Sometimes, shorter releases are perfect. The band Moment from New England told me about their 2-minute performances: “Everything we want to say we will say with so much power and energy that it’s all done in 2 minutes.” Seems perfectly reasonable. With extreme music it’s sometimes all good to have a 10 or 20-minute tape, but with the cost of mailing things around the globe, it’s not always affordable. I had to stop proper collecting because of these postal prices. It’s okay to pay $5 or $7 for a tape, but $15 to get it to Europe sucks. Maybe it’s me, but I seem to see more 3 or 4 or 5-way split-releases in the world. Maybe it’s because it’s easier to send, or it’s a bit more ‘bang for the proverbial buck’, but I see these 4-way splits like a double C20 release.
Love Earth Music released this 4-way split of some proper noise. Gnawing Teeth, Mallard Theory, Vasectomy Party and Takeshita share this shiny almost 70-minute disc. As with most of LEM’s releases, there is not an actual booklet added, so also no explanation of the conceptual approach of the four artists. Track titles on the back, that’s it. For the rest, it’s all noise that you get—four different types of noise, each with its signature.
Gnawing Teeth makes a noise where it’s just as if all sounds are pressed through a small hole, like a meat grinder, resulting in a delicious sausage of ‘what the actual fuck’. Here and there, it’s the pain of feedback; in other moments (like on “Burning Hammer”), the result is a massive, repetitive drone-like structure. Mallard Theory uses synths, metal, 4-track and pedals and is more of a cut-up artist with a glitch or (modular?) synth layers—less distorted as with distortion pedals, so also a bit more controlled output. The moments where the bass layers are pushed into distortion are massive!
There is no party like a Vasectomy party, so play those sounds and cut your balls! Hal Harmon’s project is in the same area as the previous Mallard Theory, but the layers in sound are less ‘modular’, resulting in a bit more aggressive feeling: Less cut-up, more harsh. The final act on this album is Tim Burkland from Seattle. His project and all related things are dedicated to Japanese wrestler Konosuke Takeshita, and his Bandcamp page nicely describes his sound as ‘Professional Noise Wrestling’. The choice of sounds has a bit less complexity than the earlier acts, but because of this, the outcome of the mix is a bit more direct. If you like it hard …
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