NOT SO LOVELY RITA

There are many harsh noise releases out there that you can put on if you want to attempt to fry your ears and melt your brain; hell, if you spend an evening trawling Bandcamp you'll find that they're practically a dime a dozen.  The Rita's Magazine operates on very different and dare I say much higher level; this is an album you can listen to on good earbuds in a pitch-black room while smoking a fatty (or whatever your choice of mind-altering substance may be) and go floating around the fucking cosmos on a sea of distortion.

Magazine is a whopping eighty-plus minutes of pure noise from The Rita, originally released on double cassette back in 2005 and now being reissued, remastered and expanded on 2xCD and digital by venerable New York-based noise/electronic/experimental label New Forces.  This 2005 recording indeed captures The Rita at his most mesmerizing, erecting gigantic walls of burly, churning anti-music that seem to reach out of the speakers, grab a hold of your goddamn ears and pull you into a world of sound that's constantly destroying and rebuilding itself.

What makes Magazine so enthralling is the way it hits you with wave after wave of low end rumble, creating a soundscape so impenetrable that higher-pitched tones are only able to break through for what seems like a few seconds at a time before once again being engulfed by the abyss of roiling static.  The stabs of shrill feedback that tend to punctuate noise are virtually non-existent here, making for a much more immersive listening experience.

Indeed, the extremely subtle dynamic shifts of tone and timbre throughout the album's four lengthy tracks are just enough to push things forward and are never jarring; the beauty of Magazine lies within The Rita's ability to create total sonic environments that lull you into a trance-like state.  In that respect, Magazine may ultimately have more in common with the meditative, droning ultra-doom of Sunn O))) or even the tremolo-trance-out of early Norwegian black metal than it does with other noise albums.

Overall, Magazine is a stunning work of harsh noise that blurs the lines between punishing and pleasurable.  Enduring over an hour of this stuff (nearly two hours if one counts the bonus remixes) is a big ask for the uninitiated, but hardened noise fanatics will find much to enjoy within the turbulent yet strangely soothing confines of this mammoth exploration of sound.