Short cassette from English loner of intense cassette noise Hari Hardman, a Reading-based remote viewer who’s long been a fave in these pages, never failing to send an annual Christmas card to The Sound Projector, thereby causing head-scratching and puzzlement in the noggin. Matter of fact for year 2022 his card says Happy Christmas in the Irish-Gaelic tongue, while photocopied image is of man opening shirt with a strangely determined grim expression, perhaps a video grab from a tenth-rate movie attempting to rip off Jean-Claude van Damme.
Hardman is still the diehard king of working with near-obsolete methods – cassettes, photocopying, typewriters – which were admittedly the stock-in trade of noise artists, DIY types, and home-recording bands who did it in 1981 or 1982, but clinging on to these analogue media in “digital everything” 2024 takes some determination. As to the typewriter thing, he used to do a lot of over-strikes and back-spacing, besides using many symbols and other obscure keys, to produce strings of incoherent, lovely absurdist gibberish. Sadly, this aspect not detectable on today’s release There is a Graveyard in My Mouth (HH0031) and in fact all four titles are legible and clear. Let’s hope the local Youth Centre, with their well-meaning suggestions, are not interfering in his projects – if they confiscated his Pritt Stick and scissors, there’d be a national outcry. On the tape – a C10, amazingly – four extremely short pieces of electronic noise which end all too soon. In fact they cut out very abruptly, Hardman making use of sharp edits to give the listener an additional jolt.
I’ve tended to overuse the word “abrasive” when attempting to account for Hardman’s own brand of chuggery and grindage, but today’s spin has persuaded me he’s starting to take his work down a slightly more rhythmic pathway, such as on ‘Rompferstomper’, except that when I say “rhythmic” it’s incredibly one-dimensional – like a driver on their first lesson, keeping their head rigid, teeth clenched shut and eyes fixed in front as they maintain a single speed, never once thinking about changing gear. ‘Super Tracer’ may make use of echo to suggest additional “beats” in the music, but again it’s notable how this single effect is resistant to change and development in the hands of our single-minded lathe-turner. However, ‘Kenny G Thighbone’ has more gestural moments with its bestial “swoops” interrupting a maelstrom of thick, swirling, old-school wall of noise – also generating a pattern of sorts – and is such a promising experiment that we kinda wish it extended beyond 2:18 mins. Incidentally the title of this one suggests it was created by plundering an old Kenny G musicassette from the charity shop, with its “bone” imagery pointing out how Hari Hardman exacts his revenge on the straight world by using a primitive form of voodoo magic.
Haven’t heard from our old friend since 2020, I see, so it’s nice to have him back in the racks, scaring away the normals. From 22 December 2022.