My cassette to digital dubbing still sucks shab! I do what I can with what I got…which is straight out the canal!

DJ Plague vs Terrorist Kriss split cassette:

Canada, July 27th 2002 – two guttersnipes – Canadian Speedcore Resistance don DJ Plague & his mo’ malicious counter-extremist Terrorist Kriss are contending, live & head-to-head, for the gnarliest nut-fuck cup at the Smirk club/bar/burnt-out. This entails a competitive tag-team of destructive Speedcore battery & digital-noise supported by small bouts of hard-Breakcore & Grind/Extreme Metal mishmash gatecrashing the action.

Plague is more on the hard-Gabber/Speedcore digit & also initiated & oversaw the CSR label & platform who smashed-out plenty of Speedcore misdeeds. Terrorist Kriss is the sicker candidate who was much more affiliated with Noise & Extreme Electronics (branching into it fully on later forays such as the cult-killer “Suicide Envy” that was issued as a split tape with Mourmansk 150). Together these guys bounce body-parts around the dance-floor with that classic extreme-youth-adrenalin-thirst that Speedcore, Extratone, Splittercore or whatever parlance we agree to call it represents so well.

A considerable hunk of it (its huge! over an hours’ worth!) is too tame/Speedcore on-the-Gabber-end for my liking, but there is some seriously draconian trauma on hand in places, particularly from TK who really is a loon. It’s also got that raging, minority troublemaker quality to it & it is great to have these two mad shits battling it out together in full spectacle. A sweat lodge of adolescent-angst exploding over speed-fetishism. Lost the fucking cover! Don’t think this one is around any longer? But it’s well worth stuffing into the swag-rag if you ever get the chance. Canadian Speedcore Resistance-2002

Lost In Translation-universal translation/that’s right 8”EP:

Don’t come across too many 8”s … a mouth-watering clear-vinyl from Minneapolis’s drugged-out & bedraggled Noise-Drone lofi-Electronics IDM Tramp-Hop. Lackadaisical, dreamy, somnambulant opacity with a generous film of dust or dirt. A far more torpid modal or mood than the Drop Of Order LP, or the marvelous split 12” with Substance P. Strictly analogue as usual. More subdued, trippy & authentically atmospheric brackish ambience. Shambles about in a similar territory that IOS shared for stretches of their career. Good shit.. perhaps a little too slight/abstract for my personal expectations from this great band (two downtime numbers with no blitz) but a welcome additional dose of downtempo nebulous doss. No label/self-issued

Lincoln Love Log-six song demo CDR:

Gum-disease! Sure to arouse approval in all but the most disconnected – its 2002-2003 & two sprats from Chicago are doubled-over & cramping at the loins with the dirtiest of rotting-garbage Noise-stonk or “experimental noise groove” as they self-define. Hey! This shit is bubbling & leaking blue-bottle larvae & smut-fluids like a single character special move exclusive. Very’ very good yarble with self-shaved singularity stand-apart. Sludge, Grind & Noise, but the twist of the coiling-innards comes from this groove, hip-hop, breakbeat, heaving Funk-feculence – & critical to its success is the drummer being able to drop the beats with the right foot-work, accentuations & ghost-notes. Almost no blast-beats, its all trashy Hip-Hop, Funk, Rock-refuse & toxic spillage. Guitars are a dogs-dinner of grimy & soiled FX addle with masses of distortion. Perhaps Nightstick, Black Mass of Absu & Gore Beyond Necropsy despoiling a stash of Funk & Rap records with a rush of ripe maggots. good song structures & massively overloaded vocals, not to mention risible samples from unexpected sourcing. These guys did some other good shit (though none that quite asserted itself like this) then fizzled out I think? The pearl of dirt-drench “Pink Taco” made it onto the legendary DRF Anti-Listener Noisecore compilation that Lo-fi or Die shat into a shallow-grave yonks back. self-released – 2003

OPS-PSF/Digital Noise Distortion-split 7”EP:OPS-PSF:

Oh my fuck! The first ever vinyl of cult-gold-medalist Tokyo No-Skool-Noyzcore freak garble Gunk duo OPS-PSF (recorded in 1998). 114 tracks in just under five minutes (yes! that’s actual separate songs, not one roll counted as compartmentalized takes) of the most whacked-out, harsh, scrappy, hilarious, trashy micro-Noisegrind scoff-garbage, comprising drums (Ryohei Kikuchi from Gunk veteran’s Final Exit), guitar multi-Noise (Takahisa) & mega-distortion bleurk vocals (Kikuchi again). It is unanimously unique. Hyper individualized User-Hostile blat, that’s so ‘un-musical’ yet adoringly effort-intensive & skilled in its final formulation. Glorious! & one of the finest exemplum’s of the notoriously rare “Gunk” rubric (non-digital skilled Noisecore with effort & diligence). These guys were all but ignored for all but the most exiguous of under-belly followings for like’ two decades! They have recently got a bit more attention off the back of Final Exit’s massively delayed recognition/success.

DND: A direct lump-hammer wallop onto open-top brain! Long running pseudo-marginal Italian Stentorian supremo Digital Noise Distortion – abjectly annihilate with alpha-predator-harsh, erratic, pounding, solid & obliterating full contact Stridor trauma. Mutilated circuits, fatal currents, ripping metal-work & deracinating, surface-stripping, ultra-stamina harsh-prime. Hysteria, high-speed paroxysms, escalations, drops, build-up & super’ super harsh, peak-quality punishment-beating, further frustrated by digital manipulation, looping & source-noise aggregation. The loop work, foreplay & progressive intensification finalize one of the best & hardest harsh Noise tracks/recordings I can account for in over two decades of immersion. A piece of perfection in the hall of champions.

Comes in an extremely plush & high-end odd-sized glossed-card sleeve, with a special coloured clip that secures the delicious pellucid-green-vinyl under a small lappet fastener. Stupendous full-colour original artwork & design, full colour labels. Who else but fucking Jigokuki/Lo-fi or Die Rekadz?

Illusion Of Safety-rules of the game 3”CD:

The more I listen to this over the many years, the more I admire it & appreciate just how exceptional the work is (with new details or intricacy coming to my attention whenever I revisit). It’s 1994, & core member Dan Burke outlays an 18.45-minute audio agglomeration of semi-subdued but straying, poly-dimensional & frisky weirdness & wonder (one of the groups best albums for me along with Bad Karma & Distraction). This entails extensive metropolitan field recordings, sample work, loops, electronics, drone, noise, synth & masses of assiduous editing that eventuates in a giant out-of-auricular-experience (all through/via excellent recording equipment for superb sound capture). The project inhabits a profoundly odd space – kind of resisting categorical anchoring through scope, application & idiosyncrasy. Design is also a boon, heavy-set plastic wallet (I think more commonly utilized in high-end photography), surrealist collage & strange overlapping patterns on the internal sleeve with immovable paper wallet for the disc. Fucking ace!Very difficult to composite an excerpt for this stuff as it’s so randomized & requires prolepsis & build-up for optimum effect….. so I just tagged the first two minutes (essentially the overture).