ISRAELI INTELLIGENCE: "Buffalo Hump, Moon Face, Thin Skin" C20 (Grimeology)

Crisp, clear harsh noise on a label that does great mastering to cassette. This is loud and bereft of so much hiss that would ruin the experience.

Aside from such cliched nonsense as "flesh peeled from bone by molten rusted metal" I can say this is well executed and dynamic. Israeli Intelligence wastes none of your time. The a-side is a deftly assembled collage of snippets of everything gross: overblown vomit growling, reverbed out tape scratching, feedback loops and metal abuse. Its all there. In spades. Love it. Everything last long enough to be savored, and cuts to the next serving before there's one iota of boredom sitting in. I wish my recordings came out this good. For real.

The b-side starts out similarily, but rolls along with a slower pace, more psychedelic a molten floe, not violent erruption .

I'm happily sitting in my kitchen flipping this cassette over and over whilst writing. After deluging myself with some downloads of the Japanese harsh masters this week, I'm still finding Buffalo Hump, Moon Face, Thin Skin exciting and inspiring.

Edition of 50
Grimeology.com

ISRAELI INTELLIGENCE "Buffalo Hump, Moon Face, Thin Skin" c20 (Grimology Records)

Just had a conversation with my friend Sam from Brattleboro about the "scene" in vermont, trading notes on the few things we knew about and him giving me the low-down on a few things i didn't know anything about. Sure enough a package arrives today from self described "frozen northern vermont" from the Matt @ the Grimology label, something neither Sam nor I knew about, probably because it's like 2 hours of frozen wilderness away. Well, either way, its on the unfrozen internet now, so you all have no excuse.

This tape by Israeli Intelligence hailing from California, titled "Buffalo Hump, Moon Face, Thin Skin" is a real scorcher; two ten minute sides of unrelenting mischief and burn. Not so much like a wildfire out of control turning rich people's estates in embers, but more like a high pressure blast furnace on the intense end of the sound spectrum and on the other end with occasional breaks and voiced outbursts the burn would be better described as a semi-toxic melting plastic toys on yr dad's grill type of sound. Does music actually sound like that? Did I just describe a tape as sounding somewhere between a blast furnace and a pyromaniac 11 year old? Jeez...

Anyway, some good stuff on here in particular the ascending bass tones and vocal stuff that peers through the wall of noises make for a more dynamic listen. It makes sense a totally snowed in igloo-crew would be psyched on playing / releasing this stuff in their house driven near mad by months of trying to fight off hail, ice and hypothermia all the while dreaming of a white hot california sun burn.

Black and white cover features a totally googley-eyed dude that reminds
me of that scene in Un Chien Andalou where they cut that guys eye in half
that almost makes me puke every time.

Edition of 50, still available from the label:
http://www.grimeology.com/home.html

OAK / A SNAKE IN THE GARDEN “The Enchanted Forest” (Grimeology)

Sweet split/collab tape from these two East Coast best fwend gang/projects. A Snake in the Garden (one dude, apparently) is definitely the hater of the pack, starting the CS off with a gross phasing mixer rumble stacked with background lurk noise, against which he growls echoing Malefic-style vocals. Totally theatrical but great…yet when things kick into pure screech attack mode somehow the intensity lessens. The frequencies are compressed and mid-range, which seems to gate the violence from breaking out into total amp fury. Still, a good offering. Oak go the more steady/static route with “Rods From God,” which burns like an antique incense urn of slo-mo e-bow, drifting jangle, and water-treading sitar accents. Doesn’t really go anywhere, but the trip is plenty pleasant. The B side is the collab, “Sacrificial Wizards,” and it seems like nobody wanted to play leader. Snake holds in his electric venom, but the Oak posse keep their hippie hair trimmed kinda close too, so nobody really ever steps up and pushes things one way or the other. The outcome is a quiet, tentative tip-toe through gently tapped metal, nature hiss, and softly plucked single strings. Which, personally, is a path I dig treading. More heads are better than none.

A SNAKE IN THE GARDEN "Winter's Burn" (Grimeology Records)

Two longish tracks make up this C30 by northeast US noiser Matthew Mayer, and if anything they demonstrate the versatility of this project. "Frost of the Womb" is quite decent sparse ambient work with minimal nodes of dissonance periodically creeping into a slumbering synthesizer drone. "Water Caskets" is a polar opposite, a crunchy exploding mess in the tradition of your usual HN suspects, although the track displays a tendency to subside from total distortion into a single feedback tone which could have been used more sparingly. The only serious drawback on "Winter's Burn" is the noticeable lack of volume on the dubbing. Otherwise it's a good initiation into this guy's work and is enhanced by a solid packaging job with a color print on thick, high quality paper. Bonus points for one of the best label names I've heard recently.

www.grimeology.com