It’s that time of the year again: weeks of hearing Christmas songs on repeat plus the untimely death of George Michael, and your ears are probably oozing peppermint goo while you cry yourself to sleep. This calls for some seriously aggressive noise album. You know – like a palette cleanser.
Well, here’s one, and it’s free – from Adult Swim.
“Noise” album? Cartoon Network? Okay, the combination sounds unlikely.
But if you were expecting some lame hipster compilation that sounds like “noise music” just means someone fell asleep on their guitar pedalboard, think again.
It’s actually damned good. And it’s nicely diverse, too – some post-punk, some electronic, some shouting — really every angry, loud, dirty, grungy, weirdo sound you might desire. It’s like a big, varied vindaloo that burns your mouth and gut and satisfies your hungry in just the right way.
There’s Perc and Prurient. But there’s also some folks called Melt-Banana. There’s great titles like “You’ve Got Rabies on Your Breath.”
And there’s actually a lot of timbre and musical invention – which is good, because if you do just fall asleep on a distortion pedal, you get this big “BOSS” logo backwards across your face, and who wants that?
Enjoy. Download or stream.
http://www.adultswim.com/music/noise/
Tracklist, which I’ve copied ever so carefully from their Web streaming interface:
Clipping: Body for the Pile (Ft. Sickness)
Melt-Banana: Case D in the Test Tube
Eye: Mega Equipment for Popsicle
Vessel: Prihatin
Sadaf: The Clinic
Arca: Bussy
Pharmakon: Squall
Tanya Tagaq: Erie Changys
Beast: You’ve Got Rabies on Your Breath
Dreamcrusher: Sick World
Perc: Porthia
Noveller: Processional
Merzbow: For Adult
Prurient: Everything You Know is Wrong
Hassan Khan: Casiotone Gigantja
Wolf Eyes: Subterranean Life