|
It's sometimes said that nothing good can come out of Hollywood, but, like in any city, there are things living within the cracks that are easy for the average eye (or ear) to miss. John Wiese, proprietor of the Helicopter label and member of Bastard Noise, is one such crack-dweller, countering Hollywood's big-budget cinematic trash with electronic noise that's far more intelligent, engaging, and well-made than the average celluloid offering from the city's more famous industry.
Live in Japan features Bastard Noise performing live as a duo in places unknown in the island nation, and clocks in at a heady seventy-three minutes, no small feat for a recording such as this. The two untitled tracks are long-stretching canvasses of sound, subtle and patient. Quiet, drones change slowly into clouds of sparkly static, and as the minutes pass, the music becomes more and more opaque. Increasing in volume and solidity, the noise swells to the point at which it becomes a blanket of sound, though the duo never allow the music to become overbearing or even too loud. The second track places a high-pitched whine underneath quiet rumbles of bass, and manipulates the two in such a manner that it's sometimes hard to hear anything. On Live in Japan, the delicacy of the improvisation is key, despite the music's noisy nature, sounds are handled with the utmost care, as if any sudden movements or shifts in dynamics might crack their brittle shells.
The next item in the Bastard Noise discography, Skull Wave is a trio recording which takes the ambient atmospherics of Live in Japan and more fully develops the eerie and frightening feeling that the first disc hints at. The ebb and flow of Skull Wave creates an ever-changing environment of ominous sound, a truly enveloping ocean of deathly noises, sometimes slightly off-putting, and, more often, downright scary. The almost constant liquid movement of the sound is an excellent study in tension, as the foreboding sounds move in and out of the mix and around each other, but offer no real respite. The trio allow for more pronounced swells in volume, giving the recording an almost claustrophobic feel, forcing the listener to look for open space where none exists, but Skull Wave offers no such space, and no such relief.
Tokyo Headlock is a document of a trip Wiese took to Japan and the music that resulted, a compilation of sorts featuring Wiese in solo, duo, or trio situations including electronic musicians Tim Koh, Kohei Nakagawa, Koji Tano, and Yasutoshi Yoshida. Though Tokyo Headlock's twelve tracks are fairly diverse in relation to both sound and duration, much of the disc has a far more abrasive feel than either of the aforementioned Bastard Noise discs, no matter who's involved. A four-minute collaboration between Wiese and Nakagawa is complete destruction, all crash and bang, while the former's interactions with Koh bred a quieter, more ethereal feel. Simply adding Yoshida to that duo the next day, however, resulted in a much more tumultuous sound, and the disc's last four tracks, all featuring the trio's performance at Xerxes on April 28, 2003, are raging battles of overpowered, distorted power electronics. The chronological arrangement of the tracks maps Wiese's musical excursions around Tokyo well, though a mixing of the tracks from each date, therefore, in general, a mixing of the tracks' styles, might better have served the disc's quality. Rest assured, however, that though not every minute of every track features completely enthralling music, that there is more than enough interesting and engaging music here to make up for any more structural concerns.
|
