Harsh Noise sums it up, really – this, the first in a series of so-named CD releases from David K Frampton’s Eyeless Records is kind of an assault on the ears. That, of course, may not be a bad thing: music bracketed into the ‘noise’ genre can still be anything from gloriously excoriating intensity to flat, boring skree. This collection of three artists kind of runs the gamut.
The delightfully-named Piggasm open proceedings with ‘It’s Hip To Abuse A Square’, which is all chattering waves of muted white noise over a growing backdrop of grumbling, churning squall. It’s not unpleasant, and suggests the jarring feelings and sounds one might encounter if shrunken Fantastic Voyage-style and injected into a piece of concrete-drilling equipment. Just before it looks to become dull, shards of higher-register noise begin to shower over the existing sound, and the frequency spectrum is gradually filled. Staying just on the right side of accident, there’s enough evidence of careful placing of sound to lift the track slightly above the brainless.
Partikle Accelerator, one of many pseudonyms assumed by David K Frampton, stomps right in with a slab of impressively-deep, grungy noise, which is then interspersed with sparse, single-tone waveforms of increasing length. The contrast is almost too simplistic to generate much beyond irritation, unfortunately – both at the reluctance to dive completely into either noise or pure tone, and at the lack of surprise at each giving way to the other.
Finally, Deaf Realist – aka Lee Riley of Euhedral and Vileswarm – with perhaps the most successful piece on this collection. After forty seconds of exceptionally quiet rumble, we’re dragged head-first into a very dark place, with vastly oppressive, grinding low-end noise acting like quicksand. It doesn’t particularly let up, but it’s more varied than it may at first seem: peaks form out of nowhere, volumes dip and quiver, and towards the latter half of the piece shards of light appear in the form of referrers back to the quiet opening section. By the end, darkness wins out, and an ominous near-silence pads out the final minute or so. Turn the volume right up, though, and you’ll realise you’re still engulfed in the sound.