Vokera Fan Bearing

Culver - Negative Gate
At War With False Noise
ATWAR 182. Cassette
50 copies.

VOM - Initiation
At War With False Noise
ATWAR 188. Cassette/DL
100 copies.

Vampyres - Astral Sacrifice
At War With False Noise
ATWAR 189. Cassette/DL

Schlaken - Veneration of Relics
At War With False Noise
ATWAR 186. Cassette/DL

BRB>Voicecoil - Containment
Muzamuza. 18. Cassette

BRB>Voicecoil - Reconfigure Moments
Muzamuza. 19. Cassette

Expose Your Eyes - Disintergration
Dokuro. DK67. - Cassette/DL


I’m not one to get sentimental about inanimate objects but after 21 years of trusty service the sight of our old boiler getting chucked in the back of a van was a sad one. Not just because it gave us 21 years of trusty service but because of the noises it made. The new boiler makes no sound at all, except when its making hot water, the rest of the time its a white box on the kitchen wall with copper pipes coming out of it. The old one, for the last two years of its life had a worn fan bearing. A worn fan bearing that drove ‘Alan the Boiler Man’ almost to distraction ‘you can hear that fan bearing halfway up the street’ he would say as he entered the house with his compressor and rolls of tackle preparing for its yearly service and I would say ‘yes it sounds rather nice’. A response which, judging from the look on his face I can only assume he found rather baffling. But I did like it. Both me and Mrs Fisher liked it and now when I come down for my breakfast the kitchen is deathly silent. Its just not the same.

The old fan bearing sounded a lot like Vampyres, a steady drone noise that if listened to closely alters pitch and wavers a little before settling down to a steady bearing grating hum. A simple hum and one which seems to mirror the house’s own circadian rhythms. Coming up the street now all is silent. I have no worn fan bearing to greet me just the squeak and grind of a metal gate as its bottom strut scrapes against concrete. Which sounds a little like brb>voicecoil and a little like TNB. Maybe I’m replacing the sounds of the house with this pile of tapes that sits in front of me? Maybe I’m hoping for a band or noise artist to replicate the sound of the old boiler fan with its grating bearing and welcoming hum? I think the Bearded Wonder may have beaten me to it. To be honest Vampyres are far noisier than the worn fan bearing and chuck in plenty of cold feedback in their bid to make lo-fi noise for Generation Z. I’m just making the comparison because pretty much every noise/drone outfit I’ve ever come across did at one time sound like the worn fan bearing. Its an easy analogy to make but one that bears repeating.

Vampyres are Martyn Reid and the Lee Stokoe, he who sits aloft on the throne of drone, he for whom no bad words have ever been written. I much preferred his Culver release here though. ‘Levitational Pull’ is a three track drone recorded seven years ago and scheduled for an LP release. The mad fools never put it out. So its another Culver release you say, and I say whats wrong with that? Have you heard a bad one? No. There is a lot of them but each one is like having Newcastle brewed laudanum poured down your ears. Genuflection is the only response. Best track here is ‘Negative Gate’ with a chiming, shimmering heatwave chord progression coupled to a cycling drone thats pure menacing horror film soundtrack territory. ‘Levitational Pull’ is the close up sound of sledge runners being dragged across frozen lakes at breakneck speed.

The house actually sounds more like brb>voicecoil. Especially from the outside where most of ‘Containment’ appears to have been recorded. The wind whipping against various man made objects to the accompaniment of passing traffic, meshed fences rattling in a buffeting breeze. There’s nine ‘containments’ here each one exploring a different sound, some are early TNB-ish, mystery sounds, shuffling, clatter, hard to pinpoint sounds which makes for an intriguing listen. And no after recording dabblement either. These are the sounds as captured, pure raw sounds; ‘The recordings capture natural reverbs, clipping distortion and phasing as a result of mic placement within and around subject matter’. This means you get the scrape of shovels, the tinkle of broken tiles, crows, skylarks and that natural reverberation. On one track it sounds like the mic has been dropped in to a huge empty vessel and after it rocks and sticks the resulting echo and clang being glorious and noisy. Top stuff.

‘Reconfigure Moments’ is a ‘collection of audible time frames cut - manipulated - reset - reprocessed’ and contains in last track ‘Refine’ a moment of indelibly great industrial rhythm. This appears amongst a sea of decaying structures, silences, decomposing electronic matter and all out general knock your ears off electroacoustic greatness. Much better when listened to on the download so as to capture the crispness of the recordings, the detail, the leaf mulched footsteps, the bag of marbles being gentle fondled, the gasp and flutter and wow of the artist at work. Who is Kev from Newcastle. Thats all I know. Its all you need to know.

VOM are early Cocteau Twins without the vocals. A three piece with a drum machine doing their best to keep the early 80’s vibe alive. Bauhaus even. Well almost no vocals, I did detect a smattering of electronically adjusted moaning but its wasn’t enough to get me too excited. Same for Schlaken and ‘Veneration of Relics’, a post apocalyptic, dystopian soundtrack as wrung from an electric guitar and many effects. Like dark clouds gathering on the horizon it filled my ears with dread. Sturm and Drang. Black and grey. Music to fill your bombed out house with.

Expose Your Eyes has filled this house with sounds for many years now. More years than I care to think about. Unusually for EYE ‘Disintegration’ has found a home on a label. Most of Paul Harrison’s work usually arrives here in clumps of CDR’s, hand painted jobs, hand stamped, the result of no doubt intense passages of creative energy after which he goes all quiet and hibernates or makes films that recapture what its like to walk around Yorkshire Sculpture Park off your tits on acid. His latest delivery contained just the eight CD’s [of which more later] and this cassette which is pure EYE; thirteen tracks of mangled noise, slowed down voices, road drills, swirling psychedelica, looped shortwave transmissions, pounding rhythms and, of course, grating fan bearings. As primitive as noise gets. After that, everything goes quiet again.



    

AWWFN

MUZAMUZA

DOKURO