Randy H.Y. Yau and Kazumoto Endo of Killer Bug fame united on this album in an effort to fulfill Yau's vision of "action concrète." Conceptual attempts at changing what a particular genre does to the listener scare me; they tend towards academic efforts, dull attempts at revolutionizing what music is and can do. Strangely enough, this album forced me to reconsider noise, performance, and what exactly sound "should" do-in other words, it actually changed me in some way.
Blossoming Noise
This isn't the greatest noise album ever. Its aesthetics are beyond me, a mashing of two approaches that don't necessarily compliment each other, but they don't sound out of place when sat side by side. They simply exist together. One approach is the sound made by recording someone choking, throat noises that have brought me onto the verge of gagging. The other is Kazumoto Endo taking all manner of metallic, percussive, and otherwise dissonant sounds and throwing them through the garbage disposal, passing it all down the lower intestine, into the nightmare biology of Shinya Tsukamoto, and out through the child grinder from the movie version of Pink Floyd's The Wall. There's soft moments (the sound of chewing as heard by a defective hearing aid, for instance) and there are intense, brutal moments where I keep envisioning cyborg martial artists being thrown into walls and bleeding out terrible, black ooze before emitting robotic sounds that signal self destruction and an assured end for both parties. It's all quite graphic, something Endo must be familiar with evoking to produce it all so vividly.
The results may very among users, but the effects are similar nonetheless. These approaches never occupy the same space for long. In fact, Endo and Yau seem intent on leaving the two separate. Phrases of vocal noise and machine noise are cast against one another, one going quiet so that the other may be heard. At first this is disorienting, a feat of nonsense that threatens the very notion of a collaboration between to artists. The most obvious draw for noise fans will be Endo's work; there are several places on the disc where his noise stands out, commanding more time than Yau's guttural spats with self abuse. His noise is more impressive than ever, making some of his Killer Bug material sound amateur.
Getting to the point, however, involves explaining how this record changed anything for me. At first, I was entirely put off by how these two noise sources were blended together. It's as though someone who was good with noise decided to get some guy choking on tape and then decided to add it to a mix of already intense sound. After reading Yau's website and thinking about action concrète and what a term like that might mean, this record really opened up for me. Not that I didn't enjoy Endo's half of the job, but Yau's vocal grunts were just too much, often making me feel as though I was going to throw up on a few occasions. He describes his work, however, as being physical, directly relatable to an audience because of its immediacy. For once an artist's description of his work is entirely fitting. There's no room for contemplating what such a statement might mean, Yau is as physical a performer as there can be. I imagine, in several places, that he must be shoving his fist into his throat.
Not only is this a visceral and powerful image, it's a good way of catching attention and delivering a truly physical, powerful performance. By the time the album finished the first time, Yau's part in this album was obvious, despite As far as I'm concerned, these two have tapped into the very essence of what an "action" performance should be. They have transcended all the bodily violence often associated with something like a Whitehouse appearance and substituted the more interesting and more satisfying sonic violence that many claim to harness, but few ever execute as well as their hype suggests. Yau and Endo's noise doesn't suggest violence, their noise embodies it and utilizes it to perfection. It may have taken them over five years to get this just the way they wanted (this project began in 1998), but Endo and Yau have practically rewritten the noise rules, sounding more unique and exciting than anyone else playing the same game.
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