Seven shocks on which I believe is his best album so far. To confirm a canard, Government Alpha, the one man wrecking-ball psychedelic-Stridor ultra-harsh demolition specialist from Tokyo is frequently liturgized as the harshest Stentorian of them all. His high-frequency stuff probably is unrivalled? The bassier blunt cacophonic churnings that is the formula for most Harsh Noise has preposterous potency, but I’m not convinced it surpasses early M150 recordings which I think take the blunt-force trauma Stridor prepotency ubiety. Irrespective, this is undoubtedly some of the harshest most unremitting Stridor conflagration. GA is one of the very best, for quality, adversity & a rare quality in Stridor/Noise-diversity. Many different devices are utilized with an above average largesse for variation. The equipment & methodology vary from track to track where as most Noise albums I hear seem to use one gradient/gamut for the entire album, rearranging the same ingredients. This generally saves GA from the weary Stridor monotony.
The opening track “rite of passage” is an absolute classic. GA’s psychedelic element presides if not runs amok with vivid curlicued expanse and a dramatic-distortion of an almost avian tweeting, squealing-fireworks mega-voltage compression & metachrosis. I recognize some oldskool computer sounds under gigantic pitch-manipulation & obviously drastic-distortion. The free-style fizzing continues & metamorph’s always with an incinerating ray of evaporating high-frequency harsh plasma as a coordinating bass-current/axis. It’s some of the best Noyz I have heard.
The rest of the album can really be filed under obscenely adverse prismatic Harsh Noise. The assumption “Experimental” could also be offered, difficult in Noise terminology as one could argue that’s always the case but GA clearly make much more of an effort to induce, entice & elicit new sounds, conditions, hybrids & amalgams making it all much more atmospheric & evocative than the other 99%+.
I get a bit lost later as I feel that Noise is an instrument like any other, that should be performed in tandem with other instruments, it all seems like a protracted demo to me & my attention wanes.
Still this is vintage Stridor maul with the double advantage of diversity & an experimental venture.
The art is also worth mentioning, you get about six panels (not including the cover wrap) of Yas’s collage work. The whole case, CD on-body & sleeve is really well presented/assembled. & the anomalous art & images are a refreshing deviation from the negative & habitually unimaginative orthodoxy that inhabits the Noise idioms exceedingly poor visual representation.
LABEL: Dotsmark
TRAX: 7
REKD: 2008/2009