MK9 - Solid Waste
3” CDR. 113 copies.
The Rita / Rusalka / MK9
Neural Operations. NO 11
Cassette. C30. 126 copies.
Rusalka / MK9 - Separate Anxieties
Neural Operations. NO 16
CDR. 200 copies.
Michael Nine is one of the few active American ‘noise’ artists that I know of still making the yearly trip to European shores. While everyone else has laid low or decided to stay at home to concentrate on ousting Trump, Nine packs up his gear, prints up a few releases to sell along the way and gets on a plane. Usually in Winter which may be for masochistic tastes or may be just because he likes the feel of cold European weather. This year MK9 and Rusalka [Kate Rissiek] did the whole tour which covered the whole of November with Sam Mackinlay of The Rita dropping in for several dates along the way. And while they played three UK dates; Leeds, Birmingham and Gateshead there was no London date which I heard was due to some stink with the locals thinking they were all Nazis or some other bullshit.
Unfortunately I had to miss the latest tour due to attending ‘The Wedding of the Year Not Harry and Meghan’. Something I mentioned while reviewing the essential, also sent by Nine, four DVD box set ‘The Pain Factory’. The above is what you saw on the merch table if you happened to make it to those shows or any of the many others they played in Germany, Poland, Switzerland, Italy or Sweden. Except for the last show in Helsinki which was also cancelled but not for them being mistaken for Nazis. This time I think it was the airline that let them down.
I’ll always have an ear for what Michael Nine, MK9 and his label creates. This is the work of a serious thinker, someone capable of making you think, someone capable of unsettling an audience and not just by pulling out a loaded shotgun and pointing it at their heads. One of my favourite MK9 shows was a few years back now in Leeds where Nine showed a video of someone digging a hole in their back yard while Nine prowled the floor shouting unheard words in to a mic, except the camera had fallen over and it was all filmed sideways on so we had to watch it with bent necks. This lead me to believe that this was a clandestine recording of someone burying body parts when in fact it was just someone digging a hole. Or was it? I still think about this. Then there was the Gulf War video footage of Americans blowing up their own troops. Oh we all went home laughing that night. Not.
Of the three releases here I’m guessing that Solid Waste is the new one and the one the kids were scrabbling to get their hands on at the gigs. Solid waste might be an unintended pun here, solid waste being not only the shite you can see fly tipped on the sleeve art but the term medical staff use for the stuff that comes out of your backside. Either way its unpleasant. This is another Nine trip in to existential territory ‘we are just …’ with the dumpster showing the words ‘solid waste’, ‘what is it that separates each one of us from the other, most often nothing …’. Four tracks of ultra gloom electronics with one track ‘Tired Acceptance’ a drone with spoken word addition taken straight from either a self help book or a psychiatric report. ‘Sounding Wall’ is a rapid stream of electronic data, ‘Same’ is ninety seconds of disturbance.
The Rusalka/MK9 split from 2016 has its highlights too with MK9 giving us the darker more contemplative moments to the comparatively noisy outbursts of Rusalka which are heavy on the reverb and at times sound like a squadron of Lancaster bombers heading out to sea. Sadly for me I only got to play one side of the split tape before it seized up, my aging Walkman's defiantly refusing to turn the spools. This may be what happens when you lay The Rita on tape. After trying to loosen it by various tried and tested methods I decided it too was tired of struggling to make sense of life and gave it up as a bad job. With no downloads that I know of this is one instance of the physical format fail. Life goes on. Or does it? Ask Michael Nine and Rusalka.
MK9.org
Neural Operations
Rusalka.org
The Rita
Somewhwere where you may be able to get hold of this stuff other than Neural Operations.
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