01.19.2025
Good Morning,
This is Beach Sloth. Below are this week’s albums:
· Editor’s Note – Moving forward, anything that is abnormally loud and noisy beyond what a ‘reasonable person**’ would subject themselves to will be prefaced with a *Volume Warning* Thank you.
*Volume Warning*
Judgitzu – Sator Arepo
Judgitzu’s Sator Arepo punched me in the gut with these 200 BPM rhythms. The mixture of ancient and modern dance proves why dance music is essential to being happy. Given how sedentary people have gotten in the past few decades, doing the opposite of speeding things up past the point where even Gabber might need a breather is doubly refreshing. I am impressed by the sheer level of muscle incorporated within these tracks; these are destroyers of feet and burners of calories. While driving in the morning, I listened to this and could effectively reduce my daily caffeine consumption; such is the power of this best. Knowledge of Singeli (of Tanzanian origin), Gabber (of Dutch origin), and even hints of Autechre (of English origin) help to best inform the listener of this strangeness. It's wild how, in the mid-2000s, NYC was going through its indie sleaze era, which was going on halfway around the world. I am not exactly going to knock the indie sleaze era, as it remains a beloved part of my sonic evolution, but I wish this landed on my radar much sooner than it did.
This is industrial-strength energy. I like the sound design, which is unbelievably heavy. Julien Hairon is familiar with exploring various soundscapes. A punk ethnomusicologist, as he describes himself, something is fascinating about how he incorporates the field recordings within the thick morass of activity. You can go to his Bandcamp for his previous efforts to see how he documents these sounds. Here’s my disclaimer – I am unsure how he manages to financially support himself and continue to travel to all these different places. Whatever the root cause and impetus of getting these recordings down, his heart does seem to be in the right place. He is also quite close to anyone he is working with on the ground, as documented by the literal names of people, their relatives, etc., which gives the recordings a personal charm, getting to know the people behind them, something that sometimes can be overlooked. The dedication to getting it all down and right feels respectful.
L’or Des Fous is the sound of an oncoming train. I like the eeriness of the work and how bass-laden the experience is. One of my friends describes Vitalimetre as “the hippo song” yet refuses to clarify what they mean by that statement. I appreciate the input, and sharing my love of music with friends is always lovely. In English, it translates to vitality meter, and that feels accurate. While listening to this, I think of Autechre’s most chaotic moments on the NTS Sessions mixed with something much more primal. This is probably my favorite and the drone-like rumbles make it seem like the song is operating at two speeds – one is a slowed-down ambient scape, and the other is this percussive juggernaut. Beyond even the Autechre reference, I’d go down into a deeper corner of sonic exploration, the decidedly punk ethos of Icelanders Stilluppsteypa, who always are on the periphery of somewhere yet exist nowhere in particular (i.e., Iceland).
This is a real earworm, as Julien has a good ear for melody and progression while creating this weird hybrid of different periods. Even the album artwork mixes industrial, punk, and traditional sculpting. This will wake you up.
Hans Otte – On Earth
I'm unsure why this applies to me, but 1979 is one of those years that presents a strange allure. There is something very creepy about the year, the eeriness that feels unparalleled compared to the year before or after it. Something dark, malicious, and hellbent on the destruction of the old ways. This is not to say that it was an excellent year for anybody – consider it the canary in the coal mine situation. Yet, even when I look at the years before and after the year, there’s barely anything (and yes, I categorize music by the year of release because I am that obsessive). 1979 has more than any year for about a decade before and after. Perhaps there is something deeper to explain about the year that remains unseen to me, but since I have not figured it out by now, so many years into my life, I imagine this will remain a mystery.
Hans Otte’s On Earth is one of those things that nicely lines up a slew of different strategies and sounds that appeal to me. Sound sculpture, drones, mid-century Cologne—it all fits neatly into place. With over 100 compositions to his credit, Hans Otte is best known for his minimal approach to the piano. Unlike those pieces, there’s no discernible use of a piano here – all electronic timbres from black cubes on a gallery floor. Yes, this art is very art. Beyond that, there’s the spoken word piece in German, which adds to the general spirit. At this point in Germany's history, they had already gotten a population below the natural replacement level for fertility, at least for Western Germany; East Germany would hit this much later and much more in the 90s. They had embraced natural population decline, a decline they embrace to this day, decades later. Demography plays absolutely no role in the overall sound design of the work; I found it an interesting aside.
The music here is meditative yet veers into industrial at certain moments. In the first piece, there is a much stronger emphasis on the industrial aesthetic, while the latter is a little kinder on the ears. Either feels otherworldly, like you might be encountering a world few others bothered to explore, excluding perhaps an outlier like Roland Kayn. Otherwise, this feels particularly strange, even though it is many years later in the present. It is a slow-moving, gentle work, and the tempo feels virtually non-existent. Hans slows things down, makes the two extended cuts feel akin to time dilation,
Cologne is the agreed-upon experimental music capital of Germany. You might be thinking – why not Berlin? Berlin is too cool for experimentation. Even if it is experimental, it is not cool, even if Florian Hecker’s fits might suggest otherwise. This is one of the two releases under the Cologne-based Edition Kölnischer Kunstverein, the other belonging to Nam June Paik. This and that other record can command several hundred dollars, and Nam June Paik is a weirdo.
Drone-wise, this is gorgeous stuff. The way the sounds resonate from the floor would be the kind of thing I would have adored during my drone era, and even now, after my standards for drones have increased, I still find this incredibly elegant. This aged well and is a surprising blend of the meditative and otherworldly. It is a nice change of pace from his usual piano-based works and beautiful.
Ü - Doobedoo Dub'e'dope
Outside, it was 13 degrees (2 with the windchill), and I had nowhere to go. The inside of my abode had all the tropical colors, the sky blue, the faded boho trappings, so this felt perfect. I am not a winter person, yet everything about me suggests otherwise. If I could live in the tropics, I would live in the tropics; alas, several things would need to happen for that to become a reality. I am sure the Swede behind this alias, Joel Brindefalk, also longs for warmer climates based on the frigidity of their home country alongside the incredible warmth these two extended cuts possess.
Firstly, I’m impressed with anybody who realistically has a remix alias called Pissfuckhead. Respect. Nothing but respect for that. He’s been doing this for a long time, literally decades, with decades spent dormant as well. I appreciate the level of rabbit hole dives that his work led me down, and the label that released this, Börft Records, has a rich history. This is probably not the last time I will explore their catalog, as they do some fascinating stuff. It helps that this release came out on the far more out-there works of iDEAL Recordings, hence putting it on my radar in the first place. He incorporates a vast amount of detail with these two pieces that go to the twenty-minute mark.
The spaced-out aesthetics give off a distinct aura like Sweden’s neighbor and former colony, Norway, especially the artist known as Lindstrøm. Much like Lindstrøm, a sense of unhurriedness allows the songs to expand into the infinite. Unlike Lindstrøm, the focus on dub is far more potent. If you listen to this with a sound system that is good enough (which I wish I had), you can feel the physicality of the thing. While many artists try to embody dub’s essence within a digital framework, I think it works out successfully. You can sense the hazy, humid heat on these two pieces, which is lovely. Given that my thermostat can only handle heat to a degree (thanks to old homes), the music helped.
Everything here is infinitely happy. This will make you very happy, as the grooves are playful. Aspects of the dub mixed with acid techno give me strong Mouse on Mars vibes to go a little more southern (though only by a little, and Germany’s quite cloudy anyway). You can get lost in these pieces, and that is the point. By having the songs go out for so long and evolve so gradually, it becomes hypnotic how the tempos refuse to go at anything besides a mellow, slow roll pace.
I like this – I like the construction and the slow evolution. He does a great job of transforming the basslines. Typically, I am wary of dub techno as it is not always particularly immersive, but Joel proves it can possess a joyous soul in the right hands here.
*Volume Warning*
Lust Fist - Øyenhuler Engang Fylte
Noise, for all its supposed roots in anti-establishment rhetoric and violent imagery, can go in myriad ways. Some projects can become quite famous due to the sheer duration of their tenure, looking at Merzbow’s several-decade long spanning career, from before the collapse of the Soviet Union to raising chickens in Japan as an elderly farmer. Others still take a different approach, remaining unknowable for their entire duration. If you know what the Grey Wolves stand for, all the power is yours. Speaking of Grey Wolves, Lust Fist takes plenty of inspiration from them, perhaps a little too much. Because there’s something shockingly drab, even vanilla, about how Lust Fist goes about things, nothing here will be shocking to even people with a passing knowledge of noise. This is, unfortunately, a boring release from the droning industrial churn to the by-the-numbers power electronics ethos that dominates the work. I know that aesthetics are part of the noise and the temptation for the retro flavor, but there’s nothing here beyond what has already been done. One of the finest things I have with noise is how it goes into new places, but Lust Fist appears unwilling to explore any new lands, no wilderness, especially the suburbs of noise, nothing feral about it.
Cloister Recordings released this not too long ago, in 2022. This is an established, albeit sleepy, label in one of America’s most underrated cities (I love Denver and will defend it to the death). Noise labels tend to go for either the overbearing or the relatively niche, and this is much more of a niche label, having a handful of releases in a little over a decade. This is shockingly low-key, given how some noise artists can release an album every hour. Even when you look at Lust Fist, you can see that the number of releases associated with this alias is surprisingly slim. Although founded in 2020, there are only three releases, less than one yearly. *Laughs in Merzbow* that’s a tad insufficient, given the excess that noise operates under. However, judging from the quality of this one, perhaps that is for the best.
My most positive thing about this is that the vocal treatments are interesting. After that, it goes very downhill, very fast. Melancholy melodies, various industrial drones, all of this come together in a way that, if it seems familiar, is because even in 1981, this would have been commonplace. The year is 2025, and there are much higher expectations regarding noise. Even for those noise groups that fully embrace the retro style, there’s more that they do versus this one. Though it may sound strange, this album is not innovative; it plays it extremely safe. Frequency-wise, there’s no real variation, and even by power electronics standards, which offers a tad more forgiveness than regular noise, it still falls flat, given all the interest in power electronics to the current day. Names of the title tracks are all in Norwegian, and I could translate them. Still, they have that hackneyed quality of being edgy for the sake of edgy – just more nonsense, no humor, no pushing of boundaries, basically an album created by a devoted fan of the genre without any of the originality that makes noise such an exciting genre. I will give credit for the vocal treatments, but beyond that, there’s little else that is compelling. Exceedingly boring stuff.
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** Your idea of a reasonable person, music-wise, I am sure, differs from my idea. Still, if you’re already here, you’re already unreasonable by sheer virtue of your attendance, and I thank you for that!
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