Max Nordile

Vol. 1
Cassette

Nothing Band - Veteran Factory
Reefers Records
Cassette



Its impossible for me to review anything out of America without commenting on the eye watering amount of postage dollars it costs for anything to escape those Trumpian shores. It happened with the last clump of Nordile cassettes and its happening again now because, because, because, because having $14 dollars taken from your wallet for the pleasure of having two tapes cross the pond feels like someone had to suffer the humiliation of having their pants pulled down at post office counter. Its an outrage of some sorts and if I were using the US Mail on a regular basis I’d be seething blood at the iniquity of it all.

It was with a sense of camaraderie that I looked at that $14 dollar postage sticker and decided to do what I rarely do and review straight off. Its the least I can do for someone who has taken the time and effort to fill out a USPS ‘Customs Declaration and Dispatch Note’ after trailing down to his local post office to have their pants pulled down. Max Nordile does this to me now and again. A couple of cassettes right out of the blue. Never any letter or message, just the meat and perhaps a couple of cassettes. No download code because it doesn’t exist, no limited number edition, no slip of paper with a bandcamp yum code, no email littered with url’s, no info packed pdf, not even a whiff of menstrual blood. And I know what a lot of you are saying right now, ‘but the internet is the easiest way to get your work out there and reach people’. OK, good point and who can afford to blow $14 dollars every time they want to send a couple of cassettes to someone in another country? It’ll soon add up. But still ...

Nordile doesn’t believe much in contact info either. Which can be infuriating at times but also leaves just a hint of the mysterious and the unattainable. In this age of instant everything I quite like the fact that all I have here are two tapes and the music therein. If I want to go any further I have to start digging. Which I do and uncover Reefers Records in Seattle which has some info on their new Nordile/Nothing Band release ‘Composure’ but no mention of Veteran Factory. Hey ho. The mystery deepens.

Vol.1 has little in the way of sleeve art either unless you count a handwritten ‘Vol. 1’ in the corner of a slip of pink paper as stuffed into the cassette box. Inside it says Marissa Magic and Max Nordile Oakland CA 2018, something so basic it gives me great hope, the ‘we’re so busy creating music that we haven’t got time to do a cover’ ethic. No label either, or run details. Just the cassette. Just the music. Lets listen like its 1979.

Inside are two live improv jams. The A side ‘Active Music Series’ is the wilder of the two; Coltrane parps meets electric guitar wronk with guitar strings tugged from the neck and let go twang, the sax blowing and blaring the same two notes until spent. Added tin sheet bashing and shaken bells make for a raucous night out. Side B is ‘Tunnel Jam’. Taking a Pharaoh Sanders subterranean tunnel like workout where the natural echo and reverb does funny things to your head. In a short track Nordile and Magic blow a sax apiece to fluttering and wavering highs. Fingers constantly on the move, notes emerging like flocks of starlings.

As the Nothing Band Nordile fills out his sound world with drum improv, found sounds such as traffic and street chatter, machine loops, amp hum, more sax skronk, more guitar wonk, live outings that sound like TNB outtakes, scrapes and horrible noises shoddily recorded and sounding all the better for it. There’s unidentifiable Harry Bertoia rattlings and even a  Goon Show sample of Harry Seacombe over a moribund piano motif. Try putting a sticker on that one.

Two random blasts from over the pond that as much as anything else act as a healthy reality check. Which is good for me and good for you. In terms of aesthetics and attitude only the work of the Filthy Turd [or whatever guise he’s working under at the moment] springs to mind, which is a shame. The world needs more Max Nordiles. It needs more unidentifiable madness.




http://www.reefersrecords.com/p/nothing-band.html