Sunday, December 30, 2007

Nocturnal Beasts


New c97 available from earth.space, concentrating (yet again) thematically on moon worship. To be more specific Nocturnal Wildlife such as Bats, Owls, Rhinos, and Tasmanian Devils. Regular edition available of 75 tapes, and a deluxe edition for the kingdom members of 25 tapes.
also a small run of 25 cdrs with artbook are available EXCLUSIVELY at:

The Gallery at Potential Life Studios
34 Elton Street [floor 01]
Rochester, NY 14607

differences will be explained in detail in the future, but the quick version is:
Regular edition features 2 side long tracks
Deluxe edition available for members of the-kingdom-of-earthspace features 4 side long tracks
cdr version features 19+ minutes of all four tracks.

REVIEW FROM PLAGUE HAUS:

Griz+zlor is the project of Philly noisemeister Paul Dever. He’s also the man behind the earthspacenoise podcast and the Earth.Space Noise Research Laboratories label. Among other things, ESN, is responsible for the Kassette Kvlt series where the creators of the works remain anonymous.Nocturnal Beasts is the latest from Griz+zlor. Two nearly hour long tracks of roaring Wall Noise on each side. This particular breed of experimental (non)music is definitely not for everyone. Wall Noise is a pariah among pariahs. To most, it may seem as nothing more than layer upon layer of static and white noise. I’ve found more than a few projects boring myself. A listen of this magnitude takes stamina that I doubted even in myself, but a good set of headphones and an hour and a half of your time will bring you subtle textures you may miss on a casual listen.From sublevel rumbles to radio crackle and fry, this is not background filler for game play or idle conversation. If William Hurt would have piped this into the isolation tank in Altered States, I have a feeling he would have evolved into an inter-dimensional being instead of the rapper he became.Normal cassette box with pro-printed jcard limited to only 75 copies and well worth the $6 price tag.

REVIEW FROM CASSETTE GODS:

The first promo addressed to Cassette Gods with the specific request that it be reviewed by me! How cool is that? I was clearly picked out of the critic roster by Griz+zlor because of my column on the Wall Noise subgenre, which this tape happily belongs to. Unfortunately, even as I wrote that column six months ago, I felt the WN phenomenon slipping out of popularity in the noise world. Culture moves so fast these days that we can feel nostalgic about things that happened last month; nothing sticks around for long before it gets mulched behind Benjamin's angel of history, and snarked at by VH1's "Best Week Ever." WN hasn't quite gone the way of Lil Jon beats and bullet-time FX shots yet, but the outlook isn't good. For this reason, this tape (unfairly) sounds a bit like a relic. "Nocturnal Beasts" is a slow c97 (dude!) whose two sides stay within a mid-heavy frequency range. Even at super loud volumes, the pieces aren't exactly harsh, they're lulling. I would sooner compare them to a bedside noise generator designed to aid sleep than to a nuclear holocaust, or some equally violent metaphor. In this respect, I would say that Griz+lor's WN material has more in common with Richard Ramirez's more subtle projects (Werewolf Jerusalem and recent Man Plug come to mind) whose static drone style is less concerned with brutality than it is with texture and atmosphere. However, Griz+zlor's sound pallet is less sophisticated than Ramirez's, less detailed; close listening reveals a shallow dynamic depth with fewer layers of individual crunch than one would hope to find. Rather than seduce a person to listen further, it encourages him/her into a trance like state; noise to be ignored, or received subconsciously while other mental tasks are performed. In this sense, it is merely a good tape, and unfortunately, considering the current uncoolness of WN, only great tapes will impress. (The excellent B-side of Forbidden Fuck's "Borderline" cassette on Callow God gets a pass simply because it is so detailed and skillfully produced that the listener cannot help but be sucked into its world.) "Nocturnal Beasts" is the type of tape that I will listen to often, but probably while reading a book, not while staring at my speakers, unable to tear myself from the sound.

REVIEW FROM ANONYMOUS NOISE REVIEWS:

Griz+zlor - Nocturnal Beasts - 2008 - Earth.Space Noise Research Laboratories
who left the Apocalypse on?!?!?!?.. this tape is long so don’t expect anything to evolve.. it’s just continuous crunch through both sides of the tape.. minimalist noise wall.. black noise???
Packaging 9 - black on black printing, nicely done with a printed tape label
Composition 0 - there is none, it never changes
Fidelity 8 - total distortion
Harshness 8 - bassy chunk
Bro-factor 5- ehhhhhhhhhhhh

*EDIT* THIS PART WAS ADDED LATER THAN I POSTED THE ORIGINAL LINK.

After reading some additional information about the intention of this tape I have added some further notes: While listening to this tape I did not get any visuals from the title “nocturnal beasts” which actually I think would be fertile ground. I may need to relisten more closely to see if the subtlties of the textures really bear this out.. which would be cool if it does. I certainly would not have gotten that there was moon worship involved but I can see that and in a way I get that staring at the moon with a David Lynchesque growl as accompaniment. I’m not even sure how I got this tape so maybe I missed out on liner notes or whatever text was used to describe it initially.


Kingdom of Earth.Space Edition case:




Kingdom of Earth.Space Edition Booklet:


Kingdom of Earth.Space Edition extra tape: