Acousmatomisation (ATTENUATION CIRCUIT ACU 1071 / GRUBENWEHR FREIBURG GW FR.55) is an industrial noise set which arrives with a health warning – we haven’t read one of those for a while – which stops short of advising the customer not to listen to it. Something about “extreme high and low frequencies” which might permanently damage your ears, or your stereo, or both. This is worn like a badge of pride on the inside cover, front cover reserved for a collage artwork by Maurizio Bianchi, the prolific Italian of harsh noise revered by many.
He’s the ringmaster for today’s show, under his Sacher Pelz alias – a name he first coined in 1979 when he was still working as an unofficial journalist for the cassette trading network. Joining him are the Malay act Fallen Sun (also called Reverse Image) who’s been blighting Bandcamp with his synth noise since 2024, and the American writer Thomas Bey William Bailey of South Carolina; he has a hefty Bandcamp presence, but I think he mostly does package design and presentation, though he’s also pegged as an electronics artist. The press note for Acousmatomisation would like us to believe that this is noise that can somehow warp the very fabric of time and space, making a complete mockery of the laws of physics; in 2024 I seem to recall Bianchi making a not-unrelated claim about microbes, with his “infectronics” approach to making noise.
Even so, those twiddling the dials on their analog and modular synths make good on this fanciful boast; creating ungainly, shapeless forms that somehow have actual gravity and weight, and are constantly mutating into newer, uglier forms as we listen. These crazed blobs inhabit their own space very far away from harsh noise or extreme noise wall, and have an opacity and density that makes for a compelling spin. To put it another way, there’s a lot of lively activity going on in the sub-atomic particle zones. (29/04/2025)