Since the early '90s, C. Spencer Yeh has followed the typical path of the contemporary noise-maker, releasing dozens of solo and collaborative works through numerous labels on every format imaginable. Whether it is released under the Burning Star Core moniker or under his proper name, the varying quality and availability of Yeh’s work makes understanding it, let alone assessing it, a difficult task. It shouldn’t be that way. Challenger provides all the proof needed to establish him as versatile and provocative musician.
What makes Challenger such a clear statement of Yeh’s talent is that it’s an album in the standard sense, a collection of interrelated songs on one format, rather than some random hodge-podge of disembodied “content” released without formality or context. Without its intended sequencing, each piece on Challenger would suffer in isolation. The title track, which starts off the album, glides placidly along on an organ drone only to disintegrate into a mass of piercing chimes and tape hiss. The ending is succinct but violent, a tiny preview to the howling din of the following piece, “Beauty Hunter.” Its synth eruptions and off-kilter guitar loops sound wild and immense, but without the slow warning of the preceding track, “Beauty Hunter” would be a little less sublime. Sequencing is even more vital to the short and odd interludes that populate the middle of the album. “No Memories, No Pains,” a torrential assemblage of anonymous shouts and unidentifiable clicking, would seem aimless if was not followed by the menacing synth drones of “Hopelessly Devoted.”
C. Spencer Yeh knows when to hold back and when to go in for the kill. Challenger is unpredictable yet it is so well organized. When a cascade of noise appears on any given track, the effect is one of calculated surprise rather than random selection. Challenger also possesses a rough hewn quality despite its tightly controlled dynamics. This stems partially from wide-ranging recording quality of the album. The overall fidelity doesn’t differ, but each sound element within a given piece varies quite a bit. Most of Challenger was composed by Yeh at his home in Cincinnati, but parts of it were derived from fragments recorded in Kentucky, New York, Germany, and Portugal. The crowd sounds, tape hiss, and button noises (presumably from those recordings) worm their way onto otherwise pristine sounding synth tones. Calling this collage would be accurate, but that would denigrate Yeh as an artist. Anyone can make a collage. It would be better to call Challenger a mosaic, where the individual facets are shaped to form an original image. That Yeh reuses his own material does not suggest a lack of ideas. By fitting the pieces of his artistic past so well together, he is thinking critically about his art and by extension himself. His song titles, using words like beauty, memory, plans and mysteries, suggest a more personal approach on Challenger, rather than the routine and mechanical application of musical (or anti-musical) forms.
It is easy, but somewhat awkward, to call Challenger entertaining and thoughtful. Never mind them being considered contradictory, but those two words are almost never used to describe a "noise" album. It’s hard to guess whether Spencer had any audience in mind at all when he made the album or whether he put as much effort into it as any other record. It’s also hard to guess whether he will follow up with something just as enjoyable and as it is visceral. Perhaps it will be a retreat to his normal routine of recorded improvisations and collaborative projects, but those releases lack the coherence of his composed material. Like his peers in Wolf Eyes, Double Leopards, and Hair Police, Yeh’s best work is his most structured. That may contradict the free-wheeling zeitgeist of the American underground, but an artist of C. Spencer Yeh’s talent shouldn’t bother with churning out substandard work. Challenger is proof that noise-makers be can powerful even when they are disciplined and painstaking.
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