I won’t say I don’t know nothing about the many underground genres, in more than 20 years I have had the opportunity to learn a lot. Sure, I don’t listen to many niche genres regularly, but at least I try to have a little knowledge about them.
Noise, industrial noise, harsh noise and all the different subgenres, this is nothing new under the sun, of course. And lately I’ve started to dive again into the strange world of multitude of projects, DIY recordings and art associated with it.
One of the artists I had the opportunity to get to know through their ouput, is Michael Ridge and his project Norfolk Trotter. Due to the courtesy of Polwach Beokhaimook (Ecchymosis’ prolific drummer, the interview with him for the Rubber Axe webzine you can find here) I’ve received Norfolk Trotter’s album “Paramoudra”, released in the limited edition of 37 CDr copies through his specialty HNW label Perpetual Abjection.
And that’s where the art comes to life here, even if it sounds pretty unbelievable. But the simple technique to enhance the experience of the listener really works and I have to commend Polwach for the inventive approach to production.
The noise contained in this silver disc… well… when I’ve received it, I eagerly put it into the player and… it’s noise! Well, at least for anyone not familiar with HNW stuff. Yes, I’d guess a great majority of my friends, even the fans of many extreme genres would put the headphones down in sheer horror and make a few unfavorable remarks. Don’t blame them though, it takes some time to adjust. Or not.
But with HNW, you just can’t play a CD at random, there is a method in madness (if you will).
And the build up in Paramoudra is slow, but soon enough (relatively speaking, of course), you will find nice drum loops getting out from the wall of statics and, thankfully, they don’t stay the same for long.
This album won’t be a relaxing experience, my head was droning and won’t deny a slight earache 🙂 but I would rank this experience as rewarding and certainly interesting. It has changed me a HNW listening survivor, right?
I am now definitely eager to explore the vastness of sounds and static of noise/HNW to a greater extent and I hope I will be able to introduce to readers of the Rubber Axe webzine the good folks behind those projects.
So, do you have what it takes to jump headlong into this audio-nightmarish world, where your worst fears take the almost real shape? Then look no further than this release.
At the time of this writing there are 3 copies left, so grab yours quickly here:
https://perpetualabjection.bandcamp.com/album/paramoudra
