SCUMEARTH
Mini-CDr
PRESS / REVIEWS
Reviewed on Ambolthue Reviews
http://ambolthuereviews.blogspot.com/
So the story goes: I had 20 minutes to kill with some sound and figured I should take a dive into my pile of unheard 3"es. There should be no reason for saying this, but for those who don't know the format, it's just a smaller CD(r) than the regular 5" discs that rooms up to 22 minutes of music, and from a random pick I ended up with a 3"CDr housed in a mini DVD-case with two 10 minute tracks, released on R.O.N.F. Records. It was from an artist I hadn't heard of before called Scumearth with a convincing title, "Deranged Prototype".
The first sentence I noticed were "Played and recorded live with no overdubs or computers", something I though would be interesting to fill my time-gap. Only a few seconds after I pressed play I was into it. It sounded very controlled, but still chaotic and improvised. Dark and heavy with an intro to take you slowly into the first piece, but it didn't really take long before it was a full blast. No overdubs but still very composed in a way, with enough layers to keep the interest up all the way through, and before I knew it the first track was over. A great piece that made me happy it was one more track to come.
And then the second track started with full on noise, but it's not what I would call a classic harsh noise wall track, but rather space-industrial harsh noise. Too much variation to make it a wall, and to be honest I did actually like this second track even better than the first. If it's so that this is live material, not edited nor fixed I'm really impressed with the steadiness of it. I like nothing more than to find harsh noise records that I feel I could put on over and over, and with this I did that. I actually walked over to the stereo while writing this review to put it on again, and now I'm back on track two. Reading a bit more within the info from the cover I see who directly or indirectly (as it says) has inspired the artist on this release, and with references like Pain Jerk, M.S.B.R., Merzbow and more pure gold artists, you've set gold’s that are almost impossible to reach, but this time I'm convinced. It's happy noise all the way through, a pure euphoric journey with loads of energy and interesting sounds.
If you're into noise, trash, grind core and other great stuff you should check out R.O.N.F. Records' website. There should be something for everyone there. And by the way, I also have a tape compilation with fresh-idea-experiments coming out there soon as Torstein Wjiik.
Reviewed on Musique Machine
http://www.musiquemachine.com
By day, Spain’s Alonso Urbanos is a graphic designer creating complex, photoshopped sleeves and flyers for metal and post-industrial scenes, but by night he has been translating the dystopian visions he’s shared with many of his clients into harsh electronics. His latest release, Deranged Prototype, neatly presents two such tracks of just over ten minutes each.
The title track is based around an engine whose cycle pounds away creating scattershot kicks that would resemble a rhythm were it not for the machine’s unreliability. Pressing firmly onto this latent lathe are the squeals, scratches and scrapes common to the harsh noise label. Clouds of sparks and oil are spat out smelling like hot metal as the low end boils, fighting for prominence. Occasionally the combined roar ceases only for the engine to come to life again, where fine adjustments briefly and randomly break the monotony.
For anyone who has attempted to record the power of a waterfall, the second track, Acid Storm Degradation, could be familiar. The roaring presence of the sheer force of nature can be humbling, but divorced of its physical impact it sounds the same as radio static when reproduced at home. This randomised channel of white noise persists throughout while screeching attempts to break its flow. Midway, the sound like an engine returns, this time it’s a chainsaw piling destructively and indiscriminately into various materials, each ringing out high frequencies amidst the sputtering wall. Finally all coalesces into the static, slipping and sliding through abandoned wavelengths.
While it’s no surprise to read that this was played and “recorded live with no overdubs or computers”, firing harsh noise at a wall and recording the chaotic results (both what sticks and what falls) is rarely premeditated. Despite a severely limited spectrum of emotions, noise’s antithesis to composition can astound and overwhelm, but all too frequently reverts to type as generic sounding releases fall thick and fast, like this ‘deranged prototype’.
Reviewed on Holidays
http://holidaysreview.wordpress.com/
“Deranged Prototype” is my first introduction to Alonso Urbanos’ Scumchrist outside of the excellent horror influenced old school grind band, Machetazo, so I allowed myself to go into it with high expectations.
According to the liner notes, the recording was “[played] and recorded live with no overdubs or computers” and it sounds fantastic. The album contains two tracks ranging 10-11 minutes, both similar in overall concept- extremely chaotic/sporadic with brief, dynamic rhythms that massage all ends of my stereo- all-in-all, a comprehensive array of sound. To my own ears, the most notable piece of this release is halfway through the second track, “Acid Storm Degredation” comes an onslaught of echoing, spaced-out oscillation to quick jabs back-and-forth.
Overall, this is a fantastic release and once again, it sounds fantastic. It’s a nice breath of fresh air to tune into an album that sounds as good as this one, in a scene that seems well occupied in more lo-fi, low-budget recordings.
While being simply straightforward, chaotic harsh noise (and seemingly not much else), it is recommended.
CDR is packaged in a 3" mini-DVD case with some nice artwork designed by the artist himself.
