Reviews:
(Blastitude no.8) Hey, I like these bands! Fukktron is Vanessa & Dino and Hair and Nails is Walenska & Dino. This 71+ minute disc features about 17 tracks by each of 'em. Fukktron kicks it off with a dense stew of wild, churning noise, mumbled vocals, and weird guitar playing. It's great, but you've maybe sorta heard it before, so it's the next track, "pudding pampers," that really sets a distinctive tone, featuring a funky scrambled-beat chant hip-hop kinda thing that is basically the underground antidote for PJ Harvey and/or late-period Prince. It's funkier and grittier than both of 'em; when female vocals emerge from the noise-funk background haze Twin Infinitives comes to mind, but the cry of "yeah!" at the end of one line sounds just like Valerie Scroggins from ESG, and that might have been Dino singing because it sounds like Vanessa's doing the rapping. Or is it the other way around? Sexy/funky androgynous noise, right on! And besides the whole track is only two minutes long, followed by several 98% instrumental tracks, no-wavey lurch-huzz and extended garbage rumble. Towards the end of the Fukktron portion of the release, on "bc" the vocals are sped up beyond gender over a warping guitar jam that starts to sound like The Melvins playing under a pillow. The next song, "cd", sounds more like The Melvins playing in their practice space, or at least like a real rock band, with guitar and drums playing heavy riffs, and a great pan-ethnic vocal chant coming in halfway through. "cd" is definitely one of the best new rock songs I've heard this entire year. Remember rock songs? 17 Fukktron tracks in all, with titles like "darkroom televator," "k-y firebird,' 'charlene's diploma,' 'you are samantha," "no shuts," "red pill," blue pill," "do done," most of them short, all right to the fucking point. Their last track, "do done", starts with a blast of tape skree that turns out to be room hiss on a cheap recording of someone watching TV. Some ominous sounds start coming from the background, but they might just be someone working in the kitchen. At 5:36, it's most likely the longest track on here. Okay, the insane noise guitar playing in the background at the three-minute mark is definitely not someone just working in the kitchen. There is some post-production. Hair and Nails, again, is another duo featuring Dino, but with Walenska instead of Vanessa. Pretty similar approach, lots of garbled garbage-burrowing sound experiments, without the occasional song-like vocal thing a la "pudding pampers." (Though vocals can be heard, or at least felt, on the great "red vidwhirl," two manic minutes of hazy super-abstract burrowing crunching microcircuitry jamming...waitaminnit, those aren't vocals, just some whirling high-pitched electronic sound that sounds like Little Richard himself goin' "wooh! wooh! wooh!") Track 22, "punctured face," ends with twisted carnival sounds from a keyboard. Track 23, "centuryshifter," starts with a weird percussiony thing that gets drowned out by moaning/squelching noise. Track 10, "no shuts," is a grinding bit of slowed-tape slurpage, sorta the sound Non was getting mastering old thrift-store records played at 16 RPM to even shittier vinyl and drilling three holes in the middle and then etching into the vinyl so when the needle hits certain parts an added layer of horrid hiss comes out of the speakers. Oh wait, that's a Fukktron track, and I'm on the Hair and Nails portion of the review. Oh well, no matter; this is one of those rare occasions I feel comfortable quoting a hippie: "It's all good!" -Brad Sonder
(Dead Angel no.46) A split disc featuring Fukktron and Hair & Nails, this is one of the more noisy and chaotic offerings on the label devoted to weird variants on ambient power electronics. The first seventeen tracks are from Fukktron, who favor dense, noisy, chaotic collages of sound assembled in what sounds like almost random patterns. Patterns are there, but buried under so many layers of sound and effluvia that they may well be nigh-impossible to decipher at times. With titles like "pudding pampers" and "k-y firebird," one might guess that they have a sense of humor, and unlike a lot of power-electronic mavens, they are not afraid of beats (although as viciously as they mangle said beats, the beats might well be afraid of them). How much you cotton to them probably depends heavily on your tolerance for tape collage and weird noises; i vastly prefer more structured pieces and large slabs of drone (something they avoid almost entirely), so while i think they're doing interesting things here, they don't grab me the way some other PE bands do. Hair & Nails operate from a similar vantage point, although they are moderately more into the drone element. They also favor really piercing noises, which you might find interesting or irritating depending on your preference.. - RKF
|
