LASER NUN “Laser Nun” C35 (Insula Music)




I’m not even going to pretend the first thing I thought of this morning wasn’t “Laser Cats,” the SNL sketch with the cats that shoot lasers. It’s amazing, and it’s important, and you should probably watch it if you haven’t. I thought of “Laser Cats” because this tape is called Laser Nun, and I can only imagine nuns wandering around and blasting people with their eye lasers. I chuckled imagining it.

Laser Nun the band is a duo from Copenhagen, and the two improvised sidelong pieces here may as well be firing lasers into my ear canals, because this is some violent work. Side A lasts over eighteen minutes, and side B lasts almost seventeen, so there’s not a moment of breathing room to be found. And for all you experimentalists out there who only think bending circuits or frying motherboards or lassoing static is the way to go, the way to annoy your parents, coworkers, siblings, friends, or worst enemies, I’ve got some news for you: traditional rock instruments can be equally useful – and surprisingly tuneful when wrangled with care. See, Lars Bech Pilgaard and Anders Vestergaard, on guitar and drums/feedback respectively, shred your head, face, ears, nose, and solar plexus with tone shards that whip caustically through space-time and obliterate anything in their path. Bloody remarkable, I say! You still wondering how I feel about all this? Me likey!

Like Sly and the Family Drone or whatever side projects Kid Millions involves himself with, Laser Nun wind themselves up into cacophonous frenzies and do not let up. Lars and Anders are twin afterburners blasting searing heat into unsuspecting crowds. This is noise rock masquerading as straight noise – there’s too much groove here to be fully outsider. Well done! … And as an aside, I can’t seem to get Beck’s “Tasergun” out of my head, but instead of “tasergun,” I replace the lyrics with, “Watch out son, I got a Laser Nun.” Seems appropriate today.




--Ryan Masteller