so sure about that. Los Angeles guttural Noisemongers Bob Bellerue and Jarrett Silberman could be using any source material to plus into their web of distortion boxes and/or Max/MSP patches. But there's much more to be said about their post-piano or post-whatever cacophony. These duets are dominated by sustained growls, as if a rabid lawnmower is hacking away at your ears, and are sunken by slabs of leaden Noise. The second track on the CD gives away some of the piano's internal workings, with an E-bow set against the strings and rough vibration from an ill-tempered motor. All these sounds are thrust through their Noise-making processes to dynamic effect.

(((ah too bad writers can't be there when you were born. he'd see there was no Max/MSP, no E-bows, only pianos and a minimum of electronics.... but thanks to Jim anyways for a great capital-Noise-worthy review)))

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Foxy Digitalis link
Redglaer "American Masonry" Anarchymoon
This one has been kicking around for a while, but having it arrive once again from my pals at Foxy D gave me a fine reason to revisit it. I’m really glad I did. American Masonry is a perfect recording for this ugly, wet, gray day. Many of Bob Bellerue’s projects take on a narrative of sort for me when I hear them. I’m not sure if it’s necessarily intentional, or if he really means to imply the specific things I hear, but he tends to employ a focus that gives a sense that he has a clear idea of where he’s going and how he’s going to get there. American Masonry might be the best example of this tendency. The first track conjures the sights and sounds of a massive thunderstorm. The sky gets dark, the rain starts, and in comes these pummeling, low-end synth sounds that just unleash a hellish, windswept downpour. The storm dissipates almost as quickly as it rolled in, leaving this empty, soaked landscape. I can almost smell that post thunderstorm odor as track one comes to a close. Track two is a bit more of a mellow affair, leaving behind some of the bombastic sounds to create more atmosphere than anything. This one is built on similar, reverb-laden, low-end synth drones, but brings in some feedback, high-pitched tones, and what might be some vocals. It creates more of a depiction of some psychological state that hovers somewhere between being awake and drifting into some dark dream state. Part three picks up where the second ends, taking you deeper into nightmarish netherworld – not that jarring, wake-up sort, but the kind where everything seems to be a bit off and getting worse by the minute. As the synth sounds slowly build to this incredible, distorted dirge, weird voices emerge and recede, organic metal sounds rise and fall, but in the end, all that’s left is an emptiness that sounds a lot like my tinnitus. Overall, this is a pretty incredible recording. Bellerue maintains an impressive control over the chaos he creates, balancing these intense, overdriven, claustrophobic moments with vast, empty soundscapes. There is always a sense of space, yet no indication of where that space is, how you got there, or how to get out. 9/10 - Joe Beres (June 10, 2009)

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Sound Projector
http://www.thesoundprojector.com/2009/06/09/black-skel/
By Ed Pinsent

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The Wire Sept 2008 "Size Matters" by Byron Colley

The Cherry Point / Obstacle Corpse / God Willing / Privy Seals "Dog Bone"
Great packaging and presentation on this comp of four harsh noise outfits from Los Angeles, New Orleans and Nashville. Apart from the stop-start puh of The Cherry Point, it's a fairly unrelenting assault, although the Privy Seals squeedle around the feedback pit more like trough-hogs than jackboots. Pretty intense.

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Heathen Harvest August 15 2008

http://www.HeathenHarvest.com/article.php?story=20080812063109807

Kilt Snow White In Hell
Kilt is something of a power trio of hard-hitting folks from the west coast free noise scene. Bob Bellerue (Anarchymoon, Redglaer), Raven Chacon and Sandor GF (of Bastardised repute) team up to deliver the goods on this colored vinyl LP. If you have any affinity whatsoever for the Wolf Eyes / American Tapes / Hair Police style of improvised electronics then look no further; these are kindred spirits to say the least. If you're looking for the type of electro-acoustic improv thats stems from the post-AMM camp, the Japanese “onkyo” scene or something you would find on the Erstwhile label then you may not be so smitten. The hand-screened covers, rubber-stamped disk labels and multiple record label release are a further testament to the contemporary American noise music propulsion from which these cats spring. In this case, you may actually score a copy of the record because there are a whopping 500 of these puppies.
“ Snow White In Hell” kicks off with a high-frequency whine that is joined almost immediately by low-mid rumbling and white noise shuffling. This pretty much sets the pace for what follows for the first side. There's no shortage of squalling feedback, abrasive textures, percussive noise and tortured voice escapades. Fortunately the music never becomes an overwhelming wall of noise and comes across as three people actually playing together rather than a pissing contest amongst a noise trio. The second track is significantly shorter and has a more industrial feel to it. Really it evokes imagery like that of a clean-up crew at the site of a bombed-out building. Not that it's necessarily negative, but is evocative of such a situation in a sonic context. The third cut clocks in at just over nine minutes and is less dense texturally for the most part. Here Kilt really shine as a group of listening improvisers and not just three guys making noise for the sake of making noise. About halfway through though the sparks really start to fly like an amphetamine-riddled teenager set loose with an old stone grinder and a wheelbarrow full of steel pipes. This is pretty cathartic actually and not as annoying as it may seem by description. The finale is the best part yet with what sounds like a clarinet player with his family jewels firmly placed mercilessly within a vice grip. Sure it's noise per se; riveting and unrelenting, but never offensive nor lacking in sensitivity.
The second side rolls along in similar fashion starting with a five minute track that segues almost imperceptibly into the concluding piece of nearly eleven minutes. Young musicians interested in making noise records should especially take note of the way these guys build and resolve tension. There's a natural sloppiness at times (inherent in most improvised music), but overall Kilt seem in control of the ebbs and tides of dense noise, subtle transitions and a sense of drama that is not always easy to achieve (nor often desired, unfortunately) in this type of music. Having said that, when the music gets noisy it does so to a degree that renders your petty defense mechanisms and prescription drugs' effectiveness useless. The consistency of the way in which the music flows is impressive enough and the conclusion is actually something of a disappointment. Perhaps that's the point. If this is Snow White in hell, I pity the fate of Cinderella or that cartoon babe from Sleeping Beauty. Just don't tell my daughters about this.
Information is scarce about who did exactly what, the scenario surrounding the recording and whatnot, but that's neither here nor there. “Snow White In Hell” is a solid record that should appeal to enthusiasts of noise music and challenging improvised electronics. The sound quality is not the best I've ever heard but is of little consequence to the overall effect of this disk. Luckily Kilt is not merely a one-off project, so here's to hoping for more free noise from this trio wherever they may be living now.

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AdHocIst
http://adhocist.blogspot.com/2008/08/smegma.html
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Smegma “The Smell Remains the Same” (AnarchyMoon Recordings)
Rating: 9/10
By Todd Brooks
Originally printed in Foxy Digitalis (13 August, 2008)

‘The Smell Remains the Same’ as a title is a pun meant to spin at least two ways… on a more obvious note, the title refers to the stomach-churning smell produced by the medical condition known as ‘smegma’, and on the other hand, is a play on words from their late ‘80s release entitled ‘Smell the Remains’. This is a collection of rare singles previously released between the years 1990-95 on labels such as Sympathy for the Record Industry (still extant, but in the 90’s this was one of my faves) and Tim/Kerr Records (another brilliant label) as well as Ignorance is Bliss, Cavity Search Records, and Horton/Reflex Records. Without going into a history lesson here, Smegma have been in existence since the 70’s and have passed through many changes in sound and membership as the years have gone by… so many years, so many members, so much recorded output. Along the way, Smegma have left a trail of some rare but important documents that are now being rounded up and re-released. This particular collection picks up some loose ends around the time-period of their Ism LP and between their brilliant Nattering Naybobs Of Negativity LP and their equally brilliant The Mad Excitement…LP (along with an unforgettable split with Merzbow). So this was no slacker, ho-hum, yawning era for Smegma. To be sure, there never has been one. Sure, members of Smegma, having lived through all of this, remember things differently, but for us, they haven’t slipped when it comes to making great music.

On this collection, you’re not going to find a duplication of the original singles neatly laid out in chronological order. Of the tracks released here, only Swamp Dick b/w LSD Bomb, which kicks off the LP, remains in its original sequence; the rest of the tracks have been taken out of their original sequences and rearranged for the album. This creates a new context in which to hear these songs and it works. As an album, it feels complete and has a nice flow. Included is an ultra-rare track from a long-gone, impossible to find seven inch compilation on Cavity Search Records but for reasons unknown to me, perhaps time constraints, only Fish Story from the single ‘The Whey’ was included.

The Smell Remains the Same is not necessarily for the uninitiated or the best introduction to Smegma’s work, but then again, where should one really start? Maybe, after all, it could be? Who’s to say? With Smegma, I feel the clichéd pool-water metaphor works pretty well - don’t waste your time dancing around getting your toes wet; you just gotta dive in head first. Don’t look for a particular ‘sound’, the Smegma sound doesn’t exist, only the name, so one shouldn’t spend too much time trying to classify or define their work. They are a collective in flux, creating spontaneous musics and occasional rock-oriented substrata, that’s what they do. Listen and enjoy or don’t; either way. Whatever you call their music… fucked, weird, psychotic, schizoid, Dadaist, humorous, goofy, etc… you’re basically right. All of the above. That’s what’s so enjoyable about them and that’s what makes this record so fucking good… the record is great because of SMEGMA!

Limited vinyl, 500 on blue, 500 on black with excellent liner notes by David Morgan and artwork by one of Smegma’s long-time members, Amazon Bambi. Definitely recommended! 9/10

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Animal Psi 22 March 2008 http://www.animalpsi.com/index.php?entry=entry080328-201242
Tecumseh Crossing Divides
Like an ape at the monolith, what can I say about this LP? The ‘Crossing Divides’ long-player by Tecumseh (Oregon’s Jeremy Long, Ian Hawk, John Krausbauer) is one side-long and two side-splitting tracks of immense, motionless drone/metal beyond the Earthern mantle and appropriating the drone work of Bonus, and co. The iconoclasm of single-note double bass strumming seems to resonate beyond ear and body, into the earth, physically reshaping the structure which receives their affirming groan. Slick, seamless, and vibrating too heavy to hold, the players are there no doubt, but don’t seem to mind the intense vacuum freezing the movement of their every thrust forward. “Ten Thousand Leagues Down Under” parts I and II straddle both sides of the disc, with closer “Thames” fording the final watery stretch. Third-handed electronics fill the screen such that you must know to look for them (and even then you will still lose sight), both undergirding and undermining the “song” structure, simultaneously macrophonic and entirely anemic, static. Thick black vinyl comes in fancy, three panel sleeves with glittery screen-job, limited to 384 copies. Both labels make a powerful contribution here with their respective 19th release. Impenetrable.

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The Wire April 2008
Smegma The Smell Remains The Same: Singles 90-95
This compilation of Smegma singles from the first half of the 1990s overlaps pretty precisely with what Oblivia - turntablist and vocalist - described in The Wire 270 as "the worst time ever for Smegma". Having first coalesced around the Los Angeles Free Music Society in the early 70s, the loosely tied collective had moved to Portland, Oregon, and become involved in the motions of its punk underground. But when the Pacific North West's slo-mo punk/Metal hybridss found commercial apotheosis as Grunge, the corporate sheen it acquired along the way was always going to be exactly opposed to Smegma's obsession with absurdist freeform noise collage, as well as the most scatalogical endpoints implied by the Stooges' primalism.

The Smell Remains The Same shows no signs of sapped energies or defeatism though. Smegma's collective memory regurgitates some frazzled rock tramps like "Swamp Dick", "Walkie Talkie" and "Thicket", whose Beefheartian gristle makes you think they can't have felt too much like prophets in the wilderness in this period. Similar racket by Thinkin' Fellers Union Local 282 and Truman's Water was coming out of San Diego. The rest is the kind of hallucinatory stew which made Wolf Eyes such devoted Smegma fans: all chaotic, cloudy overlaps of vocals, samples and homemade instruments. "LSD Bomb" bases itself on a dialog sample from po-faced cop show Dragnet, which suggests the thought that, like Philip K Dick, Smegma work best when they're trawling deep through the trash stratum of pop-cultural memory. (Sam Davies)

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Foxy Digitalis link

Various Artists "ABQ=/=LAX" 7"
Anarchymoon / SickSickSick

Great Record! This is an excellent example of doing it right and I hope it may serve as a template for further adventures from others out there (new labels and artists take notice). Aside from the amazing cover artwork by comic artist and contributor Mark Beyer and aside from the incredible music nestled in the grooves of the crystalline-clear platter; what makes this record so great is that it is a collaborative effort from 4 labels run by the artists involved. Everybody wins. The public gets the record and no one had to break their bank to get the music out there. There should be a lot more of that communal spirit and camaraderie; anyone running a label knows we just don?t make any money at this anyway, so why masochistically drive ourselves into the poorhouse trying to put out great art? I don?t mean to overstate the act of collaboration here as somehow entirely unique and groundbreaking, but you have to admit, label collaboration at this level is noticeably lacking in today?s saturated world of d.i.y. labels.
5 noise artists on one 7inch is nearly unheard of in recent years, but sevens are an excellent format for noise musicians because of the imposed time constraints of the medium. A nice noise work can reasonably take at least 5 minutes or more to build the momentum before unleashing the crux of the work, but with a seven, things are different; an artist has only a few minutes to make it count and everyone on this record does exactly that ? they each make their contribution count! Each artist delivers a sonically powerful track making this a compelling listen from start to finish. Side A opens with heavy-hitting, power-player Raven Chacon (Kilt, Black Guys, Dog Shit Taco, etc.etc. / Sicksicksick) who delivers a heavy- feedback-ripper that descends into a searing and sinister haunt. Next up is Alchemical Burn (angaym k. oss / Ohmni) who draws out manipulated electronics and feedback into a dive-bombing, ?destroy the mixer, blow the circuits? all-out assault. Riot police are called in and the whole thing is over before you know it, only a bloodied document remains for future ears. Side B opens with Redglaer (Bob Bellerue of HalfNormal / Anarchymoon Recordings) giving us a distorto-ripper of damaged tones and broken electronics. Following is legendary comic-artist and sometimes noise-musician Mark Beyer who brings a manic-clanger called Radiator Music #1, which I believe from the title, can be taken literally as a sound source. The final piece is a live track from Alan George Ledergerber (Black Guys / Hype Machine) and is a subdued, glitched-soundscape of manipulated electronics. Overall, a great release. Get one now! It?s limited to 550 copies. 8/10 -- Todd Brooks (18 March, 2008)

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Digitalis Industries http://www.digitalisindustries.com/foxyd/reviews.php?which=3094
Tecumseh "Crossing Divides"
From the bowels of Portland, Oregon emerges the dark lords of Tecumseh hell-bent on rattling the rafters of your home and, hopefully, bringing the whole damn thing to its knees. On "Crossing Divides," Tecumseh is a trio of two basses and electronics. John Krausbauer, Ian Hawk, and Jeremy Long have crafted one of my favorite records recently with this blackened offering.
The thing that instantly gets you about "Crossing Divides" is how fucking slow it moves. It's frozen molasses. Okay, maybe it's not the first thing... maybe that's the brooding duel between both basses. Krausbauer and Hawk get totally subeterranean. "Ten Thousand Leagues Down Under," both parts 1 and 2, plod along like a sordid plague reaching out its tendrils into every corner of the globe. This is the black death, folks, creeping up your sidewalk and blowing down the doors. Tecumseh churns out the best kind of mud. This has serious flavor.
These bass lines... they just sink in further and further until you're skull is completely submerged. Rolling along, twisting and turning and ever so gently applying pressure to your forehead with the heel of a steel-toed boot... so thick and heavy... sinking... you don't even realize you're drowning until your lungs are full of divine sludge. 9/10 -- Brad Rose (22 January, 2008)

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Volcanic Tongue http://volcanictongue.com/
Smegma "The Smell Remains The Same"
New collection that gathers a slew of tough-to-locate singles and one-offs from avant/freak unit and LAFMS affiliates Smegma cut between 1990 and 1995, ranging from snatches of doctored tape and sniggering sub-cultural insurrection through avant garage bombs, skronking improvised blood-letting and a whole ton of goof. One of the most consistently cracked visions of the post-Rock era. This one features Swamp Dick, L.S.D. Bomb, Fish Story, Found & Lost, Yes Your Majesty, Change Me, Boils and Carbuncles, Walkie Talkie, Vox and Thicket. Edition of 1000 copies remastered by Mike Lastra, sleeves by Amazon Bambi and liners by David Morgan.

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Weirdo Records http://www.weirdorecords.com
Smegma "The Smell Remains The Same" LP
The squelching big band shudders their way through small slices- singles that were released on a wide variety of fairly crappy indie labels during the early 90s. Their instant-shitrock, country haze, sampling interruptions & novelty goof aspects are all here, though a little less mushed up altogether than they are in long pieces.

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Vital Weekly 600 http://www.vitalweekly.net
SMEGMA - THE SMELL REMAINS THE SAME (LP by Anarchymoon)
REDGLAER - AMERICAN MASONRY (CD by Anarchymoon)
Though being a constant factor in noise & free rock for as long as those genres might even exist, I can't recall ever listening to a full Smegma album apart from collaborations with Wolf Eyes or Jazkamer. This new LP, subtitled SINGLES 90-95, might therefore be the best introduction to this group that has been around for longer then I've been. Considering that this is a collection of 7" tracks it makes for quite a diverse and exciting listen, even including a relatively straightforward garage rock track with opener ≥Swamp Dick". What amazes me most here is how good they actually are as musicians. Tracks like ≥Fish Story" end up as some alien free jazz, not unlike some Art Ensemble of Chicago, and what also strikes me is the spirited use of loops, found sound and sampling. It makes the group sound in places like a musique concrète lab experiment injected with a viral disease. I wonder if their all-out approach to sampling is something from the 90s or if this has always been their sound. I will certainly need to start checking out more of them now. Better late then never.
Much less known, and much younger, is Redglaer. The solo project of one Bob Bellerue, this new CD contains a live recording made in Tulsa in 2006. The title of this recording is chosen well, it sounds like somebody who knows his craft, and builds sonic walls for his after-work pleasure. The music takes place at the crossing between drone music, dark ambient and the occasional noise, but stays abstract enough to neither annoy or grab attention. At some moments vocals come to the fore, especially in the third, final, and best track, which for a short moment sounds like an extended buddhist chant overlayered with, I assume, Redglaer's own wordless incantations ending in some rather nice stormy weather. (RM)

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Aquarius Records aquariusrecords.org
Tecumseh "Crossing Divides" LP
This one is for the slow and low crowd. More gorgeous slow motion sludgery, crawling dreamdronedoom, a slow black sprawl, but unlike the current crop of guitar-against-the-amp droners (and no dis, we love that stuff), this disc by the trio Tecumseh, harkens back to the classic Earth 2, the record that spawned a million sludge bands, by reintroducing the riff. And as we must have mentioned before, it's always ALL about THE RIFF.
So all three looooong tracks here, begin with a riff, downtuned of course, nearly to the point of dissolution, and slowed way down, so that 9 or 10 times through the riff might cover half a side of vinyl, and that riff is stretched out as far as it will go, the notes drifting in blackened expanses of buzz, no drums to speak of, it's all about the riff. EXCEPT, for something strange going on in the background. A constant low level hum, the soft swirl of wind like whirs, all manner of subtle buzzing and layered drones, all woven into a constantly, but subtly, shifting background, in front of which, Tecumseh's slow-low grind creeps and crawls. Not so much heavy as it is meditative, it's very dreamy and soothing and mesmerizing, not to take anything away from these guys, cuz I'm sure this sort of band prides itself on it's heaviness, but this is the perfect metallic drifting off music, almost like they've discovered some new genre, sludge-ambient, doom-age, whatever you decide to call it, it's pretty amazing, and fans of all things slow motion, downtuned and yes, heavy will dig this big time.
Packaged in gorgeous thick fold over gatefold sleeve, hand screened, blue metallic on grey, and of course quite limited...

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smooth assailing 10/17/07 http://smoothassailing.blogspot.com/2007/10/smegma.html
the smell remains the same (singles '90-'95) 12"
[2007, anarchymoon]
smegma is a seminal experimental group currently operating out of portland, oregon. they've been around since 1973, and have had more than a handful of members pass through their ranks. their current line-up is amazon bambi, oblivia (aka rock'n'roll jackie), dr. id, burned mind, ju suk reet meate, borneo jimmy (richard meltzer) and vibraband. seeing as how this record captures a five year period in the band's thirty-four year existence, i doubt that that was the personnel for these recordings. i think meltzer joined the band in the latter part of the '90s. oblivia, bambi, dr. id and meate were definitely involved, that much i know thanks to david morgan's overview / review included on the lp's sleeve.

the smell remains the same is a compilation of smegma's seven inch releases from, you guessed it! 1990-1995. one of the things that i found pretty fucking cool (and a little odd) is that a few of these singles were originally released by the long running (and rad) sympathy for the record industry. sftri, in the red and damaged goods are easily my favorite garage rock oriented labels.

bands like sun city girls, caroliner and smegma are ones where it takes someone sending me something of theirs for me to actually listen. this is despite the fact that i have numerous albums from all three on my hard drive. they're attributed with being "weird" or "difficult", and musically schizophrenic. not only that, but they have rather sizable discographies. if they refuse to settle into one easily identifiable music genre, i'm not really sure which releases to start with, and would rather not listen to anything then have to wade through a bunch of stuff that i might not like (admittedly, i'm pretty fucking picky) in order to get to the albums that i would. too time consuming. so, i'm really happy that bob sent this to me. it's the perfect wake-up call.

the music contained on these ten tracks are a pleasing mixture of structured rock, freer experimentation and dadaist blather. for the most part these are pretty disjointed, though there's definitely some cross-over between the latter two. as for the rock songs, first up is swamp dick. killer fucking southern, erm, swamp rock. jackie's lazy drawl syncing up perfectly with the bassline. i particularly liked the stop and start rhythm of it. musically, it's not hard to picture this track coming from the cramps or the gun club. lyrically, it's story-telling. instead of your basic verse chorus verse, the catchiness of the music itself is the hook. the next rocker won't come until the eighth track, walkie talkie, but it's a great one. this is essentially a three and a half minute jammer. there's some nice, but not domineering, caterwauling from one of the ladies, which wonderfully compliments the occasional guitar squeals from ju suk reet meate. the closer, thicket, also has a southern fried flavor to it. that's aided by rooster samples in the beginning, but the male singing is in an bible belt-like manner, which has something to do with the lyrics, but i pay more attention to the music and the sound of the vocals than i do to what's actually being said. it's less air-guitar worthy; slower, more evenly keeled and features another good bassline along with some twangy and looser guitar playing. i absolutely love those galloping guitar licks.

now, on to the experimental stuff. l.s.d. bomb implements a repeating sample of "marijuana is the flame, heroin is the fuse, lsd is the bomb". this will become more and more manipulated as the track plays on until it gets affected into oblivion. afterwards, other samples will pop up. along with this, there's saxophone playing, light electronic accompaniment, and screechy instrumentation. it's these improvised tracks, sans vocals, that i liked the most, out of the non-rock set. fish story, again uses samples. i'm digging this one a bit more, mostly because of the panned, repetitious electronics and background synth drone. jackie's turntable manipulations are a nice touch as well. the structured base worked nicely with the freer instrumentation and made me think of crawlspace, a little bit. yes your majesty will combine sampling with repetitious bass guitar chords, unobtrusive guitar noise and random metal tinkling sounds, which provide the only percussion. boils and carbuncles is the last of the less weird experimental pieces. here, i really like the organic instrumentation, particularly from the drummer. the sample that they've chosen is of a more musical variety (delightfully catchy, and not overused) and suits smegma's music perfectly. this one has discernible vocals. they're pretty nonsensical, but didn't detract from my enjoyment of the music.

the more experimental tracks which feature vocals: change me and vox, are my least favorite on the album. musically, change me isn't too far removed from any of the other pieces. there's sparse instrumentation as well as good multi-channel usage, but i can't get into the lyrics with an adult woman talking about having her diapers changed. supposedly, there's a double meaning having to do with religion, but i'm not much for veiled metaphors. with vox, as you can gather from the title, the focus is on people using their voices. it sounds like everyone's talking and making sounds with their mouth at the same time. meh. some experiments in sound are more successful than others. this one's just a bit to inane for me.

listening to the smell remains the same, it's clear that these guys (and gals) were pushing the proverbial envelope, but my favorite aspect of this band has to be the fact that when they choose to play rock music, they're fucking great. granted, the lyrics and "singing" style are still unconventional, but you can't take anything away from their musical talent. conversely, when they want to be weird, they can be fucking weird. it's really the best of both worlds. while i can't say that i was a fan of everything that they were doing on these tracks, i can say that what i did like makes me want to seek out more of their material. i'm won over.

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outer space gamelan :: http://outerspacegamelan.blogspot.com/2007/09/various-artists-powerfield-kilt-snow.html

Various Artists - Power/Field / Kilt - Snow White in Hell / Redglaer - Aneleutheromania (Anarchymoon 2xCD-R/LP/CS)

[power/field cover image] Grab bag of fairly new Anarchymoon trans-missives on mixed format...in case you need help decoding, the compilation is the 2xCD-R, the Kilt is the LP and label proprietor Redglaer aka Bob Bellerue lays claim to the tape. Anyway you probably remember Anarchy Moon (or "anokmoon") from the bang-up job they did with that Dead Machines/John Wiese/Damion Romero set not too long ago, and ideally even the Roman Torment/Feed the Dragon 12" splt and the Redglaer 10" because those were worth a look too. Bob's back in a big way with these three and more, a Smegma LP compiling disparate 7" tracks (!) and a five-way split 7" with Raven Chacon, Redglaer, Alchemical Burn, AGL, and Mark Beyer. For now though, let's focus on eating what's on our plate, starting with the compilation.

According to the bit of info included on the "Power/Field" xerox, all 23 tracks across these two discs were "performed and recorded live on-site somewhere, outside of the studio and the stage", hence the title in large part I do imagine. The first disc is a pretty even split between power and field, with certain artists devoting themselves to the former (most of these found towards the front of the disc, it seems) and others to the latter. I have to say I'm more a fan of the field recordings - \\\'s "Vive Le Rock" sounds great for what could be a bunch of rocks (geddit?) bouncing around inside an aluminium bowl like metal kernels popping, while William C. Harrington's "LAX 9/17/06" and Christopher Fleeger's "Sea Gulls at Lake Ella" sound exactly like what the titles say they are, and all the better for it. The sinister gnaw of Chronicles of Lemur Mutation's "Cattle Gate" and David Kwan's "Howl" find their power in understated recordings from out in the backwoods of the planet and are a perfect oasis peppered between noisier jaunts like Phroq's static/glitch "Glass Building II" and No John's all-out noise attack "Nieuwpoort 2006". If the previous tracks hinted at some kind of "noise" inflection, he's the first to say what we were all thinking, and it marks a definite seachange for the rest of the disc. Jeff Gburk roars out of the gate with a sinus-blowing drone that whittles its way down to nervous static through distorted radio frequencies within its 8 minute running time and Infiltration Lab goes the opposite direction, starting from nothing and working up an impressive boiler room lurking pitch that'll take your fingernails clean off. From there though, the tracks get slightly faceless - tracks by Oubliette, David Kendall, sheaMgauer and Gen 26 all focus on electronically-generated rackets and drones with a low degree of memorability about them. Only Stephen Cornford's simple yet elegant "Air Con Quartet" (which I doubt is really what it claims to be but who the hell knows) sticks in the grey matter with its dull, wavering hums, but then again it does have almost ten minutes to get its point across.

The rest of the lengthy pieces are given over to the second disc, and there are six to speak of - one each from IDX1274, Dave Phillips, Ecomorti, Burial Hex, Nova-sak and Bellerue's Redglaer, all at least 11 minutes in length. Similar to disc one, these tracks waver in between the "field" and the "power" but you really wouldn't know it judging from IDX1274's hulking opener "Field of Waist High Grass (II)" which doesn't really sound like a field of waist high grass at all unless it has come to life and is attempting to swallow you whole. IDX1274's M.O. is that he doesn't use any keyboards or samplers and everything you hear is hand-manipulated from original ("clean") sources. Hard to pick out anything clean from this slobbering mess, but that's really more a compliment to IDX's knack for obfuscation. And it certainly sounds cut up and re-stitched too, but I think he's telling the truth. I think I'm more a fan of the methods than the results, but that's just me being a pussy more than anything. Nova-sak's "Field Power" (hm) is of a similar vein, this one sounding altogether more spacey and with some dropped-out moments but still noise-rooted and birthed from decidedly non-nature-al equipment. Burial Hex's "Reaping the Keep (Outsider Version)" has me on the fence, like a ten-minute slice of greyish blur spitfires, storm activity, darkened skies over vast farmlands, and shoot it even starts with a cowbell...I'd probably enjoyed a more slimmed down version of all this electrolysis, this one just seems to ramble. Ecomorti's "amaz on p inkele PHANT s eal for the Xtinct" uses the sounds of two endangered species' (I'll let you piece together which) in an off-kilter hum that's still more of the field, but doesn't quite sustain itself over its alotted running time. Curious I should say that because Dave Phillips' fantastically titled "Most Adults Are Atrophied Children Whose Fire Has Long Since Been Extinguished" (a phrase lifted from William Bennett's blog, sez Google) almost befalls the same fate but has a certain je ne sais quoi going for it that just sweeps me up in its ghost limbs like a princess. What it is, is an absolute slow burner of married high-pitched whine and pond sounds; ducks, loons, crickets, the like. Its only build up is the last two minutes when the drone fades out entirely, with the soothing sounds of waterfall and a duck to take it home. Beautiful! And it's as close to new age as you're ever gonna get from the Schimpfluch group so just take it. Redglaer closes off the proceedings with an awesome pieces that combines the best of both worlds, taking a full six minutes to slowly start to churn and transform into a static-speckled acid-burned noise jam with just thee most glorious oscillations that, at this point, sound more like heaven than anything Yod himself plunked onto the globe. Guess when it's your compilation, you gotta step up your game? Challenge met!

Sequencing questions on disc one and general - let's face it, inevitable - inconsistencies aside (and that's just my own personal take, maybe you'll dig how it is just fine), this one was definitely worth the two years of work that went into it. Painfully limited to 200 copies and housed in one of those sexy cardboard tuck-in sleeves, it's too bad more people won't get to enjoy it. But as of today there's still hope for Y-O-U.

[KILT cover image] Bellerue's also got a stake in this one, the debut full-length from his Kilt project what also features Raven Chacon and Sandor Finta. When I first got it and had no idea what it was, I confess to hoping it was a Scottish noise (or, going by the cover alone, black metal) band making a play on using the word "killed" as a band name, but some things aren't meant to be. I'll settle for what I got, and what I got ain't so bad either. "Snow White in Hell" is two long sides of noise demolish that purports to have actual track times and seperations but I'll be fucked if I can hear any of it, it's pretty tough to distinguish from all the general wreckage taking place. Sounds like all three have their hands in pretty deep here with overloaded circuits, junk pedals pushed to extremes, gibbering Porky Pig metallic stammers, and heavy abuse of what can only be described as a cross between a dentist's drill and a world-razing gamma laser (Light of Judgement?)...these cats are rough and raw and bringing it back to how you remember the good times circa early 90's Japanoise filth a la Incapicants or Hijokaidan. It's good to be reminded every now and then that blasts as harsh as this are still rippling through the strata. Because yes sometimes I do need to be reminded. If you do too, then get Kilt. Ahahaha, moving on.

[Redglaer "aneleutheromania" cover image] A bit of full disclosure before I get into this one(-sider): I'm predisposed to like any tape with "fuck the government and the people" stamped on the inside because well I'm a sucker like that. "Aneleutheromania" brings together a selection of live Redglaer performances in a rather brutish cover wrap, and hits all the aforementioned aspects of Bob Bellerue's noise fetishism. It veers bodaciously from tinnitus-inciting sine scrawls to guttural noise sludge and a full spectrum of oscillations in between conjuring up feelings of radio transmissions, field recordings, 80's industrialism, concrete, and more. At the "lighter" moments it sounds like a Wolf Eyes/American Tapes thing and current Whitehouse by way of Africa in the darker spots. The odd vocalized grumblings and/or shouts, generally deformed by all the electronic gnarl they'll battling through, are just the sweet touch needed to push this one from sassy to salacious...but it's got bite, believe you me. Only complain is that it's a touch long for my tastes, but so's everything else in the world so I can't fault Bob for that one. Definitely a cool smattering, but I'd recommend the "American Masonry" 10" before this one, if it's still available.

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smooth assailing :: http://smoothassailing.blogspot.com/ (7/28/07)
KILT "snow white in hell"
[2007, anarchymoon / bastardised]
more noise supergroup action! the formerly los angeles-based kilt is comprised of the recent portland resident bob bellerue (redglaer, halfnormal, feed the dragon, anarchymoon recordings), raven chacon (death convention, dog shit taco) and sandor finta (auto da fe, dog shit taco, andorkappen, harrasor, the abstractions, wounded head, bastardised). i've had this cd split between andorkappen and the cherry point, but didn't know who the hell andorkappen was until i got this record. i believe the other two members still reside in the la area, and i'm semi-curious to know if bellerue's relocation has affected il corral... i'm also firmly convinced that the city of portland steals everyone's good musicians. luckily for me, portland isn't very far away.
you know how when you play a record, even without speakers, you can faintly hear the music? well, the screeee emanating from my turntable as i was ripping this was damn impressive. it's even more impressive now that i'm actually listening to it. snow white in hell is the kind of noise record that dares, nay, double dares you to listen to it with headphones on. i'm not that crazy. this shit is brutal and made even more interesting by being (generally) baseless and not relying on the shrill / dense dynamics which have become commonplace. what's really going to get you during this lp are the high-pitched squeals and feedback, prevalent throughout, but the more scaled down works, tracks two and four, that's where we get the full force. piercing feedback in all its glory with nary a shred of rumble to cloak itself with. as much as i dig that, i'd have to say that the album's other three tracks are really kilt's money-makers. can i say money-makers? it's with these that the trio incorporates a broader range of sounds (all noisy!) and flesh things out while still managing to avoid coming off as retreads. i definitely recommend checking out this record, but remember, please listen responsibly.

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Bull Tongue :: arthurmag.com (not sure if this will be published in the upcoming Arthur ie the phoenix rising July 07 issue)
Los Angeles label Anarchy Moon [anarchymoon.com] scored big a while back with the Redglaer [myspace.com/redglaer] American Masonry 10?, which was a wicked ride through high force audio death wind. The label has a local connection to Il Corral [ilcorral.net], a venue catering to the most extreme forms of L.A. sput and has released a somewhat mouth-watering double LP documenting the night of Friday the 13th January 2006 there. The acts are powerbook sound jammer John Weise [home.earthlink.net/~johnwiese/], electronic junk and spirit head duo Dead Machines (John Olson of Wolf Eyes and Tovah O’Rourke Olson) [myspace.com/tovaholson], low end cement-mix slabber Damion Romero [poweracoustics.org/discography/] and a collaboration of all three – each to a side. Each joint gives you a real time glimpse into each of these people’s noise emission world and anyone familiar with their catalogues may think it’s certainly not their most killer takes. The interesting thing though, and this holds true for the genre in which they’re active, is that the process of reaching for personal epiphany is as rewarding as hearing an artist’s chosen best effort. Weise spends time with comparatively quiet stations, Dead Machines deal with a more fractured pace than is expected, and Romero really just sits on a deadzone of drone, although three-quarters of the way through his piece starts to glow in a subtly remarkable fashion. The get together on side 4 comes across as any jam out in any one of these budz basements and therein lies its charm. All these cats have stronger sides out there, but these performances are the sound of them in true experimental style, seeking, prodding, checking in and checking out and back again – everything that makes this scene so goddamned great in the first place.

Also on Anarchy Moon is the split LP betwixt Roman Torment and Feed The Dragon. Roman Torment’s side is as good a place as any to hear the current state of American power electronic harshness. Not a full rectal blare nor a squiggle fest these boys, Jeff Witscher (Impregnable, Deep Jew) and Evan Pacewicz (Moth Drakula [swamplandnoise.com/mothd.htm]) ride the flaring noise gush in an almost compositional style taking the listener through a harsh yet meditative drive. Feed The Dragon is another nom de plume, like aforementioned Redglaer, of Bob Bellerue [halfnormal.com], a Naropa Institute graduate and a man who has spent jugs of time exploring, thinking and creating all sorts of transmissions of noise humanism. His side is typically jake and another cog in this cat’s excellent life.

[NOTE: Albert Ortega was somehow overlooked in the Bull Tongue review of Feed the Dragon. apologies to him. rockstars - you can't trust anyone!!]

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Outer Space Gamelan :: outerspacegamelan.blogspot.com
Dead Machines, Damion Romero & John Wiese - Friday the 13th (Anarchy Moon 2xLP)
When you play a gig on a friday that just happens to be the thirteenth day of the month, is there really any other option? You gotta release it, man. And you gotta get that nice old school horror feel to the cover to make it complete. Would you believe me if I told you that's exactly what happened here? It's the truth. John Wiese, Damion Romero and the Dead Machines played a show at today's "it" venue Il Corral on January 13th 2006, Anarchy Moon boss Bob Bellerue was on hand to record it, and the rest is noize hiztory. Pretty pretty packaging job on the sleeve too, 12"x40" screened semi-gatefold fully-scorchin' doodles all over. It hurts so good.
So let's break this down...Wiese, Romero, Dead Machines and four sides of vinyl, how they gonna fill that last side? You know it, collaborative battle royale. The three artists/four sides combo is crucially under-executed, glad to see it's coming around like last year's Double Leopards/Mouthus/Sunroof! dance and now this one. Wiese bats lead off and wow brother, not at all like I expected. He's known for laying it on heavy and low and low and heavy and I wasn't sure how well a live recording would translate to record but this is a beaut. A slow-moving trawl through smog-choked wastelands forcing you to wrestle through the haze, winding up at a run-down busted shack. The rusted iron gate swings open, sounds like it's coming from within your head, wind chimes all clanging ominously persuading you to turn back but you're drawn in...foot's set inside the house and it hits you like a Tyson right to the stomach - this is your house! But you died a hundred years ago!!!! It's a ride, no foolin'...probably even better here than it was live, something about hearing it under the covers in the privacy/confines of your own house, angering poltergeists and shaking spirits.

Dead Machines (it's some guy and his wife, I don't really know) start on eleven, like being belted with a billion theta waves. That assault falls off into a low mechanical rumble hit with spasmodic fuzzy coughing from what I assume to be the jreaded J-tar and then a lovely/horrific flute duo psych-out. Side ends with probably the harshest harsh noise of the set which isn't very harsh at all, Olson slops on surges of power strokes to the ambiance noire hamster-wheeled out by Tovah. Vicious and delicious.
Damion Romero's fully harnessed the machine-generated drone at this point in his career and that expertise is on full display here. He takes a while to get going, cobbling together low groaning and threatening, warbly crunches that sound almost guitar-like but I don't think that's a part of his set up...anyway all this results is a total brain-wasting drone like a grindhouse chainsaw symphony. Basically a fifteen minute long searing. I feel like I'm the bread inside the toaster, charred but not black. Go figure.
Which brings us to the trio (which is more like a quartet really) performance, a lot quieter than I would've expected with Wiese and Romero (and Tovah?) building a rocky foundation over which Olson exercises the sax chops as the noise behind him reaches a boil. To be perfectly frank Dead Machines with John Wiese and Damion Romero doesn't sound a whole lot different from Dead Machine without John Wiese and Damion Romero but the two do a good enough job filling in the necessary holes with buzzes and drones. Overall though they never really go anywhere as a unit and it kinda sounds like lip service, but these kinds of dream-team hook-ups do have a tendency of setting the bar to unrealistically (or unfairly) high levels so I'm not too...plussed.

Overall these sides are still quite good, can't bag on the fourth too much since it's more of a bonus than anything. And you may still love it yet. My only real complaint is that both my A-sides (Wiese and Romero) are pretty scratchy for the first few grooves, I dunno if that's across the board or what but it's a slight irritant. Bob was kind enough to send me a couple other recent Anarchy Moon jammers in the same mail crate so expect those soon enough. In the mean time these are limited to 515 copies so gauge your purchasing accordingly if need be.

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Outer Space Gamelan :: outerspacegamelan.blogspot.com

Redglaer - American Masonry (Anarchy Moon 10") / Roman Torment/Feed the Dragon - Split (Anarchy Moon LP)
As promised, the final two installations from this current chunk of waxes from Bob Bellerue's Anarchy Moon label. The first is a stab from the man himself under the Redglaer moniker and the other is a split between a couple of American noise groups, Roman Torment (Jeff Witscher and Evan Pacewicz) and Feed the Dragon (Bellerue along with Albert Ortega). Like the "Friday the 13th" double, the packaging on both of these is quite a treat. The 10" is in a cardboard cover with painted-on cover and glued-on back photo w/glossy insert while the 12" has front and back pastings of images varying in degrees of horror with another beauty insert. The former is limited to 330 copies, the latter to 300. You can see hot pix on the Anarchy Moon website if you so desire.

Never heard Redglaer (or any of Bellerue's work) before but I see I've been missing out like a sap. Apparently "American Masonry" was recorded in an enormous large warehouse in Tulsa with Bellerue using the structure's natural resonances to bolster whatever kind of damage he's applying. What you end up with is a great slab of computer- (?) generated/cement-slapped spectral waft, a dark grey cloud of fear and tension locked in a holding head somewhere above your head. Celestial and terrestrial. Organic and orgasmic. Slanted and en...nevermind. The flip is an angrier whack of synth- (??) induced squalor, careeneing back and forth from the right side of the brain to the left. Gently washes away only to roar back for a screaming finale. Excellently executed spaced, outer-reaching drone. No clue what Bellerue's implements are aside from the building and maybe it's better that way. Judge the results and not the methods, right? Well the results are quite tremendous. For the turntable-unable you can also get "American Masonry" on CD but I'm sure it won't sound this good.
Last I heard from the Roman Torment duo they were ripping it up on the Troniks CD "Skin Game" with a record due on Hospital Productions. Not sure if that ever surfaced but they're keeping up appearances here with a side-long blasterpiece dubbed "The Gift of Grief". Total non-stop in-the-red wall of high-wired electronics geared to explode synapses. Witscher and Pacewicz keep all hands/feet/whatevers to the metal for the full twentyish minutes and spew out a dizzying juggernaut of blindingly fast, brutal, and surely harsh flat-out fucking noise. Totally worth the possibility of getting evicted over. Buckle up or down as you see fit.

Feed the Dragon's side "Bromide Romance" is a mixed bag of junky electronics, UFO-transmitted soundwaves, buzzing matrices, robotic splurge and a whole lot else strewn methodically throughout the slow-evolving piece. Bit of a baffler and not too much to say but it's well done and engaging and that's all you need to know. If this helps, Anarchy Moon sez: "narcotic ritual. the history of desperate ages and the final moments of delivery into chaos / nothingness, scorpions erupting from cactii. who will be left to laugh about the death of civilization???". Did it help? I thought it would. I think the label website also offers some MP3 downloads so get on that huh?
Considering these and upcoming cuts (a couple of heavy noise 2x7"s, new Il Corral 2006 2xCD-R, Yellow Swans 12", etc) it looks like you can safely add Anarchy Moon to the ever-growing list of quality labels serving up slick and slimey doses of new noise. Good for music, no good for your wallet...you know how it is.

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The Wire "Size Matters" (Dec 06)
Redglaer is Bob Bellerue's experiment in harsh textural environments, and he finds himself a dandy of a harsh one inside a huge concrete warehouse in Tulsa. American Masonry is the celebration of the space's acoustics. Filling the booming structure with dark rumbles, antic squeedles and sheer blather, Bellerue fully engages the cavernous sonics, creating chittering walls of echoed overtones and hints of eternal combustion. He roars through the space like a giant robot, spluttering sparks and evil intent all the way.

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Hanson Records :: hansonrecords.net (he's sold out of them, so it's no longer on his site...)
Redglaer "American Masonry"
Man... This 10 inch really blew my gord... Prolly my fave 10 inch since the PETER FONDA TRIBUTE on MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH... Man... REVERB GALORE and preolly the BEST DRONE to be made in the past few years... Scraping metal drone... Will keep you OVER satisfied till the next TNB/ORGANUM collab...which we know AIN'T HAPPENIN'... SO FUCKin GRAB THIS ASAP.. HIGHEST RECCOMENDATION! All hand painted covers on THICK cardstock....

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Volcanic Tongue:: volcanictongue.com
Friday the 13th
New collaborative release in a classy teenage/slasher style from these three future-primitives with a solo side each and one massive three-way to top it all of. Comes in a screened 3-colour gatefold sleeve that is so beautifully assembled it could almost be Japanese. Limited edition of 515 copies. Supremely violent overtone assault cut-up with moments of stark, frozen nada. Fantastic and highly recommended.

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Aquarius Records :: aquariusrecords.org
-----------------
Friday The 13th 2xLP : Dead Machines, Damion Romero, John Wiese
With a lineup like that you'd probably be expecting some sort of ear
splitting noise free-for-all. A blasting batch of brutality designed
to melt your speakers into little black puddles, to send your
neighbors diving for the phone to call the cops, the sort of N O I S E
that is gloriously and literally unlistenable. Well, in this case,
you'd be wrong. Very wrong.
In fact all four sides of this quadruple live set, are downright
listenable, if not actually lovely here and there. An epic 4 sided
dark ambient dronefest, that while hitting the spot for the usual
suspects, will definitely also appeal to the drone minded among you as
well as the Earth / SUNNO))) dronedoomdirge obsessed.
John Wiese of Bastard Noise and about a million other projects starts
things off not with a bang, but a rumbling whir, a slowly unfurling
blanket of crumbling fuzz and hiss, muted minimal ambience rife with
pulsing low end and thick rivers of black shimmer. This is dark
ambience more than noise, strange disembodied melodies, drifting all
ghost like, haunting and surprisingly pretty, but without ever losing
its overall bleak and ominous vibe. Definitely the best thing we've
heard from Wiese.
So at this point we sort of expected Dead Machines to kick it up a
notch, and they do, sort of. Beginning with a grinding symphony of
buzzing analog synths and fuzzed out feedback, but that quickly gives
way to a very Wolf Eyesian industrial ambient wasteland, clang and
rumble, creaking and crumbling clatter, barely there dreamlike whir,
distant high end melodies, downright blisssful before a coda of thick
buzz and roaring damaged noise (but even then, it sounds really fuzzy
and washed out)
It's up to Romero then, to get things good and noisy, but surprise
surprise, Romero follows suit, offering up maybe the most tranquil and
drone-y set of the bunch, thick undulating low end throb, overtones
shifting and beating against each other, sounding like a doom metal
Phill Niblock. Gorgeous and dreamy but still dark and menacing.
The final track, taking up all of side 4, features this fearsome
foursome, Romero, Wiese and the two Dead Machines, teaming up for an
epic and one would assume chaotic and noisy collaboration, but once
again, we're thrown a serious curveball. Instead of all four piling up
on top of each other and making a huge loud mess, they deftly
intertwine their sounds into a subtle dark drift. Only once exploding
into a full on noise drenched onslaught, spending most of the time
rumbling and whirring and weaving a dense and dreamy world of dark
drones, and mysterious sonic shapes. Really fucking awesome.
Double lp, pressed on THICK black vinyl, packaged in super elaborate,
three color silkscreened fold over sleeves and LIMITED TO 515
COPIES...

Redglaer "American Masonry"
-----------------------
A killer slab of ultra minimal, low end soundscapes, from this LA
noisemaker. Tangled shadowy shapes twist and slither, stretch and
contort, a constantly shifting lowercase world of speaker destroying
rumble and strangely sibilant buzz. This is thick and crunch and heavy
and will probably cause damage to your speakers, but it's all muter
and muffled, dragged down into the dark, so instead of being an all
out noise assault, it's a beautiful and serene crawl through some
black sonic underworld, ambient, but subtly harsh, dreamlike, but
ominous and mysteriously fucked up. The sound can be cavernous one
second, machinelike the next. Imagine the still warm corpse of Wolf
Eyes, laid out on the slab, sliced wide open, all manner of
microscopes and imaging devices trained on the various, still pulsing
inner workings of the beast, well, the sound being picked up by the
most sensitive of microphones, placed delicately within the carcass,
are picking up the very sounds captured here.
Packaged in gorgeous chipboard sleeves, one side with a pasted on
image, the front adorned with a simple symbol in metallic silver ink.
Each one different. Really striking. Pressed on super thick vinyl,
with a full color printed insert. LIMITED TO 330 COPIES!

ROMAN TORMENT / FEED THE DRAGON split 12"
-------------------------------------
This here is a noise record. No way to sugar coat it. There are bits
and parts that are less than noisy, some subtle sonics and strange
ambience, but ultimately, to dig this, you need a taste for NOISE.
Roman Torment is a blast of face melting ear shredding rooooaaarr. A
dense smear of sonic chaos, grinding shrieking howling, thick
crumbling masses of sound, blinding streaks of feedback, bursts of
speaker shredding grit. Intense and thick and L O U D.
Feed The Dragon, are all about the noise too, but they creep up on it
slowly, starting out with some minimal glitch and stutter, a swirling,
scraping ambience, lots of low end and distant sonic gristle, before
gradually building into a thick undulating swell of electronic buzz
and rumbling sonic grind, sheets of skree draped over throbbing pulses
of crunch and grind, that gets so thick and heavy near the end, it
almost begins to resemble something distinctly metallic, like Earth or
SUNNO))), but of course way noisier...
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Pressed on super thick vinyl. with cool and
creepy paste on art.

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Signal to Noise #43, autumn 2006. by David Cotner
The Dead/Bird / Redglare dbl 3” CD-R (Seizure Palace / Anarchymoon, anok09) starts with Redglare’s opening salvo creating an effect not unlike one stumbling upon a peeping-tom at one’s bathroom window – startling, and such beady eyes! Staring incessantly until the beads become BBs and then annihilating annoyances of the sonic variety, it’s like the feeling of cleaning all the pots and pans in one’s pantry with steel wool – there’s just that much energy communicated in the scraping that mounts in violent waves of sound. The Dead/Bird recording comes across as a modern interpretation of the scene in “Barbarella” during which Jane Fonda was thrust so unceremoniously into the humongous birdcage and attacked by the avians within. Nifty home-made packaging with a sleeve whose wraparound image seems to be that of a warped security camera tracking consumers at the supermarket.

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Smooth Assailing :: smoothassailing.blogspot.com
bob bellerue is a noise artist currently out of los angeles. his
musical contributions can be found in redglaer (sometimes spelled as
redglare as well), feed the dragon (with albert ortega, who performs as slujun or branches,
and has worked with lee ranaldo, anla courtis (reynols) and leticia
castaneda, among others), halfnormal and kilt (with raven chacon and
sandor finta, the latter runs the bastardised label and is in wounded
head). additionally, bob runs the la performance space, il corral.
zaika recently put out a cd showcasing a live performance from there.
there's also his label, anarchymoon, which has a mighty fine looking
double 12", dead on friday the 13th, coming out in the first week of
november. it's a three-way split bewteen damion romero, dead machines,
and john wiese, with the fourth side being a collaboration between all
three. dang. anarchymoon has definitely captured my attention.
i picked up the following albums at noisefest, and since they're both
so damn good i thought i'd share my thoughts on them. well, beyond
them just being damn good.

roman torment & feed the dragon
split 12"
[2006, anarchymoon]
wow. trying to figure out who's in roman torment and their subsequent
other projects was quite a process. here's what i've been able to
dredge up. roman torment = jeff witscher (impregnable, rainbow blanket
(with his brother greg, aka solitary hunter), menwhocan'tlove,
watching him die (also with his brother), without belonging (a duo
with pedestrian deposit) and evan pacewicz [pictured right] (blud
thirst, and he's also in moth drakula (with josh stewart), ex-jesus
and he's in genius females (with privy seals, who's in deep jew with
impregnable (again), lee smith (of noisecop) and oscillating innards
(who's also in noisecop..wtf) hopefully, some of this is accurate.
roman torment's side, the gift of grief, is first up and it's hard as
hell. it starts off with a dense blast of noise and really doesn't
relent at all. the guys do an excellent job of keeping you interested
for eighteen very loud minutes. at about eight minutes in they change
it up a little bit and evan's screaming, distorted, vocals are a bit
more discernable and the feedback is kicked up a few notches, then
it's back to the staticy noise. normally, i'm kind of 'eh' about that
sound, but there's a couple of acts who can pull it off and still
impress me. impregnable is certainly one of them. as far as the
prevailing themes here, i'd have to say that they would be dense walls
of noise, screaming vocals, and great feedback. i particularly like
when they stop the dense noise for the feedback and/or vocals, and
then start it up again. it made me appreciate it more when it came
back. great track.
bromide romance is the title of feed the dragon's side. fun fact:
bromide is a fancy word for a boring person or a tiresome idea. the
track starts off with the sound that an old record makes when you play
it. kind of scratchy. it's nice. then there's a humming sound in the
background, with other minimal noises in the right and left channels.
it's a much more subdued effort than roman torment's, but no less
excellent. it's more experimental as opposed to their harshness.
there's a lot of electronic pulses and hums (used more as main layers
that the other noises build on top of). after about five minutes of
slow building, it starts to get louder as more sounds are being added
in less of a complimentary fashion, a little bit of chaos to stir
things up. as bromide is playing out things indeed take a turn for the
noisier. not harsh, but noisy enough. so much for being subdued.
alright, fifteen minutes in and this track shifts into some actual
noise. i'm liking the ambient sounds buried underneath bob's noise.
this is a very nice piece of music, with a surprising, but satisfying
ending.

i'd highly suggest this album to anyone looking for something new and
noisy, not only that, but it looks nice too. there are still copies
available from this edition of 300 at anarchymoon's site. be one of
the smart ones.
Roman Torment The Gift of Grief Excerpt (from 3:55 to 6:52)
Feed The Dragon Bromide Romance Excerpt (from 11:17 to 14:48)
(note: this was ripped at 33 rpm, the correct speed should be 45, but
it still sounds good)

redglaer
american masonry 10"
[2006, anarchymoon]
this album, from one of bob bellerue's solo monikers, opens up with a
slow feel, similiar to bromide romance, but more minimal. a couple of
minutes into it and it gets a bit more interesting. there's the main
humming noise and what sounds like a whale call. i may not know what
it is at all, but i like it. soon after that settles down, the
background noise is rumbling, which, in a few minutes, transitions
into more of a spread out feel as the general sound becomes more
hushed. the last portion of the side does have its noisier moments,
though.side b carries on with a feeling of minimalism. it feels more minimal
than it actually is, though. there's plenty of things going on, but
overall, the tone of it is more relaxed. oops, i lied. the volume
level picks up a bit after a few minutes before fading back out again.
it continues like that with the noisier aspects seemingly coming in
waves. additionally, there's also the sustained tones, hums and
rattling tones. my favorite part of the record comes with about five
minutes left: really loud sound waves that scream and fly from speaker
to speaker like banshees. it's terrific, especially towards the end
where it calms down enough to pull you off guard before coming back
for one final hurrah.

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Igloo Magazine :: igloomag.com
Bob Bellerue / halfnormal - Threat Level Charlie (by TJ Norris)
Out of nowhere comes a dramatically empowered recording by LA-based sound artist and performer Bob Bellerue. Using glass, metal and other electronics as the sound sources Bellerue is a physical performer with no regrets. His work here is akin to other such experimenters as Aube, Knurl and a touch of Brume. Sounds like an evil potion - but this is far from evil. Its magic recipe is in its sporadic sense of improvisation and drama. The composition is blindly organic and freeform truly made of ingredients, formulated through its base structure and all its singular elements coming together, clashing at times. There are mind numbing screetches and quieting intervals of solace. He has used broadband noise developed from speeches by George Bush and Osama bin Laden and distorted them beyond recognition into the overall final mix. Winning top honors at this year’s Centre de Cultura Contemporànea de Barcelona Bellerue’s sound collage of homemade instruments and noise have a big presence. The final piece is made of four interlocking tracks, clocking in at about 45 minutes, that are raw and capture a live sound. He calls it “poetic terrorism” and I call it an aural mind bomb. For fans of Nocturnal Emissions and Illusion of Safety. (TJN)

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Bagatellen :: bagatellen.com
Bob Bellerue/ halfnormal - Threat Level Charlie (AnarchyMoon, anok1) by Andrew Choate
Using “glass, metal, suling , electronics, programming, space, body, and power,” Bob Bellerue’s Threat Level Charlie reveals meanings being sounds. He chooses “engineered materials that are emblematic of the consumer need for protection and comfort” to make music out of the substances of our lives. Threat Level Charlie is a harbinger of what’s already happening in your body. You just don’t know it yet, until you listen. Then you remember, and realize. Our body is a locus of forces at combat, and we do not control which forces win out. We try to, but we can’t. Bellerue translates this process into sound and matter, conjoined. Glass gets bown and blowed. Contact mics pick it up. The glass is actually hanging.
Eep. Evocative whistles like alien landing signals and gristly bubbles and hypnotic resurgences of mild feedback – in and out, like a cave breathing deep – cause the whispery, respiratory air of the first track to absorb concentration. This beginning slows down your biorhythms; it gets you in a place where you can listen. You are a listening machine in fact. Something molten crinkles;
a cauldron of stirring tones glimmer thickly from a satellite to a star: bloodflow reorganized. It ebbs you in, it makes you receptive, and, once you’re ready, and the materials have undergone adequate preparation, density and nuance are checked and re-checked to assure absolute surrender. This track ends on the gentle fade of a passing star, but not before a sudden surge in the sixth minute makes it clear that no matter what is happening on the surface, something else is at work within.
Swervy abstract sirens whirr in the distance of the second track, but they’re not pure; they just rotate in sonic space the way a visual siren would. So many layers. Digital eagles swoop down, but not to attack, rather, to condemn us for not flying. Wildly pinging claps and swats are eaten by the static of the sounds surrounding them, and the skitterish radio tuning that began the track supports our concern: are we being infiltrated? Internal shrieks made audible would seem to corroborate the findings of the panel, but there is often no place to turn when you know you’re right. Thwispy washes of unselfish discipline emerge and recede to raindroppy thwacking. The layers of sound events disappear, appear, and dissipate. We can fight to disbelieve what surrounds us, or we can submit like reluctant angels to the fray.
A sharp transition demarcates cut 2 from 3, where a cellar door swings and screams. Glass is bowed, and the horror of a complex brain replete with too much psychological foiling draws attention to itself. Long streaks of bow action skip and squeak like car wheel brakes. A ball of jelly is strapped to a contact mic and slapped on a clean wood floor at the four minute mark.
By the time it finally explodes you’ve been begging for it. You want to turn it up and grimace in pleasure. Let it ride over you and overturn your cathartic ass. We are subjects and we are subjected to this harsh atmosphere and we do demand it. Acoustic scrapes and electronic hums come together, thrillingly inside each other, the one projected through the other, using the other as a resonating device. Howl and border.
An apron sexually torn.
You literally hear the electronics through the acoustic material.
There is something refined and bitter about the ending, like a friend that is out of control naturally, but somehow not fretted over. Bellerue harnesses the volatile energy of feedback like it’s a slinky, or his best friend, or a glass of water, or silly putty. Enter a Doppler-ish fade of swirls. This is physical and deeply abstract: the sounds could be the narration of a completely internal crisis, or they could be a status gauge of contemporary political life. A radio gets tuned in near the ultimate end of Threat Level Charlie , and it gets received through the very materials of our security and panic. Radios deliver news, and it is in these materials, traveling through them, whether we admit it or not, that the attitudes of our times are carried. We only have to tune them in to know it. We like to think we are safe, keeping ourselves secured and sheltered from the news – “it’s all in our minds/hearts/opinions/beliefs/votes” – but we’re not. The basic objects around us carry the waves, receiving them and holding them and shaking with their storehouse of atmospheric pulses. All it takes is a well-placed mic to hear them. I know I’m repeating myself. Do you? Are you repeating this? Where do repetitions come from? How does a threat work?
The news is always within objects – sometimes silently, sometimes not. The materials contain the broadcast, the news, the signals. It’s harrowing, gracey.

reader comment (by the incredible Jeff Gburek)
Thank you Andrew for your reflections into the minutia. It’s good to come across this reviewed here even after it has drifted so far along the necroelectromagnetic aeon. Bob’s work consistently and inspiringly intertwines idea and practice for me, leaving ends you need to pull, unraveling in the direction of uncertainty. That art plays out the concrete existence of “warring elements”. That art is about making trouble, creating problems or being a problem and letting no one “solve” you. That we need not begin the process of making art as if we were already in the art history books looking back at ourselves with all-knowing eyes in that symbiotic antagonism called tradition, unless we wink, as if to say, with Blake’s woman clothed in the sun: the dry dry cake of life needs one thin layer of glaze alone: there are great cold distances under our fingernails, somewhere this blip already stopped, under a bleeding helium ulcer e pluribus unum, like asteroid scratch, rings a tea-bell no one hears. That we work in an area of freedom and in a spirit of discovery, almost of science, out of a basic instinct rather than from an ideology used to draw the line between legitimacies and consolidate the walls of corporate gain. Sugar? That we unmask powers operative at large in the materials themselves because they alone are the energies that compel us. On into the breaking point, a kind of collapsed inter-cultural space, where the more impressively sturdy ossature of the industrialist situationism still supports the thick skin of the era of supercollidors and eai. These are all things I felt in common with Bob’s articulation. I call his CD an articulation because it carries for me the same “sense” that his words do and because I see in his life a parallel to his art. There is a spirit of seeing out the process to the very end, even beyond that finality which violates the conventions of the representable and casts the work in terms that cannot be so easily converted into the tender of the unquestionable objects of bourgeois culture. This is very existential work. It has a rare honesty. But it is not a work that withdraws from posing serious problems for the consumer. There is a sense of vital and positive danger in Bob’s work that communicates on a subsonic VLF similar to those elephants use when they flock about to gather the bones of some elder. When I played Threat Level Charlie on the air in Albuquerque, NM, one of the station’s technicians called. He was evidently concerned that we had left microphones turned on in the studio then under reconstruction down the hall. It took me a full minute to fully comprehend what he thought he was hearing on the radio and another minute after he hung up to consider the likelihood of disguised commentary. When Bob came to perform a week later, downriver from Los Alamos, I was to learn shortly that the glass was not being hung. It sat horizontally on blocks (Styrofoam, as I recall) where in addition to being bowed it functioned as a kind of resonator absorbing and transmitting acoustic sounds from his other instruments. Although I might have been disappointed that I was kept from the anticipation of the glass breaking up before us all, I began to hear echoes of the large glass in a very different way, not the obvious ones. There is more going on here than meets the ear. But what is the next threat level? When will it really be reached, what…will it sound…
onward anarchy moon... Posted by: j.ff gb.r.k at December 25, 2005 1:28 AM

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AMPERSAND &TC ampersandetc.virtualave.net
Threat Level Charlie CD Bob Bellerue / halfnormal
Bob Bellerue is a performance artist who works with a range of material – the inside of the sleeve shows Liam Mooney (one of a number who work with him) manipulating a sheet of glass – but he also uses various metals, resonant tubes, radio, programming and his body to achieve his musical effects. TLC (interesting acronym as the name is actually the highest level of alert) was recorded in a studio but with excerpts from a live show.
Shimmering crackly feedback signals and a low throb build a stimulating atmosphere joined by tings and distant chopped voices. Pattering noises and a growly undercurrent together with a metal wind make way for sustained ringing and gentle tones, then shifting to a noisey scrabble, distorted voices and tones to squally feedback. A shifting electroacoustic space. The second track opens with a distorted Dubya accompanied by a squeaking balloon and deep wobble-board sound develops into scrabbling windswirls, a twittering battle and high tones. Passing from a more musical mood it drops to a rumbling pulse and soft cycles that echo and loop to an applause-like percussion. Deep woobles, twitters and harsh whoosh, a low tone and manipulated higher one – interference vibrations – crackles, tones fade.
The third track is short – edgy harsh metallic vibrations and high tones – close mike work – percussive at times, but more focussed. And this intensity carries over into the last two tracks. The fourth layers noisy held strong tones, some squeaks and scrapes. But focussed on the full tones with controlled modulation, creating a vibrant and powerful noise work with lots of interesting variations. In the final track a scrabbly burble, possibly the radio, is a base for the other components – long feedback tones, a juddery oral close-mike scrabble, noisey drills, squiggles and shimmers building the slowly fading through the noises into a whooshy finale.
The balance in the album between to more exploratory variations of the first half and the intense focus of the second provides a strong structure to the work, which is a complex mixture of live and studio performance art, conjoining engagement with sound and noise.

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