2010

Hey, it's that time of year again where i don't provide a list of ten hardly essential things that you all downloaded long before i did anyway.

Sometime between now and mid-january, time permitting, i intend to do three seperate posts on some stand out artefacts of the last year. If the posts never happen and this paragraph is rapidly edited out then i've descended into another fit of self-consciousness and decided agianst it.

There's a reason why most metal blogs catering to a non-niche market all have Agalloch, Electric Wizard, Deathspell Omega and Ludicra in their lists and it's because people moderate their behaviour and opinions in accordance to what other people around them are doing. Or it could be that these were just totally fucking amazing releases, but i kind of doubt it.

Regarding Deathspell Omega i listened to Paracletusa lot (probably more than most other releases this year), still waiting on an easy to purchase vinyl edition before i hail or curse it. Initial listens were utterly frustrating and i'd decided that this was basically the LP where i would stop following them. And repeated listens did not bring anything out that i could say i liked. Yes, i can definitely hear all those parts that have been written off as sounding like Botch and likewise, i'm not all that enamoured with them.

Sometime about two weeks ago whilst walking through a snow storm at 6am it clicked with me a lot more and listening to it in terms of the two major DSO records that came before it (Fas and Si Monumentum) i'm starting to appreciate it more. In this era of instant downloads and instant ill thought opinions via blog, message board and status update alike it's a brave band that will release something that neccesitates repeated listens. (And i offer the same praise to The Body for their All The Waters of the Earth Turn to Blood release.)

Which is why a top ten list of things from 2010 is about as useful as the playlist on the bottom of any of my blog posts; it just captures my thoughts from the previous two days. I'm still figuring out the importance of Deathspell Omega's newest work, it'll either be something that doesn't captivate me at all or it will become an important release to me (and it'll be one extreme or the other).



Drainland's And so our Troubles Began is one of my favourites from 2010 without a doubt. Download it here, get the demo here. Where it would sit in a top ten list i couldn't say.



Shit that was important this year:

A new Burzum LP

This is something that is worthy of a far more in depth analysis than i could attempt. This is something that needs to be discussed in terms beyond "OMG he a natsi that killed a mayhem", "this record is garbage, lol nintendo metal" or "HOLY SHIT BEST GUY EVER RETURNS TO SHOW YOU HOW IT'S DONE AND REDEFINES BLACK METAL"

Maybe in five years it can be discussed.

Scion.

First, fuck the language of advertising encroaching onto grindcore records and fuck everyone who let it happen (the "who" that entails is a more complex answer than "Magrudergrind gone done fucked up"). Second, fuck almost everyone on both sides of the debate except Ryan McKenney of Trap Them who wrote the only genuinely compelling piece about Scion that i read this year.

My opinion on the subject is considerably more nuanced than the simple "fuck Scion" this reads like (but still, fuck Scion)and will appear in the tenth anniversary issue of Short, Fast and Loud magazine early next year. I was considering posting it here as well, but at 4,000 words it's far too long for a blog post even by my wordy standards. E mail me if you want to read it and buy the magazine anyway when it comes out.

The death of Peter Christopherson.

Most of my heros are dead. See earlier lengthy post about it.

Myspace being irredeemably awful

I wrote all this stuff about complexity theory and eco-cycle lenses in terms of Myspace and their failure to move effectively with the people using their services. Then i figured why even bother and just deleted it. Myspace is a largely dead concern.

The Endless Blockade and Joshua Norton Cabal Myspace pages can stay where they are for now; they're unused anyway. Slaughter Strike's page will be deleted as soon as Google redirects people to Bandcamp more often than it does to our Myspace. I'm trying out a Soundcloud page for Nameless Dread. Here's something:

Crowned and conquering child by nameless dread

I'm still figuring out if i like Soundcloud or not.

My 2010

Well, shit, it feels like i had something released every three weeks this year and 2010 has undoubtedly been my most productive year in terms of physical releases.

The Endless Blockade finally died a death in 2010, i guess it's time to stop pretending we're on hiatus. The Bastard Noise split finally came out and i was pretty pleased with both that and the Unearthly Trance split as being our final major statements.

The BN split was based on taking the formula of Primitive and applying it to a section of chapters to make a linear, yet hopefully cohesive whole. The UT split was a recycling process; taking the weirder elements that the BN split threw up and putting them back into the template i set up for the writing of Primitive.

And i realise that this is very much seen as the blog of That-Guy-From-The-Endless-Blockade so i should probably announce now that after taking a year off writing power violence i recently started working on new material with Eric King that largely picks up the pace where Blockade stopped.

It's early days yet, there's probably less than ten minutes of material so far (based on new writing and finding an unused Blockade rehearsal tape with just the two of us). Anyway, the upshot of this is that there will be something in 2011 by Column of Heaven, possibly nothing more than a demo tape but there will be something.

My time is pretty constrained with full time school, two part time jobs and Slaughter Strike and when Eric says "yeah, i totally want to rehearse this week" there's only a 30% chance that he actually does want to rehearse.

Slaughter Strike continued on at a glacial pace, which i'm definitely ok with. After spending the last seven years as sole decision maker for most things i'm happy taking a collaborative approach to running a band again. In 2011 expect our full length (currently half written) and some dates in the eastern and mid-west US in august. Possibly the west coast of Canada around april/ may, but that's highly debatable at this point.

And in my post-Blockade world i tried my hand at some different stuff. Here's a download for you.

Two of the tracks are by Nameless Dread, one is for the full length coming out on Crucial Blaze the other is a remix of a Cutty Ranks song, probably never to be released and more a learning excercise than anything else. The problem with electronic music is the ability to edit things forever and never stop. After about twenty different versions of Limb By Limb i can already hear things that need to be changed with the mix. The other two tracks are just things i was pissing around with and are unlike anything else i'm known for (Nameless Dread still has a relatively industrial edge to it)

Emanations

Ten years ago there was a Norton/ Cornucopia split CDR on Audio Intruder Pain. AIP ended up being the straw that broke the camels back; after something like five labels in a row screwed me on copies of my releases i gave up on releasing noise for over five years.

Alonso, if you're reading this feel free to send me copies of Sounds for Heads and the second press of the Cornucopia split... Anytime you're ready...

Anyway, Jorge from Cornucopia asked me to do a second split/ collaboration with him when he heard i was releasing noise again and this is the result.

It took forever to come out, entirely due to my initial reticence to release my track for a year or so. I had some hare brained ideas about where i wanted to go with Norton for a short while; the problem with being a one person act is that there's no one to say "don't do that" except yourself. Anyway, this is an anomaly in my back catalogue, it doesn't really sit easily with any of my stuff. Had i released a few different things in various permuations of this style it would be different.

It's basically a thirteen minute track made up almost entirely of other peoples music (not noise) with the occasional field recording mixed in and endlessly reworked and regurgitated into a new composition (not music). Consequently it never really gets all that harsh or bass heavy. At times i guess it's slightly like some sections on Shattered Hand (last track on Inner Light).

But yeah, for about a year i was being a giant baby and decided i didn't want to hear it ever again (it's playing in the background as i type this and i can't really figure out what the hell i thought was wrong with it to be honest).

Actually, the tape's called Emanations and i was in some weird Qabala head space at the time so there's probably some mystic shit that i've forgotten about as to why it flows the way it does.

I also submitted a much shorter track of reworked Cornucopia materials.

Collaborations are always a tricky beast for me; if the source material is excellent i ask myself "what can i do with this? It doesn't need any work" and if they're too unfinished i say "what can i do with this? It needs too much work."

Which is why i rarely get involved in collaborations. This one turned out pretty good though and is quite listenable. Cornucopia did a great job reworking the harsh noise material i sent them. There's a Norton/ Frailty of Angels collaboration that i'm quite happy with that should be out early next year too.

You should buy this direct from Cornucopia/ Sonora as they're offering it to you for the princely sum of $6 PPD anywhere in the world. Given that it costs me almost $7 to mail a single cassette to the US (apparently we have the third most expensive postal system in the world or something) and the US $ has been at parity with the Canadian $ for over a year now, meaning there's really no point in anyone ordering it from me.

You can hear samples of the two collaboration tracks on the order page.

Listening:

The Body - All The Waters of the Earth Turn to Blood
Noose - 2009 demo
Lycanthropic Warhead - Infinite Castigation
Hooded Menace - Never Cross the Dead
Death in June - Peaceful Snow
Cutty Ranks - Six Million Ways to Die
Rot - Diabolus (the Unholy Rot)

Reading:

As Loud As Possible
Journey to the end of the Night - Celine
Kosmology - Jeremy Christner

Small Doses

No, not the label of the same name (though i did just approve artwork for a release on that label), but the 100 band compilation CD that Mortville just released.



Anyway, there's a 30 second Joshua Norton Cabal track on there. I tried to apply power violence dynamics to a noise track, came out OK i guess.

Here's what some guy on the internet said about my contribution:

The disturbing image in the booklet warned me, but the music frightened me without premonition. I think this is a duo, but I may be wrong, and they deliver a very disturbing mix of concrete music, harsh noise, ambient and industrial, everything topped with super pissed off screaming. Pretty interesting stuff!

Great comp, had a listen to it this morning. Put it on in the background, ignored the tracklist and treated it as if it was a 70 minute single piece of music, utterly enjoyable. There's something for everyone; noisecore, grindcore, noise, grindnoise, noisegrind. Every single genre of music in the world worth listening to is on here.

The CD booklet also has some writings by Andy from Mortville, Wadge, some other guy and someone that was in The Scroungers. Three of the four pieces are excellent and worth a read.

You should buy one from the label. (Plus Andy was in Captain Three Leg)

Death, dying, art, culture and "famous" people - one explanation as to why we're bummed out when celebrities die

Person on the internet #1,876,345 writing about the death of Peter Christopherson...

For those of you unaware you can read a decent eulogy in The Guardian here and from former bandmate Chris Carter here.

To my mind a major function of art and in particular music, is to carry difficult emotions of the consumer so they are better equipped to deal with them.

Unconsciously or concsiously, it doesn't really matter and people tend to do both, we seek out music that captures a certain moment of our lives and encode that moment into the sound. To this day i still can't hear Wonderwall by Oasis, a song which i don't even like, without getting slightly misty eyed as it reminds me intensely of an important period of my life where that song always seemed to be in the background.

People often listen to angry music when they've had a bad day for a reason. Frequently it's because they can project their feelings on to the music and then get on with their day. Similarly some people would rather listen to something that functions as soothing because of the mental and emotional association they've trained themselves to attach to whatever the piece in question is.

I believe that a small but significant part of the music industry's dying gasp is happening because in the 1980s there was a concerted effort to tie more and more music with more and more useless consumer products that ultimately only held a fleeting meaning; it's hard to get stoked on a night on the town when your anthem now makes you think of sanitary towels or low fat yoghurt.

When celebrities or artists die i believe a lot of the reason many feel a sense of loss towards people they never even met and probably had little in common with is not some misplaced sense of worship but the sudden loss of a deeply personal sense of sharing.

Whether you care or not Nirvana wrote songs that millions of people felt encapsualted some of their sense of alientation and loneliness in the world. When the creator of those songs took his own life i have no doubt that the effect on many was a feeling that the songs that in some way helped them had either been pulled away from them, or that now there was a new layer of grief encoded into their meaning for the listener.

This is in a sense how i feel about the passing of Peter Christopherson. After a sudden death very close to me i listened to a lot of music (it's what i do...) and found that certain pieces by Coil, amongst others, helped me substantially to deal with the drowning sensation that i find true grief to be.

The real help they gave me is hard to adequately explain, but as i talk about above it was really just a conscioius transferring of emotion of my behalf so i could try and turn off the sensation of loss.

On a certain level, hearing that Christopherson died in his sleep this week brings back some of those emotions to me again. Coil's music helped me get through a difficult patch of my life; i can listen to Wraiths and Strays now and i appreciate it as both a fine piece of music and a bittersweet mnemonic device that helps me remember both the good times i had with my friend and the hole in the world that i will always feel in his absence. And it's a sensation of loss i neither want to have clouding my thoughts constantly nor is it something i want to forget; it's just too fucking important to me.

So Christopherson's death brings some of that back to me. I'm sad for the death of someone important in my life who i never met and i'm reminded again of the very tangible loss in my own world.




There are lots of "if it wasn't for abc then def wouldn't exist" in the world and honestly, were it not for industrial culture and in particular Throbbing Gristle and Coil, then The Endless Blockade and any related output and this blog would have turned out quite differently.

Even more than Throbbing Gristle, Coil have long encapsulated almost everything i've looked for in music and culture for my entire adult life now. My early experiences generally revolved around being stoned out my gourd listening to Transparent, in particular Sicktone where everyone would basically try really hard to make themselves feel nauseated by listening to it as loud as possible. As my drug use progressed it became dropping purple oms and listening to Love's Secret Domain and Stolen and Contaminated Songs on repeat for eight hours straight. And i got pretty bored of drugs by about 1994 but have maintained my obsession with Coil since.

Ah, what else can i say? The man was a genius (as was partner Jhonn Balance); i don't think he's ever been on a record i didn't like. I'm not really one for nostaliga most of the time but i decided to travel to Chicago to see Throbbing Gristle last year, the main reason being less about TG and more so i could witness Peter Christopherson and Chris Carter perform.

I guess given the tone of this piece i should use this opportunity to state publically that i want Fire of the Mind played at my funeral. Someone point my family in the direction of this blog when the time comes.



In the last two months i've found myself listening to a lot of Coil again. I put up the Nameless Dread link last week (and thank you for the kind comments) which a number of people refered to as breakcore or similar. The truth is that most of it is influenced by Coil filtered through my love of power electronics and grindcore. And if you listen to the opening of Some Names Must Always Remain Unspoken you'll notice the track is built around the main refrain from What a Day by Throbbing Gristle (whether that was Carter or Christopherson's idea i have no idea...).

This week i was also in the infant stages of figuring out a Nameless Dread take on the Coil song Triple Sun and have also been reading Mick Fish' book on Cabaret Voltaire (the band), Industrial Evolution, which makes several references to Throbbing Gristle.

And if you've managed to get this far and your interest in music doesn't go that far beyond hardcore and metal then this interview is a great introduction to some of the thoughts of the man. It's worth watching the entire thing whenever you have a spare fifteen minutes.



"We are all only temporary curators of our present bodies, which will all decay, sooner or later. In a hundred years or so all the humans currently alive will have died. I take great comfort in knowing, with certainty, that thing that makes us special, able to enrich our own lives and those of others, will not cease when our bodies do but will be just starting a new (and hopefully even better) adventure ... "

More Urine Cop

Info:

URINE COP IS ADAM JENNINGS (WINTERS IN OSAKA) AND ERIC KING (THE ENDLESS BLOCKADE, SLAUGHTER STRIKE)

LIMITED TO 35.

EVEN MORE FILTH, FEEDBACK, PITCHSHIFTED VOCALS, AND BLASTBEATS THAN THE FIRST DEMO.
THIS IS HARSH NOISE LO FI BLACK WAR METAL GRINDNOISECORE SHIT.

EMAIL ME AT: MEATALULCER@AOL.COM FOR MORE INFO

More drums forcing a structure on the new one (which is about three weeks newer than the first one...). Vocals are kinda like Revenge.

Still lo-fi noisecore blast

a playlist just because:

Death SS - Horned God of the Witches
Kathaaria - The Complex Void of Negativity
Integrity - Systems Overload

and new experiments are inconclusive but this is a partial early result

another one from ancient history

Fuck, i haven't heard this in forever.

I wrote about Ebola last year and posted the 7" we recorded here.

The internet is failing me today and i'm unable to find a picture of me when twenty two and much skinnier/ less crushed by life as i was in this band. Actually, i was probably more crushed by life than i am these days but what ever.

During the recording of this LP i had pnuemonia and could barely breathe. I'd also worked night shift for the entire week before (and the entire week after). Daylight hours were about 9:30am until 3pm at that time of year in Newcastle (if it got light at all). Consequently as my weekend off was spent in a windowless studio i didn't see any natural light for two weeks and basically felt like killing myself. All great stuff to pile on top of my clincally depressed younger self; i think my grandfather would've called it character building.

Anyway, the only Ebola full length, recorded back in 1995. Probably the most 'tuneful' thing i've ever been a part of.

And this is exactly what download blogs should be for, not "for review purposes only" new releases

Blockade/ Wadge split 7"

Before our posthumous collaboration with Tupac Shakur drops let this beast whet your appetite.

Recorded in early 2007 and largely forgotten about the material on this split was written and recorded in the transition period we had between Turn Illness Into a Weapon and Primitive. Along with the Hatred Surge split these songs bridge the aesthetic gap between the two full lengths.

Earlier versions of some of these songs were on the Trapped in a Scene comp on 625. Most of these songs were originally ear-marked for the session that eventually became the Hatred Surge split. Not sure why all the changes occured; i'm sure there was a good reason at the time.

And much like the Hatred Surge split these songs were also recorded in our practice space.

Note to all budding home recording enthusiasts; if you tune to B and play at loud volumes you need to sit your computer on a large piece of foam so you don't keep getting disk errors due to massive amounts of vibration. Or try and move it out of the same room as the 8x10. Whichever's easier.

The lyrics to IPCR are printed incorrectly. They should read "Children call me Hungry Knife and creep silent with love for Earth" which is a line from one of many letters penned by Lynette Fromme and Sandra Goode in the wake of the Manson Family's demise. Quite which eco-unfriendly CEO or politician they were threatening to murder in that particular communique escapes me just now.

And speaking of eco-unfriendly, the first song, Pest Control, is the closest i'll ever get to writing something on a vaguely ecological matter.

For a long time i've personally felt one of the failures of the green movement to engage the general populace is its refusal to reframe the subject matter in more honest terms.

The bottom line is we aren't killing the Earth and we're actually unlikely to destroy it. The Earth however will destroy us at the rate we're going.

When we talk in terms of how we're killing the planet we're still engaging in this idea that human race is the be all and end all and that the universe revolves around our every act.

In a broad sense i believe you can tie this into the cult of individualism and some of the longer lasting destructive shifts that occured under Reagan and Thatcher's legacy in the 1980s. And in the same way that WWII is far more historically nuanced than "some bad man invaded Poland" i recognise that the "me" generation is not simply a result of the shift towards Third Way politics.

Enough. We'll see if that opens up a can of worms i'm utterly unprepared for on the comments page or not. It could go either way.

The idiotically named Regurgitated Semen Records from Germany released this one. They can call themselves RSR all they like but everyone knows they're really called Regurgitated Semen Records. I guess there's some kind of a lesson to be learned about not naming your label after a Meat Shits demo when you're a teenager in there somewhere.



On the A side of the record (we're definitely playing second fiddle here) is the incredible Wadge; Ontarios greatest video store owning Tiki grindcore one man band. Number one in a field of one.

Some people may take me to task here and say "i thought you didn't like humour in music?" Well, Wadge is deadly serious. That's all there is to it. Wadge rules; nothing more to be said.




Reading:

Tsawalk - Richard Atleo
Saints, Scholars and Schizophrenics: Mental Illness in Rural Ireland - Nancy Scheper-Hughes
Rabelais and his World - Mikhail Bakhtin
Violence in War and Peace
Only Death is Real - Tom G fucking Warrior

Listening:

Cloaks - Desolate Turves
Diocletian - War of All Against Y'all
Ride for Revenge - In the Spirit of Ultimate Sacrifice
Rudimentary Peni - Farce