When selecting an alias for his artistic persona, Paul Kidd chose the name of the flame resistant material, Nomex. A protective shield suggesting indestructability, it appeared an apt moniker for someone who liked to “keep it cryptic” and push the limits of both his art and in his own life with an intense fervour. For those of us who knew the man behind the name, that this great force has been extinguished is hard to comprehend. However, his music endures and what I write here is a personal attempt to connect the life of Paul – my great friend, collaborator and partner for over a decade – with the compelling body of work he leaves behind.
HFK
[Rouge de Colere 11]
The Toolbox sublabel reserved for the fast and hard sounds is back with one of its best releases yet. The four-tracker starts with some mental hypnotic hardcore which would also fit in a more out-there tek set, then starts evolving into more speedcore inspired experiments. It’s not that extreme and comes of as quite rounded, but evolves with multiple listens to a great addition to the catalogue.
Molecule SCAM vs. HFK
[AcidNight 20]
The first side credited to Molecule SCAM is an epic digital acid excursion with nice progressions, but definitely nothing outside of the genre. This is what happens on the flipside where HFK is giving the old Jones & Stephenson track The First Rebirth (released in 1993 on Bonzai) a manic flashcore workover. Of course it’s tongue in cheek, but since I have no nostalgic feelings towards early 90s hard trance I find it hard to get into, although I can imagine there to be the right moment at a party for mixing in and out of this track. Pretty good is the final track where hardcore, speedcore and broken elements in the beat structure are combined with nervous bleeping loops and descending hisses. Overall a welcome addition to the Acid Night catalogue, especially with its genre-bending tendencies.
Cyclic Backwash
[Neurotrope NRT039]
Very prolific in the last couple of years, Cyclic Backwash appears on Neurotrope with a varied 3-tracker. Most interesting is the a-side with its combination of acid lines, resonating stabs and psychedelic progression with a slightly broken beat. [Read more →]
Honey Disco 1-4
Honey Disco is a label from Canada that releases single-sided, clear 7” vinyls with beewax on the flipside and honey smell included.The first two releases by Hristo and Koosh contain some cool funkedelic disco-dub. Number three By Eddie C was my favorite so far, with a dubby downtempo tune that reminds me slightly of T.Rex’ “Hot Love“. I heard number four by Osmose recently, wich works in a similar way, re-working Billy Idols “Sweet Sixteen”.
Myler
Gorilla Biscuits
[Pennyroyal] Myler Northern Extension [EarToGround Records]
Irish producer Myler with 3 tight and rumbling techno tracks, released in 2014 on Untolds Pennyroyal label, soundwise somewhere between JoeFarr, J. Tjin and Randomer with those thick bassdrums and a certain funkiness that all of them have in common. The other record came out in ocbtober 2016 with 4 tracks and a locked groove on vinyl and one good digital bonus track that goes in direction of the pennyroyal material. A1 is shuffling breakbeat techno, quite ok. A2 and AA2 are more or less solid techno tracks but the real gem is the AA1 track “D’Electrocution” which is raw, straight forward basement techno with an intriguing filtered piano. Opinions might differ about this, but for me it totally works.
KK Null – Star Breaker
[ThirdTypeTapes, TTT18]
Veteran noise/rock artist KK Null returns to a Belgian label (after last year’s excellent Pulsar X cd on Cyber City) for another outing that seems to further his crossover into more rhythmic territory. It’s great to hear shades of speedcore and broken beats appearing in his recent material. Elements of his sound have come together to form what sound like ultra fast beats underpinning the usual abrasive frequency bashing. The rhythmic elements drift in and out of the mix in a way that makes the sound evolve through different (brutal) forms and it makes for a much more cohesive and natural sound than almost any of the more straightforward hardcore/speedcore you will hear today. The beginning of side B is a definite high point for me. Sheets of metallic noise slowly give way to an utterly pummelling broken beat that had me doing the rewind. Highly recommended listening if you like it harsh.
Bombardier
Fury
[Division 13, D13.016]
A new limited 2 x 12” release from Bombardier featuring the best of his tracks from the last few years. Jason Snell has always had a very distinctive, hardware based sound in whatever context he decides to operate in and has carried this over into his recent more techno/electro based material. There is a mixture of 4/4 and more broken tracks here but all of it is an absolute gift for any dj looking for heavy, dark beats of a kind that are extremely hard to find these days. I have no idea how many have been pressed but they seem to be released in batches from the Bombardier bandcamp page where the artist has only been charging for the postage. Don’t miss.
JK Flesh
Nothing is Free
[downwards, LINO-71][Read more →]
“Boyd’s rather unimaginative sadism used to embarrass me, but then he explained it using words like ‘Weltanschauung'”
Lisa Crystal-Carver, Drugs are Nice [LC, p215]
I last saw Boyd Rice play (as ‘Non’) back in August 1981, alongside Throbbing Gristle (TG), Z’ev, Cabaret Voltaire and Clock DVA as part of the ‘Industrial Night Out’ at the Lyceum, London, which brought together the big cheeses of Industrial Music in what was to be something of a coming out party for the scene but turned out also to be its swansong (it was TG’s last UK concert; they broke up a few months later). At the time Rice presented himself as a Dadaist and prankster though his aesthetic was actually closer to the sub-Futurist ‘instant karma for kids’ noise-racket that Merzbow has since successfully appropriated and turned into a brand / ‘racket’ of his own. While TG boasted of making music from ugly noise, Rice tried to outflank them by serving up the ugliness directly, unfiltered by any obvious concern for form. In fairness Boyd Rice could be said to be among the key players of early Industrial Music, and as a result he perhaps has a shade more kudos than some of the complete musical non-entities we’re generally concerned with around here (Wakeford, Pearce, Moynihan, et al). Rice has declared his Fascism in a number of statements, in his art, and through public actions such as appearing in full Fascist regalia and holding a dagger in a photograph alongside Bob Heick, taken in 1989 to promote the latter’s organisation, the neo-Nazi skinhead party, American Front. He has also appeared on White Aryan Resistance founder Tom Metzger’s cable TV show Race and Reason, where he declared that his friends in Current 93 and Death in June were promoting a ‘racialist’ agenda and emphasised the importance of Industrial and Neo-Folk music for building the ‘Aryan youth movement’. [Read more →]
