HOSTILE ORGANISM

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 different concept of what a guitar album could be back in 1996.  As such, he assembled a motley crew of avant-garde players such as Melt Banana's Ichiro Agata, Naked City's Fred Frith and Gastr del Sol's Jim O'Rourke (later of Sonic Youth) and set about creating some of the most bat-shit insane guitar music ever put to tape.  Granted, one might be hard-pressed to call what transpires over the course of this hour-long six-string fuckfest "music," as much of the album has more in common with Japanese harsh noise and the experimental side of dark ambient than it does with the more structured work of its personnel's respective main bands.

Although it isn't the opening track, the skin-peeling, anti-riff insanity of Guitar Organism really kicks off with the monolithic "Where We Exist," a nearly thirty-minute live collaboration between Null and Frith that sounds more like their guitars are being tortured as opposed to played.  Essentially, if you've ever wondered what it would sound like if you let a bunch of violent rogue robots run amok at the Fender factory and then set the building on fire while they were still inside wreaking havoc, this is about as close as you're ever going to get.  There is very little here, if anything at all, that resembles conventional guitar technique, making for an extremely challenging yet rewarding listen.

"Where We Exist" is bookended by "Double Headed Jet Pimiento" and "Love isn't Blind," which work perfectly as intro and outro pieces due to their short, repetitive, noisy nature.  While these tracks are extremely enjoyable, I have to admit I expected something a little wilder from Agata given how bonkers Melt-Banana can get.  Fortunately, Null and Agata saved their best for last with "Oriental Psycho Garden;" I'm not sure who's playing what here, but one guitar plays a reverbed arpeggio that would qualify as pretty-sounding if the second guitar wasn't attemping to strangle it from behind with distorted free-form noise.

In comparison to the other tracks, Null's collaborations with Guy Lohnes and O'Rourke are much more subdued affairs, but that doesn't make them any less interesting.  "Vicious Circle" begins with crawling ambience before swarms of insectoid distortion enter the mix, but even when this occurs, the track maintains an eerie sense of calm.  "Neuro Politics" on the other hand, sounds like UFOs from a 1950s sci-fi movie milling about aimlessly through the vastness of the cosmos, punctuated by what sounds like guitar strings being plucked using Freddy Krueger's glove.  These two songs serve as a nice comedown toward the end of the album, offering respite from storms of distortion that came before.

Guitar Organism isn't an easy listen, but listeners with open minds and a taste for exploring extreme music's fringes will no doubt relish the opportunity to hear one of the Japanese scene's most idiosyncratic six-stringers do what he does best with a host of equally incomparable guest players.  It is a testament to KK Null's ability to craft captivating experimental music, as well as his knack for choosing like-minded collaborators.  If you're ever lucky enough to find a dirt cheap copy lying around like I did, don't hesitate to pick it up.