Subtitle/John Wiese/Adlib/The Cherry Point "split" 7"
[Troniks]
Wow, Troniks branches out once again, surprising me here with a four-way split 7" where each side pairs up an experimental hip-hop artist with an experimental noise artist. Subtitle begins with "Tech as Heck With a Holographic Drill (Yeah, 03!)", an experimental hip-hop track with a simple beat and some electronic textures (a few of which are slightly melodic) supporting some fast flowing rhymes with a little bit of heavily filtered singing. It's structured, but not in the sense of a traditional song. The lo-fi sound doesn't quite do the work justice as nothing is too smooth or dense and the vocals can be hard to make out at times, but it's alright. "Karaoke Pulse Camp" from John Wiese is next. And what would you expect but lots of cutups fusing breaks of silence with all sorts of noisy textures, from dense ambient hums and shrill attacks, to mild distortion or manipulated drum samples? Actually, this is one of my favorite tracks from Wiese/related projects, as a lot of diverse passages are meshed together without abandoning his always recognizable style. Side B starts with Adlib doing some very cool experimental noise textures with melody and stuttered beats, a definite mix of the more musical sides of the genre with the more improvisational and scattered sides. It's not dance-like or anything, it just creates an awesome fucking atmosphere, despite (or probably due to) the lack of vocals. The Cherry Point follows with "1982 Forever": Raw harsh noise with lots of midrange and an almost harmonic layering of twisted feedback drones. A very brief piece that makes for a nice closer. The record comes in a hot pink sleeve with crisp, simple artwork/text. The white labels on the record have each artist's face on their appropriate side/location, which is a nice touch. This is a very surprising release, and one that I admire a great deal. It's not the best material I've ever heard in all cases, but I highly respect the label's pushing of the boundaries here. I again assume this is limited, but to how many copies I'm not sure. Very interesting... (7/10)
Running time - 10:00 (approximately), Tracks: 4
[Notable tracks: they're all good, but the Adlib track is the big winner]
Troniks - http://www.troniks.com

This review has been displayed 1782 times.