New England

5 long playing records, 10 sides, one each from 10 separate new-england based noise-oriented artists. each contributor designed and manufactured 45 covers for this behemoth, rrron did the rest (mms' copies are all karl's smashed-record design... a nod to the new blockaders perhaps?). breaking it down to the mms-relevant bits we get a good 20 minutes each from:

jessica rylan (aka can't and my recent sparring partner at the intransitive festival with some whoppingly fantastic home-made modular-synth blorpage & scream-damage)

matt brinkman (aka mr. brinkman from former fort thunder-based collective forcefield, last seen at a whitney biennial, here with some forcefield-lineage grumple)

jeff wrench (aka brutum fulmen, read my gushing elsewhere on this site re: this particular neo-musique-concrète outfit, slightly more aggro than elsewhere, but still damn good)

dominic fernow (aka prurient, recent touring-mate of both kites and hair police, straight-up pwr-ns)

karl giesing (aka my buddy karlheinz, contributor to the rkk13cd, here on his first-ever lp, grinding vocoder and samples)

and a bunch of other folk whom i've either never met or hadn't heard of until this behemoth here. the focus is certainly on capital-N NOISE, although there certainly are some quieter bits (generally... between tracks). it's a nice thing though, well worth a rainy afternoon spent by the fire going through it all. takes me back to the early 90s when these sort of regional comps were more commonplace. it's kind of the anti "harmony of the spheres" box. just as interesting...

Brutum Fulmen, Can't, Skin Crime, Prurient, Immaculate:Grotesque, Karlheinz, Diagram-A, Mr Brinkman, Human Is Filth, Sickness

God bless Ron Lessard and all who sail in her. He doth bestow upon the world noise releases of thee greatest noise label in da world [massive, etc..]. And if you populate the world with screaming class such as the 5LP box set then that crown will be hard to shift.

In a world besotted with compacting more and more music onto smaller and smaller gadgets it’s with unfettered glee that I cast my eyes upon a 12” hand finished box set and sigh with relief; for I know that I don’t have to give up on the world just yet. As long as there are people like Ron Lessard pumping out class vinyl such as this onto a world gone mp3 crazy then I know that all is well.

New England features acts from New England. Easy y’see. Get yourself a hold of a vibrant noise scene and get ‘em involved in decorating some old 12” boxes and lay inside them 5 LP’s of sounds [ten sides – a side a piece] veering from all out noise to ritualistic drone.

Brutum Fulmen go for the Column One dollar and come up trumps with some great needle fluff, low end rumbles. Rattling milk bottles and a dying robot that bursts into flames fill me with an urge for more.

And there’s another nine to choose from. And most of it is of an excellent calier; Karlheinz give us electronic snow showers; Immaculate:Grotesque bring us churning, fizzing, head clearing noise; Prurient go with a throbbing drone that envelops my synapses; Diagram A have that great tape squelch vibe. Nary a bad track in ten sides and slices of prime New England chatter.

At the time of writing, this majestic piece of noise history is still available via the RRR website for a measly $40 and with the dollar getting a pounding there’s never been a better time to buy.