A few weeks ago, I was playing at the Crude Intentions II festival in the Netherlands, and the line-up also included the Israelian project Kadaver. I’ve known Michael Zolotov a bit longer after meeting him at a festival back in 2013, and we’ve held contact occasionally. In 2018 he and his partner Tamar Singer created the 999 Cuts label, which after a few personal releases, kinda really took off in 2021 with the sampler “The First Cut”. If you are looking for a sampler with deities of noise and power electronics spiced up with many new names you probably have never heard before: This is as good a starting point as it gets. Since that release, 999 Cuts already released 15 other releases, and at the festival, we traded a few items. So even if these titles are from last year, they’re still fresh in my book.
We’re starting with K2, the brainchild of Kimihide Kusafuka ever since 1983. With over 200 releases on his name, any noise head will have heard of him. But looking at my collection, I shamefully admit that all I had from him are a few 7″s and a collaboration with Telepherique from 2000. I had seen him perform at the Sacramento Sound Waffle, and it turns out he ‘has gone modular,’ which also goes for me, so I was curious about what “Pandemix Coronalis” would sound like. Well, it is in your face harsh and obnoxious cut-up noise! Brilliant! I can’t tell you about his set-up; I can’t tell you about additional sounds. I can’t tell you about composition techniques because everything goes everywhere. And with modular systems, there is one rule: Each artist will approach each module and its initial function differently. That’s the beauty of it. The same systems in different hands will lead to a completely different outcome.
“Pandemix Coronalis” seems like a Covid project of K2. The titles reveal as much (“Three Adhesions Go Zoomy Or Oozy”, “19 Nin-No-CoviD”, and “Viral Shedding 2020”). The 999 Cuts website reads: “Recorded in 2020, during the most ominous days of Covid – when panic, terror and isolation were widespread, and the future seemed grim.” This grim view of the near future is perfectly audible in the tracks. Nothing seemed inevitable, perfectly captured by the always-changing composition, and the panic is well caught through the extreme frequencies within and the harshness of the recording. In “Viral Shredding 2020”, there seems to be some imperturbability at moments, but as we all felt back then, our emotions changed every bloody effin day, so the peace in the track is always short-lived. Harsh and yet still a very nice release.
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