From the label Khatulistiwa based in Kuala Lumpur we received The Silence That Does Not Exist (KTW001), by Reverse Image…this is solo project of Siew Y’ng-Yin who tells me they used to run the labels Mirror Tapes and, with a friend, Xing-Wu Records in Malaysia. The latter enterprise managed but five releases (that we know of) but did include some important experimental types, such as Jean-Luc Guionnet, mnortham, and the drummer Seijiro Murayama in its run. They also put out a double-CD survey of international contemporary music in 2004, called Insight. Khatulistiwa isn’t just a label, but also a gig space in KL – and since three compadres are involved in stoking the administrative boilers, that’s likely to be a healthy sign of cultural activity and musical prosperity in the region. Reverse Image has taken time out from signing the documents and carpeting the treehouse to make this solo item of electronic goosh-gash, with cover art suggestive of fungal growths or fractal cosmic excursions, and with their tune titles such as ‘Dimensional Wreck’ and ‘Lunar Inclination’, they promise to propel the listener on a thrilling ride into the unknown, and pose certain metaphysical questions along the way. (06/07/2023)
Mouth Worker is one of the regular acts on the Bristol label LF Records, often turning up in the neighbourhood with their own brand of acidic, querulous digital noise to frighten the pigeons. Today’s groink-a-thon is called Trapped TXRX (LF 089), and the online blurb alludes to some mysterious event in oblique manner, telling us “a radical change occurred in the nature of the night transmission phenomena”. Not clear what this snippet of sci-fi apocalyptic fiction means exactly, but judging by what we hear on the grooves, the consequences of that change sure sound grim. The noise-music here arrives in broken passages, constantly interrupted by distortion, drop-outs, and signal failures. Most disturbingly, someone is struggling to transmit a message on track 4, but it’s completely scrambled. A chilling vision of an imminent catastrophe, and its aftermath. (06/07/2023)
From same label, the record by Silicon Sands might occupy the same turf of disaster and broken communications, situating itself in a zone of “abandonment and bereft signals”, but also promises “pillars of salt and dust, deep electronics on the golden verge”, which indicates a possible attempt by the survivors to rebuild something from the ruins, even if one of them has suffered the same fate as Lot’s wife. Crumbling Structures Pt. 1 (LF 088) underscores its bleak message with stark, high-contrast images of long-forgotten power stations or atomic piles. I still love everything from this label, but didn’t their brand of noise used to be bit more forceful than this, a bracing walk in the wild elements, a deep dive into the raging chasm? Silicon Sands (the name may have some connection to another release on this label by Alter Ego) comes across as defeated, reluctantly giving up the ghost in the face of a harsher unavoidable truth. Their noise offers moments of resistance, but is mostly a by-product of an unwelcome emotional state, its maker crippled by lethargy and despair. (06/07/2023)