Vomir - Proanomie

Artist Vomir
Label At War With False Noise
Year 2009
Genre(s) Harsh Noise Wall

There's been a lot said about the genre Harsh Noise Wall, some good, some bad. Even within a genre like noise it seems to be polarising. One of the frontmen (or rather entities) within this "scene" is Romain Perrot, the French embodiment of nihilism. With a most stoic performing presence and the use of plastic bags Vomir seeks to submit to the audience true nihilism conveyed within his music. Sitting in a dank basement in Glasgow, a bin bag stopping any light accessing my eyes and all human chatter and ambient sound replaced by punishing walls of feedback and static got me thinking. There seems to be a backlash towards HNW recently and I've seen it described as talentless in many places before (See : Any thread on the iheartnoise board) but I really can't say I know enough about the sub-genre to write everything off. One thing I am willing to say, though, is that Vomir is fantastic.

Proanomie on At War With False Noise has an impressive run time of just over 76minutes of tumultus, twisted, torture. One sole track dominating the entire release. Coming packaged in the barest of terms (This being done as an aesthetic). So fair enough, Vomir's aims are clear, his aesthetic in both performance and releases stick staunchly to that. What about the music?

A dark room, large headphones and a high volume mark my listening experience for Proanomie and where the technical merits of construction may not be as important as your usual knob twisting noisenician, Vomir is all about emotions and atmospheres to me.

There is no subtle fade in, no opening drone to lead into a different passage, this music starts aggressively and remains so til the end of its run time. I had no music on prior to this and the harsh rumble sounds like a building slowly collapsing, juxtaposed perfectly with earlier silence. This is bleakness, pure and simple.This serves as electrohypnol, I have absolutely no memory of where the 76 minutes of my life has gone, in fact I'm only snapped back to reality by the sudden glaring silence where audial nihilism once stood.

The overall release is simply fantastic, a big note to AWWFN on this fact too, seeing as he apparently did the layout (Which suits the release perfectly). Vomir is Harsh Noise pushed all the way to OTT conclusions but it is neither pastiche, nor parody. If I wasn't such a cynic I might call it evolution, either way just grab the CD and be prepared for one of the most chilling, depressing, euphoric listening experiences of your life.

Timothy C Holehouse - Littlecreatures

Artist Timothy C Holehouse
Label Unknown (If any)
Year 2009
Genre(s) Space Noise (?), Drone

Littlecreatures came to me packaged in a large plastic baggie, included were all sorts of police procedural forms (!?), handwritten instructions for various elements of driving lessons and a small insert, listing what appears to be a poem. I was pretty excited by this, to see how the aesthetic presentation sat with the music on tape. That said the music is most important so we'll get to that first.

This release sounds a lot more spacey than other work by Holehouse, sounding like echos from a battle lost lightyears away, now reaching our simple fleshy brains. The last days of the first sentient computer, traversing the universe and caught on tape one starry evening. My attitude towards this is partly covered in the Felony report document where the first track Leucotony is listed as being made via broken wires, therimin frequencies and a charity shop drum machine. Sounds bounce around, aided by the panning decision. Out of nowhere the music suddenly gets darker, the earlier frequencies hinting at screams from a dying planet. Any form of music that seems spacey always makes me think of Kraut Rock, Littlecreaturs is no exception and as per it's a fine piece of music, evolving past the simple beginnings into a true miasma of sound, drones push and pull like currents. There is simply so much going on that it deserves, nay demands, multiple listens (and upon hearing it once you'll want to give it multiple spins). The sound dies away, leaving a slight moment of reflective silence before a harsh, crumbly drone begins to drive the track forward. The interplay between the harsher elements and more dreamy spaced out sounds really managed to separate me from the music, I wasn't just sitting jamming to a tape and writing preliminary notes, I was in the middle of something. All action on my part stopped so as to better experience the music on offer. Littlecreatures manages to transcend the "background listening" experience of some more drone based noise and become a true behemoth, this demands your attention and you'd be right to give it some. As ever Holehouse doesn't stay with one style too long, everything is wrapped into a package, some harsher almost PE elements invade the sonic tapestry but never at the expensive of other parts. This isn't cut-up, it flows freely and simply for an epic journey.

The second track (side) titled Elephantis burns forth on a more harsh note, sounding like early Masonna live recordings, harsh rumble, static and children's nursery rhymes cut-up into an unrelenting assault. Almost acting as a pastiche of the found sound aesthetic. This review is hard to write because I'm dealing with some amazing nostalgia right now. The harsh elements seem harsher due to the juxtaposition between them and TV sound samples and even kids singing. Never sitting in one place and refusing to be categorised. Elephantis really displays the use of good cut n paste styles of found sound within the genre. I'm gonna make a lot of enemies here and say that if James Ferraro is seen as being amazing because he can play old 80s themes through a pedal board then Holehouse shows how actual found sound can be incorporated into noise for the benefit as opposed to some gimmick. The track covers so many moods that it's hard to list, jumping seamlessly from a harsh cut-up nostalgia trip to an unnerving drone. Like the Talkboy I owned at age 8 being swapped into a Merzbow performance. Magical, creeping, screaming.

Timothy C Holehouse/LAN Formatique

Artist Timothy C Holehouse / LAN Formatique
Label None
Year 2009 (?)
Genre(s) Dark Ambient

Yet another split tape featuring Mr. Holehouse and yet another blinder. packaged with a small insert (part of which is reproduced above) on purple coloured tapes there's really no preparing for this release.

Holehouse opens with electronic drone and distant drums, fracturing under subtle bomb samples. Wails echo around the piece as if you're being serenaded by lost souls. There's a very real image of a solider slowly dying in the middle of a battlefield, blood mixing with the moody ground. Being beckoned to and taunted by those that have already passed. The closest artist I could compare this to would be Edinburgh's Wraiths (Edit : I have just noticed they are thanked in the insert), this release is a lot calmer however and very much has an identity of it's own. The insert tells us that these tracks were recorded in a 16th Century cottage in Dorset, coupling this with the images evoked within the sounds and the artwork there's a very strong aesthetic drive to the release which works perfectly. This is proper bleak electronic ambient, feelings of loss and despair creep into your brain, carried effortlessly by the music, itself simply dripping with implied menace. This shits all over most of the so called "medieval dark ambient" (See : Dark Ages) by not only creating the aesthetic needed but also being able to carry the idea within the music itself. I tried to listen to this tape whilst lying in bed the other night but had to turn it off because it was genuinely freaking me out. A simply fantastic effort. One issue that I have noticed is that the second track appears to hard panned to the left channel, this can be overlooked when considering the sheer depth of the music included however. The final track is a more overt noise piece, but it carries forward the atmosphere from the preceding two arrangements. It's really hard to describe each track separately as they flow together so well.

LAN Formatique were new to me with this tape and here they present us with six tracks which were apparently "Recorded between the land of the living and the Emerald city", now I'm not too sure about anyone else but I, for one, am intrigued. The first thing I noticed about their recording was the use of guitar to form a basis of the music, alongside what sounds like real (Being a drummer I'm fucked if I'm wrong) drums. I'm reminded of Opaque mixed with a little bit of early Abruptum, very befitting the style established over on Side A. The constant panning of the drums gives me a bit of a headache but when they build up into an all out assault I quickly forget any issues I had, this is noise rock at it's noisiest and most brutal. The songs blend into one long track (Which is really helped by the format) which leaps around seamlessly from foggy ambient drone to spastic instrument abuse almost at random. Only with great care can something sound so spontaneous and unplanned.

Shuriken/Timothy C Holehouse Split Tape

Artist Timothy C Holehouse/Shuriken

Label None
Year 2009
Genre(s) Drone, PE, Noise Rock

Timothy C Holehouse opens his side of this split with a barely audible machine hum, a crescendo building into sultry drone. Dark and claustrophobic, sounding like a slowed heartbeat pushed through a pedal line. An incredible sense of foreboding, as if waiting for the end that is expected but no less scary. The first track, Swine Flu Boo... Who? is the audio equivalent of the pandemic, slow rumbles at first, growing closer and becoming louder until the whole world is screaming. The track, as with the threat of Swine Flu grows and grows until it suddenly begins to ebb out just as quickly as it arrived.

The next song is a mixture of static feedback, pulsating with a steady rhythm. As if every computer rebelled and marched upon the senate. The track rises up for one final attack and stops in its tracks. Holehouse's side is closer to Batchas style dark ambient to my ears, which is no negative point. Both these songs are fantastic, if a little short for my liking.

Next up we have Shurikens side which is split into four tracks. The first thing I need to say is how shocked I was, the music on this side is straight up rock. I actually checked to see I hadn't accidentally set my hi-fi to CD (Dinosaur Jr. was still sitting in the tray). I'm really pleasantly surprised by the first track offered up, amazing bass lines and angular guitar with fairly emotive vocals. The next cut Unison sounds like Sonic Youth meeting The Jesus Lizard in the Batcave, very noise rock/post punk. The music really is fantastic, it's especially nice to hear more "conventional" bands sharing a tape alongside noise musicians, variety is the spice of life n' aw that.

Amazing presentation on the release too, on tape printing for both sides (I can't tell you the amount of times I've been faced with an almost impossible attempt to work out Side A from Side B with some other tapes) and fold out J-Card with a skeletal theme.