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STEVE, I WANNA SAY THANK YOU, FOR ALL YOU'VE DONE FOR ME

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“Steve, I wanna say thank you, for all you’ve done for me.”  That line is from the song “Aloha Steve and Dano,” by the goddamn mighty Radio Birdman. It’s about Hawaii Five-O, but over the course of the past week, my brain has repurposed that particular lyric, because Steve Albini died unexpectedly on May 07, 2024. I never met the man, and yet I owe him so much.  I first heard Big Black sometime in high school. Up to that point, I only knew Albini as the outspoken recording engineer that helmed Nirvana’s In Utero , but after reading about the band in some random music publication, I bought a copy of their second and final album, Songs About Fucking .  I was not ready for that shit. Songs About Fucking was caustic on a level that my teenage mind couldn’t even begin to comprehend. Listening to it kinda felt like your brain was being scrubbed with steel wool. The feeling was not a pleasant one, and I sold the CD after letting it languish on my shelf for a while.  I came around on Big Blac
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SOFT WATER CANNIBALS

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Originally released in 1998, Tauromachine was Merzbow's third and final solo album for Release Entertainment, the Relapse Records sub label that almost single-handedly introduced the US to the wonders of Japanese harsh noise. After the death metal inspired violence of Venereology and the relentless extremity of Pulse Demon , Merzbow opted to for a more psychedelic approach, creating what is arguably one of his most accessible albums.   After having been out of print for many years, Relapse has finally seen the light and reissued Tauromachine with a fresh remaster courtesy of James Plotkin (Khanate OLD, Namanax, etc.), as well as a second disc's worth of previously unreleased bonus tracks. To say that it's an embarrassment of noisy riches would be an understatement. To these ears, Tauromachine  is stylistically somewhat akin to 1997's equally classic Hybrid Noisebloom in its embrace of spacey psychedelia over brain-battering harshness, but what ultimately sets it apa
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MY NOISE ORIGIN STORY

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A few months ago, I was put on the spot to explain my love of noise to some friends who were unfamiliar with the wonders of Merzbow. Unfortunately, I was quite stoned at the time and as a result failed miserably. But in the days and weeks that followed, it got me thinking about my path to discovering noise and why I enjoy it. I wasn’t able to properly articulate my fascination with ear destroying sounds while under the influence, but I’ll do my best here and now. I’ve always loved music and I think my interest in noise began as a byproduct of that when I was a teenager in the early/mid nineties. Like many young metalheads I was an aspiring guitarist, but there were many days where I spent as much time hooking up a bunch of effects pedals and seeing what kinds of fucked up racket I could coax out of my Squire Stratocaster as I did learning Metallica riffs (likely much to my mother’s dismay). The less it sounded like a guitar and the more hideous the sounds coming out of my amplifier got
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TWO MEN AND A NOISE ALBUM

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Ever since forming in 1981, Osaka's Incapacitants have been establishing themselves as legends of Japanese harsh noise.  Indeed, the duo of Toshiji Mikawa and Fumio Kosakai are responsible for many genre touchstones, and one of their most sought after releases is 1995's As Loud as Possible .  Released by cult label Zabriskie Point during what was arguably one of the Japanoise scene's most intensely creative periods, the album has long been out of print.  Thankfully, Germany's Total Black was somehow able to secure the rights to reissue As Loud as Possible on CD, vinyl and digital, making it available once again to depraved noiseheads all over the world. I was lucky enough to grab a CD copy of As Loud as Possible  via American label/distro Cloister Recordings and was immediately struck by the quality of the physical product.  Housed in a sturdy eight panel digipack, I unfortunately cannot say how it compares to the original release, but I can say that this new version lo
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TOP 5 ALBUMS OF 2022

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Given that the blog has only been active for a couple months, I wasn't even sure I was going to do a year end list.  But, the music nerd in me simply couldn't resist.  So, without further ado and in alphabetical order, here are five albums that I enjoyed the heck out of in this, the year of our lord 2022. Bastard Noise & Merzbow - Retribution by all other Creatures (Relapse Records)   On Retribution by all other Creatures , Japanese God of Noise Merzbow and West Coast sonic terrorists Bastard Noise unleash just over an hour of music that's sometimes cold and cavernous and at other times relentlessly ultra-violent and punishing.  Whether sounding like a malfunctioning eighties arcade game that's being lowered into a vat of acid or a swarm of crackling, crawling glitched-out fuzz, the album is consistently compelling from start to finish and never becomes so harsh as to become completely unlistenable, but at the same time never lets up enough to be accessible to the a
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WHITE RAVEN FLIES HIGH

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I discovered Wardruna through Norwegian black metal.  Being a huge fan of Gorgoroth, my interest was piqued when I learned that two of the band's members were involved in another project together, and I of course had to check it out.  To my surprise, their music was unlike anything I'd ever heard and so far out of my usual scope of listening that it might as well have been from another universe.  And yet I sensed there was something special about it.  From there I followed the Wardruna's activity sporadically over the years, never thinking that I would ever get a chance to experience them live. But as my wife and I were preparing to move to Oregon, there it was; Wardruna playing just a few minutes from us at the Elsinore Theatre in Salem.  There was no way that I was going to pass up the opportunity to experience something so unique, and so we immediately picked up a pair of tickets.  To say that I was anticipating this show would be an understatement, as my appreciation of
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HOSTILE ORGANISM

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Over many years of collecting, I've had a knack for finding oddball CDs in random places and KK Null's Guitar Organism is certainly no exception.  I'm not exactly sure what possessed me to look through the international section at the Rasputin Music in Fairfield, CA, but there it was, just waiting for some goddamn weirdo like me to happen upon it.  After paying a princely sum of $2.95 for the disc, I took it home and popped it in my computer. When most folks think of guitar albums, they immediately think of wankery; you know, dudes like Joe Satriani, Steve Vai and Yngwie Malmsteen doing widdly widdly shit on seven string guitars for as many minutes as they can cram onto a CD.  But what assaulted my ears when I put on Guitar Organism was completely different from any "guitar album" I'd ever heard. You see dear readers, Null, the legendary vocalist/guitarist/madman behind forward thinking bands such as Absolut Null Punkt and Zeni Geva, had a very, very differe
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