DECAYCAST REVIEWS: HEY EXIT “Else” Cassette/Digital (2015)

“Else”  was  recorded by HEY  EXIT, in Brooklyn NY in 2015, but  you’d  never  really be able to tell as  it comes off  as this  sort of  timeless  drone recording.  “Else”  starts with a low, slow, cloudy  drone and  slowly builds and  destroys  subtlety across the  entire album. The  first sounds that  emerge  are  delicate.  spacious, tone  poems of  humming synths? guitars? who knows?  but the  source isn’t  really that important and the sounds  create a sonic  space  that exists  somewhat outside of  codified instrumentation, structure,  rhythm. The  sonic palette of HEY EXIT is  largely of a similar toolset, at least on Else, and the cassette is broken up into five tracks, however they all function as  one  breadth, decaying and  gently bleeding into each other. “What Role, If  Any”  is  probably the track that feels   most complete on its  own in terms of a moving composition within itself and  offers arguably the most  sonic  density and  variety on this EP.

The sounds themselves  are a  plush mesh of drones,  blissed  out  and  stretched  out  orchestral swells, slow attack  guitar  swells,  strategically placed crunches of  rumbling  distortion, and  wind. The  tempo of  Else is  made up of slow, delicately offered  pulses, as  if  someone was  breathing  out the notes, blowing ou

t the  tempo on a single  flickering candle,  but  not  through a wind  instrument, the  attack is gone, the breath has  transformed into a slow,  churning, crawling, beautiful sound.  The slow, crawling , glossy pillars of  sounds ,  at times  almost seemed to  sync up with my breath as i was  sitting in the dark listen

ing to the  cassette on repeat. This is  excellent  “meditation” music, or at least music that  begs of  slow action, slow  thought,  slow body movements, and slow listening. There  are moments  that  get “noisy” in the traditional sense, but they never  obliterate or  destroy the  more  quiet, subtle  tones  that dance and  breathe  as he main life  source of the  piece.  “Else”  is  a delicately crafted ambient  drone offering for  fans of  slow, delicate, breathing music to  listen to  on a foggy, crawling  confusing day. Highly enjoyable.

 

You can   check this release and more  from HEY  EXIT,  here

TONIGHT: NOISE SHOW IN SF w/ DEMONSLEEPER / THOABATH / NEHA SPELLFISH / MALOCCULSION

TONIGHT  4/20 IN THE  CITY OF  SAN FRANPSYCHO

SECOND ACT. 1727 HAIGHT STREET, SF, CA 7:45-10PM SHARP

 

“Four twenny in the Haight Ashbury? Yup. If smoke makes the best sunsets, the banks of Golden Gate Park will be blowin’ up as Neha Spellfish, Malocculsion, play the final show with Demonsleeper and Thoabath before they hang ten off a dank ring blowing out toward San Juan, Puerto Rico where they’ll opena new venue for experimental live sound. Come see them off with…

NEHA SPELLFISH (Oakland/Madrid)
With low frequency waves washing up on a beach of dark noise ambience, Spellfish delves into the shared space of interspecies communication and paramnesia, invoking the spectral measure of waking consciousness and noospheric cognition. Neha invokes themes of macro psychology, xeno feminism, dynamically modeled weather enclosures, and instinctual variance, employing audio programming platforms and algorithmic granular synthesis.
https://soundcloud.com/spellfish

Demonsleeper
Deathrattle lullabys and inescapable lucid dreamscapes wrought by somnambulist maestra, Alexandra Bushman. In 1999, she formed the electro-acoustic group, Synethesia, tegether with Angélica Negrón. After scaring the daylights out of everyone at the Conservatory of Music in Puerto Rico, she matriculated to Mills College before committing to advanced studies with ancient dark forces whose names must never be spoken.
https://soundcloud.com/demonsleeper

Thoabath
There’s a perceptible gravity to Andy Way that somehow vanishes once you draw near, the material world floats adrift. His solo project, Thoabath, might just be that massless Euclidean point where noise, dub, power electronics, horror, and ambient all emanate, an entelechy without clear precedent, of no laws. Prepare your ear, first study his collaborations with luminaries like Bruce Anderson (MX-80) & Petit Mal in the project, French Radio, sink yourself in the occult cacophony of Sutekh Hexen, and then, approach Thoabath, inescapable dark quasar.
https://soundcloud.com/acway/

Malocculsion
Watch concrete turn to quicksand and glass return to sand as this sonic juggernaut storms the Haight Ashbury. His inaugural solo album released last year, “Psychosis Industrial Complex”, melds blown out distorted beats, arpeggiated synths, tape manipulation, voice, field recordings and homemade oscillators to belt forth a dark, unique offering of post industrial, prison music.
https://ratskinrecords.bandcamp.com/album/malocculsion-psychosis-industrial-complex

 

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DECAYCAST REVIEWS: SHROUDED RECORDINGS ZINE #1-3

 

Whenever  one  goes out to the mailbox  and   is  granted with music its a great  day, zines and  books are no exception, especially collaged zines which  throw my brain back into  being  15 and   thumbing through pages and pages and pages of   crudely  xeroxed interviews  with friends, bands i looked up to and  bands i  had yet to discover, Shrouded Recordings Zine is  pretty much this:  centered around the label with the same name.   Issue 1  has an interview with Sam from the Rita, which is  funny, informative and to the point, which is surrounded by high contrast images of cassette  tapes, industrial style  textures and abstracted artworks, and  ads  and  upcoming releases for the label. Volume 1  is more fanzine style, however,  Vol 2 and 3  give considerably more  to the  reader  in terms of length, quality, artwork, and information. Shrouded Zine boasts cut up style interviews, NOISE, NOISE, NOISE and more noise are jam packed  within this modest zine. All of the content  blends together in an interesting and almost dadaesque  way. Interviews   blend with reviews, ads, non sensical, albeit beautifully crude collaged images, and blank space – the MOST important  space in noise and  art, imho.

 

#3  is  perhaps my favorite so far, as  each page of content  is  intelligently paired with a blank page  to act as a  journal, sketch pad, notepad, blank space  for  contemplation. What at first seems maybe like a  printing  error later  reveals itself to be an intelligent and generous  offering from the  writer  to the reader – in fact mine is INDEED  scrawled with random notes and drawings  that i made on the  bus ride into the city  whilst  thumbing through volume three.     Fun and informative interview with Kevin Yuen from  Sutekh Hexan,  lots of  reviews covering  harsh noise, death industrial, power electronics, noise, electronic, ambient and  even some hardcore/metal  stuff! PLUSS   adds and upcoming releases  from noise, industrial, electronics, and harsh noise  labels, distros, and other  zines/webzines with some  minimal artwork  scrawled across the pages as backdrops.   I’ll be  looking forward to  stumbling across  more  from this  zine/label in the  future!

SHROUDED  RECORDINGS

DECAYCAST REVIEWS : K2/ CONSTRAIN / FENIAN CD (Oxen label, 2015)

DECAYCAST REVIEWS : K2/ CONSTRAIN / FENIAN CD (Oxen label, 2015)

Here we have another  harsh, tasty treat from the always  harsh, loud  and  on fire label OXEN RECORDS  from LA  run by Matt and  Leah Purse. This album comes in beautifully artworked jewel  case, and the  sounds live up to the  artwork./ The  disc opens up with a harsh, but  fun offering from noise legend, K2 (Kimihide Kusafuka)  who  swiftly and masterfully carves through fifteen minutes of classic,  chaotic, phased out  harsh noise blasts. Oscillators and  opportunities shudder open and closed as Kusafuka melts, blends, breaks, and blasts his  way to a masterfully brutal harsh noise assault. k2 has been terrorizing both sides of the  brain/globe  with his  harsh noise  presentations of  aural hell for years and this brand  new offering is no exception. Dynamic, loud, abrasive, and unapologetic  doesn’t even begin to sum up the  work of  K2  on this release, or any of his extensive and  sought after  back catalog, though it’s a brave and noble start.

 

Kevin M. is up next with an equally brutal and  chopped up track from his elusive  yet prolific Constrain project (who also offers up  the album  artwork to boot) The Constrain track has a few  more  rhythmic elements that tease and  tug on the listener somewhere  in  the  background, but  they never remain for more  than a  few  seconds before they  are  swept  away with choppy, arrhythmic feedback blasts, chaotic, unstable  circuits and belching, smelly walls  of  distortion and speaker popping.  Constrain’s style is a bit  more choppy overall than K2, but it’s  no doubt working in the  same  schematic of  compositionally aware, yet angry and  disjointed noise music.  The Constrain track has  some nice  stereo  effects  and is  fairly dynamic, in terms of some of the other projects from this artist, though it  slowly builds to a  chaotic climax  somewhere about halfway through the  track and begins subtracting from itself  and  erasing  its own heads and tails.

 

Last and not least of the  three  artists,  we have the Fenian track, which is perhaps my favorite and the most dynamic and movement based  piece on the  disk. Also a bit  shorter than the k2 offering, fenian carves, warped, warbley  blown out  harsh noise which seems to have more  of an analog tape machine feel (even though i know thats not  whats  being  used – or  maybe i don’t, or maybe nobody  does, and nothing does,  including the machines ) Fenian navigates the  harsh to minimal transitions rather smoothly and  always riding the line between blown out and microtonal harsh noise, in a  swift and compelling way. Some  faint  field recordings of  voice/ old  song can be heard, however  before the listener can claw at a point of reference, the  sound is GONE, SQUASHED, MANIPULATED, into a harsh hellhole of  auditory terror.

 

The fourth track is a collaboration, by mail it  seems between the  three  artists  and is mixed and compiled by K2 according to the liner notes. This track offers  some really fun manipulation of  source material from Constrain and possibly Fenian as well but  it’s  undoubtably  processed through the K2  sound  engine!  Overall a great  offering for all the  harsh heads out there  who want something with a bit more sonic density  and  with more  variance than most contemporary harsh noise, these  three are  keeping the bar  high and  dangerous.

 

OXEN LABEL 

CORAL REMAINS (formerly Styrofoam Sanchez) On tour NOW! check dates below!

CORAL REMAINS (formerly Styrofoam Sanchez) is a post industrial sound and sculptural installation personifying the trash island in the pacific gyre. Spawning from a hybrid of human DNA and trash, CORAL REMAINS is a dystopian, amalgamated magnification of failed civilizations, spliced rogue technologies gone awry spawning dark pulses of technological neurosis and inner psychosis . When fish put fin to sand then you’ll understand, fish can carry guns. CORAL REMAINS represents the last molecule before total conversion of humans into futuristic trash receptacles. Human, your skull will be in a museum.

https://www.facebook.com/events/1582825008659649/

GX JUPITTER – LARSEN “Pump Powered Permawave” 10″ (Oxen Records, 2014 )

Where do we even begin. “Pump Powered Permawave” is a new 10″ record of two locked grooves from noise legend , entropic wave enthusiast and all around spectacular artist , and not to mention founder of the legendary noise / conceptual art / performance unit, the Haters, which if you’ve never heard of, I Suggest doing some research, GX Jupitter – Larsen. GX’s works are conceptual, dark, funny, harsh and mysterious all at the same time which is one of the reasons I’m so intrigued with him as an artist, and I this new 10″ record on Oxen Records, out of Los Angeles, is no exception.

Raw, unnerving, grinding, gritting away at the listeners mind and ear lobes, PPP is the recorded document of one of many of GX’s minimalist harsh noise performances. Pump up the suitcase (in 10″ bright disaster / construction cone orange vinyl form ) to hear beautifully decaying tools of entropy spiraling down your spinal column, and back up out the listeners cochlear. Pump Powered Permawave is the entroptic inverse of the sound of drilling through the eye’s sanded over distorted interpretation of vision, bent and mangled through harsh, gritty tunnels of grinding, unrelenting harsh noise rhythms.

The sound is abrasive, loop based , harsh shapes, sometimes resembling circles of inner ear insanity and a noisy information form of sonic chaos, documented and preferably played at MAXIMUM VOLUME, whilst grinding away at ones frontal lobe with an angle grinder. GX does it again, the simple plan wins, but when you dig deeper there’s a deeper meaning behind the broken wave of decay, your brain is actually inverted to create the sound. What a beautiful record and piece.

No dymanics, no intros or outros , just the pure essence of noise itself. GX Jupitter-Larsen’s work digs to the most primitive, yet often the most beautiful sources of noise. when noise has a concept, in the case of GX, it can’t be defeated, for it is the ultimate statement in anti musicality, and refreshingly so.

Don’t mind losing your mind, and scope of space and time and the elusive Permawave?, then GX’s new record is JUST FOR YOU! Highly recommended for its beauty, execution, harshness and realness, a MUST OWN for any fans of noise , art and/or entropy.

(Photos via OXEN LABEL website)

EN NIHIL “DEAD FREQUENCY” Cassette (Danvers State Recordings, 2014)

Here we have a newer release, “Dead Frequency” from the prolific yet deserted and obscure project called En Nihil, released on Danvers State Recordings The  A  side  starts out a slow,  cold,  ambient windchill of  space and  delicate reverberations. En Nihil is known for his  desolate, dark  heavy death/ambient/industrial recordings  but the “Dead Frequency” tape picks  up the pace  pretty heavily right off the bat. The slowly spinning ambient burner quickly but in a well composed manner, morphs  into a heavy, noisy, industrial hash squall from hell.  Dense, sharp, ripping sounds crumble and spatter atop of each other and  create gray pillars of psychedelic, waves of spiked feedback, and noisy  percussive elements. The wall section of the  piece  builds up to a blistering climax, and then gradually gives itself breathing room and a deeper, more restrained   tension is created. En NIhil swiftly and skillfully creates a monumental tension between the cold, ringing, droning ambient sections, and the harsh noise walls and cities of sonic bombardment.

On this particular release, we have a wide and refreshing scope of styles that are skillfully executed. There is actually a plethora of sounds and  ideas making up this  sinister, unclimbable wall of sound. Even though at times, it just sounds like “noise” , rest assured, it would be counter productive to pigeon hole it as such En NIHIL is a master at riding the waves between noise / ambient / death – industrial and straight musicality. Especially the B side of “Dead Frequency” if you blink for a second you might be fooled into thinking that some of these tracks , composition wise , have a structured sensibility to them, which for this type of music is a good thing in my opinion. There are no happy accidents here, or if there is, they are disguised well, each note , tone and action appear intentional and forthright in the composition and idea.

“Dead Frequency” is the logical progression in the En NIhil discography and takes a step forward in terms of dynamics and harshness but remains true to the unique style that the artist has created. MOre to come from this artist! Keep an ear in the cave.
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DECAYCAST REVIEWS: COCK ESP & GINGER CORTES Split Cassette (Forever Escaping Boredom Records, 2014)

DECAYCAST REVIEWS: COCK ESP & GINGER CORTES  Split  Cassette (Forever Escaping Boredom Records, 2014)

I’ve been a Cock E.S.P. fan for a lonnnnnnng  time  but i have  never  written about, or  attempted to write about their music/noise/destruction, etc but  with this tape, i’m going to, The  side  starts out  with  an insane bass  blast low -end wall of noise  and  a woman’s  voice, twisted, demonic, screaming and  howling as  it’s being  choked with blood and laughter. The  voice is a constant but a  hellish wall of  squelching noise  ensues and  swallows the voice into despair and hatred.  The transmission is broken, and high frequency walls of nauseating   piercing feedback give a bloody birth, to, what , a thumping beat, a beat???? Yes  folks, thats tight, Cock E.S.P. brings the booty bass on this one. The  distraught voice chugs and howls on,  grabbing onto and biting through the beat until the  skilled vocalist spits it out into a superhero’s afterbirth of a noise  menacing, dark noise  wall,  screaming at and  attacking  the listener  with unrelenting precision and terror. I do  NOT want to know what was going on in the  studio when this was  being recorded, or maybe  i do, but  either way something hilarious, dark, and nauseating was the influence, oh I dunno this  filth of a planet? COCK E.S.P.  does what most harsh bands cant  do, EVERYTHING. they bring the ultimate  package of visual and  aural insanity.Here’s the thing though, this is noise, but it’s done with a  jazz like attention to detail, all whilst embracing the  murky guts of the  chaotic element of bodily fluids, chicken masks, and flying objects.

They literally NEVER  let me down, even when when they’re  trying to let  you down, they don’t, and  that’ll hopefully piss them off 🙂  and this recording, like many I’ve heard are a testament to their hard work in the  studio, in the gutter,  and their  blatant infatuation with  and  disgust with humanity… What a  fucking  good  band, seriously, see them live, but  don’t blink because it’ll be over.  Like this  shit  inspires me. Thank you Emil Hagstrom, Jason Wade, Julia Rau, Paige Flesh, and John Vance for  releasing this blatant harsh assault on my ears and mind, it was much needed.

Despite COCK E.S.P.  being  a very tough, and messy act to follow on the  stage  and on a  recording, The  Ginger Cortes  side holds it’s  own on the B side of this harsh  brain jammer.  GC opens up with a dark, heavy, grinding, repulsive wall of harsh decaying belt  sander  style harsh noise. The  dark, brooding  sound continues on, slaughtering the  listener  with an unrelenting sledgehammer of a  scraping mid  range  springed out static  attack.  Ginger  Cortes grinds and  grinds and  grinds  away until the cochlear begins to flake  and shred off, bleed  and disappear, and  then they stop. They stop for a few  seconds of unknown scraping and  fumbling  around, and then a few  sharp  cuts  and blasts and we’re  right back into the harsh noise anus of Ginger Cortes. Quick,  cutting, bloody  cuts of high range  feedback give splinters of disease Ridden mid-range  feedback clusters, and  atomic blasts of  distortion,…and then ‘be  a good  little girl”……….??????????????   wow, what a tape, what a wild  tape, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED,.

FOREVER  ESCAPING BOREDOM RECORDS

COCK E.S.P.

GINGER  CORTES

DECAYCAST REVIEWS : PREGNANT SPORE / VERTONEN Split Cassette (Forever Escaping Boredom Records , 2013)

DECAYCAST REVIEWS : PREGNANT SPORE / VERTONEN Split Cassette (Forever Escaping Boredom Records , 2013)

The Pregnant Spore side opens up with a fuzzed out, distorted thud percussion pulse and  slices of  choking voices aboot. The  blown out crawling bass slam and  garbled voice slices play off of each other quite nicely, and occasionally giving way to blown out sawtooth death note blasts that come from below and pierce through the mix. Albeit them a little hot in the mix, these jagged bass blasts create a rhythmic structure which shapes a dense and articulate bassline for a plethora of stuttering, flickering , and what sounds like sampled piano notes bounce off of each other in a loose and playful yet, rhythmically interesting way. The first half of the track held a little more tension for me personally, but the dense buildup toward the end created a relieving and necessary contrast. Overall a wide scope of  timbre and dynamics of sound  are utilized in a short amount of time. Will be writing more about this project in the coming reviews for sure, as we have at least one more tape by Pregnant Spore in the  piles of stuff to do. Now let’s get to the second side.

The Vertonen side comes right out of the gate with a warm yet sharp sounding repeating oscillation of unknown origin which goes on seemingly unchanged and tightly hinged to itself. gently beneath the surface, as if a failed distant audial telegraph, a slow tone begins to oscillate deep beneath the surface and causes a subtle yet growing psychedelic phasing of the original pulse. Slowly but with a determined tension, more and more complimentary voices trickle in and out of the mix, and cautiously roll over each other into a Terry Riley/ Steve Reich esque nod to minimalist classical composition. A short, relevant and beautifully articulate offering from Blake Edward’s Vertonen project.

Overall, a nice short release, although both projects could use a little more room on the ol’ magnet as i felt both pieces were cut off a bit abruptly, however sometimes that’s the way she goes , leave them wanting more yes? a solid release overall, with a brightly collaged color xerox cover, and plushly purple tapes which complement the J card’s nicely. Will be reviewing more from this label in the following weeks.

FOREVER ESCAPING BOREDOM

PREGNANT SPORE

VERTONEN

HAPPY NEW YEAR – Lots coming in 2015!!

Hello and thanks for keeping up with decaycast . 2015 will bring a lot more reviews , interviews , podcasts and even our own bandcamp for easier streaming / downloading of all of our past and future episodes . If you’d like to submit PHYSICAL material
For review please email
Decaycast(at)gmail.com and we’ll go from there . We’re also happy to announce that we have two new writers so we’ll be able to crank out more lengthy reviews quicker and with more love and precision! The band camp will be up by the end of the week and expect interviews with PCRV , Crank Sturgeon , Jason Wade and tons more !!!