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The
final live document to come from this legendary UK Noise group is drawn
from the most amazing TNB live action of their career, their massively
psychedelic set from ATP’s Nightmare Before Christmas curated by
Thurston Moore. There were a ton of amazing performances over that
weekend: The Stooges, The Bummer Road, Wooden Wand, NNCK… but TNB
pretty much ruled the weekend. The set was quite unlike anything
they’ve ever really done before and hearing it again in this form,
beautifully recorded and mastered by Damion Romero, the amount of
hallucinogenic detail and the intricate violence of the performance is
even more apparent. It starts off with sudden blurts of extremely
tactile lightning strikes before a bunch of voices cohere in a low fog
of disruptive tone, building with shrieks and starts to the point where
it becomes a huge opaque wall of vibrating tone threat. But what really
sets it off - and what makes the whole thing sound so impossibly
malevolent - is the evocative use of a highly vocal/vocoder sounding
synth pattern that occasionally rises to the surface in waves of
genuinely disturbing claustrophobic threat. At the time I was sure it
was a modulated vocal but here the way it is subtly threaded throughout
the performance like the most under-stated theme makes it sound more
like a synth mutated to the point of electro-hypnotism. Certainly the
most psychedelic noise record of TNB’s career, if not the best of
their live actions, Das Zerstoren, Zum Gebaren is already one of
my all-time favourite Noise releases. Volcanic Tongue
TNB, together since 1982, surround themselves with 'Art of Noise/Noise
as Art' sound theory, believing that the dense oscillations of alarms,
metallic rumblings, quivering shrieks and spatial interference expertly
controlled over this hour-long performance should be a unique, visceral
release for the listener. One problem of simply hearing this, however,
is that TNB also take influence from extreme performance artists such as
the Viennese Aktionists, and if one were to listen without the memory
strain of four men in business suits and balaclavas with Xs crudely
stuck on with white tape, while two others wriggle like fuc*ing eels on
the floor, then, well, look it up on the internet. Plan B
For what was rumoured to be their final concert, UK Noise veterans TNB
accepted curator Thurston Moore's invitation to make a rare appearance
at ATP's Nightmare Before Christmas festival. Even though they were
competing with souch noisy youngbloods as Wolf Eyes and Prurient,
reports from the front were full of enthusiasm and ecstasy over what
happened when TNB plugged in. For those who missed the spectacle, this
sonic seaside postcard of the group's performance that windswept
Saturday afternoon is a worthy substitute. It's a howling gale of
electronically induced feedback and static stutter that, almost
elegantly, takes its time before fully kicking in. With a line-up that
reportedly included members of Sudden Infant, Jazzfinger and Putrefier
alongside the founder members, the extent of TNB's artistry over the
years is distilled into this single performance. The black masked and
suited members of the group lean over machines that squeal with agony as
the thumbscrews are tightened. It is during the final 15 minutes,
however, that the group's full impact is felt. The piece transforms into
a chrome-burning rock juggernaut, a mangled wreck of of broken music
that, as TNB slam on the brakes, suddenly hits the audience who erupt
with applause. Damion Romero's excellent recording - where even the
faintest flurry of feedback and subliminal drone effect is captured and
preserved - allows one of the first and finest Noise groups on the
planet to bow out in style. The Wire
Collaborative releases by TNB have a habit of feeling more guided by the
hands of guests rather than keeping to a definitive vision. This live
set from ATP Nightmare Before Xmas 2006 is a glorious mess of metallic
textures. Six masked men played the gig, so who knows what the deal is
with who or what The Blockaders really are. With this line-up including
Joke Lanz of Sudden Infant, the male two-thirds of Jazzfinger and Mark
Durgan of Putrefier, hopes were high. Beginning with a disquieting
floorboard squeak of the approaching torrent having taken on a single
human form, things slowly work up to a storm. It's a decent soundboard
recording so the softer ideas within the bloodshed are partially exposed
but still frustratingly lost, too sunken in the scrap yard to really
catch fire. There is one thing that survives though, an inveterate
passage of strangled pitch that manages to eke out a life beneath the
din. Like a cross between a Public Enemy screech and a throttled rodent
death cry, it's like that many more similar terifically bizarre
ingredients were boiled out of the picture. With too much rusty chrome
hitting the mic; there's just too much clatter. Rock-A-Rolla
TNB have been around since twenty or so years and I must admit I have
always been fond of their music, but find it always hard to say what it
is. Their earliest work seemed almost like acoustic noise, of rusty
metal sheets scraped against bicycle tires - at least that's how I
imagined things. Over the years they added feedback like sounds, but
their sound remained collage-like. Not the ongoing noise blast, and not
the refined blasts, but a kind of Musique Brut, with strange things
dropping in and out. Since sticking around for so long they are now
officially recognized as pioneers, so they gather up at say ATP - good
for them. This recording seems to me one made with various microphones
and the various recordings were made mixed together - I might be totally
wrong of course. The change, or at least the marginal change, in sound
is something that I'm perhaps not entirely used to, but this final live
recording is a fine one. Vital
This juggernaut of a live recording is unquestionably one of the
greatest TNB recordings. With an expanded all-star cast, including
Damion Romero, Joke Lanz and Dave Phillips, Das Zerstoren, Zum
Gebaren comes at first in fits and starts, creaky bursts of
electrical interference that quickly begin to cohere into a giant,
ungodly noise mass that's forever stuttering forward, shaking off pieces
of itself that constantly recombine into new shapes. Drone elements
begin to creep in, broken up by cutting feedback blasts and showers of
debris. A glorious piece. A landmark for TNB, and one of the very best
recordings of this year. Introspect
TNB were one of the earliest pioneers of pure noise. We won’t say
music here because their early records were literally the sound of
hammers, chains, wheel barrels, garbage, nails, screws, trash cans and
motor cycle parts, being dragged aimlessly around the floor of a shed
while a tape recorder muttered on in the background. That was 1982.
Fast-forward through a seemingly endless series of Dadaistic final
recordings, final performances, final manifestos and you have this CD: a
live recording form their brilliantly mysterious multi-manned,
multi-channeled performance at ATP Nightmare Before Christmas. The
performance hosted a line-up of epic proportions of the noise
continuum... What makes this release unique in the long and violent
history of TNB is the quiet slow beginning and introduction of drones,
tones, and atmospheric loops interwoven among the junk and cacophony.
The great irony of noise is despite its volume and assault on the
listener there is great subtlety in texture, tone and pattern that can
only be heard after the ears adjust and the mind opens. This CD
exemplifies the paradox of loud exclamation and sub atomic detail that
good noise can hold. With this a psychedelic realm is reached, not
previous heard in the tension between colliding grit and tonal
electronics. TNB recreate and recycle themselves in this live beast. Hospital
Productions
A document of what is supposedly the final live action from TNB. Active
for almost three decades, theirs is a remarkably consistent sound; the
short jolts of noise that activate the beginning of this fifty-minute
peace shadow the metallic scrapings writ large through early LPs like Changez
Les Blockeurs. Their extended line-up and the ritual energy that
accumulates in this particular live context spurs the group on to even
more obliterating form, though, and here they absorb the entirety of the
screen, splattering rough-hewn noise across the frame in an almost
Pollock-esque performance of 'selves as artists.' This is no bad thing.
TNB at their most ritualistic are a pulverising force, intent on erasure
through a combination of overwhelming volume, textural saturation and
abreactive audio. Unlike a lot of Noise artists, who set their
parameters and then tinker aimlessly, TNB are closer to improvisers,
more like the extremist Free Jazz/Improv of Borbetomagus than the latest
Merzbow, and thus their noise always breathes. This is rare for their
particular genre, though they do share with other great Noise artists a
general lust for transcendence via negation: as Byron Coley describes in
his liner notes, this is 'music which is not-music, communication which
refuses to communicate, art which is not-art.' Signal To Noise
Excellent - spasmodic bursts of feedback and (presumably metal) junk
cohering at points into very tonal drones, very wide dynamic range, and
extremely abrasive even by TNB standards. Structurally it's a lot like Changez
Les Blockeurs or 'Crincum-Crancum' from Gesamtnichtswerk,
but with much greater density/gravity and much higher distortion levels
- it's like a constantly stuttering forward movement that suggests
motionlessness and velocity at the same time, continuously falling apart
and recombining into new shapes. Rides the ugly/beautiful line with
incredible finesse. Dystonia Entartete Kunst
Supposedly documenting their final ever live performance, Das
Zerstoren... depicts one 49 minute composition at the Thurston Moore
curated All Tomorrows Parties music extravaganza. Considering their
stance as ‘anti-music,’ the composition was probably written as
played full of squalling, squealing ripping, piercing textural sonics
sounding like the soundtrack to a city being bombed played in reverse
over loudspeakers to that city being annihilated in real time. Once more
simple in approach, their first releases depicted the sounds of chains,
wheel barrels, metal tools and scrap metal being thrown around all
without the suggestion of actual song. This final live document depicts
frequent use of scalding, sonic frequencies and tonal gibberish.
Superficially, the album may sound like random AM radio stations that
never recognizably come into focus layered in a disjointed collage or a
car alarm going off after a fatal collision. Though a difficult listen,
a listener will be mistaken to dismiss such sonic terrorism as random
noise as instead the music works as rhythmically stuttering sound
collage. The first couple of minutes are dominated by what sounds like a
squeaking door or a rocking chair. By six minutes, one is immersed in a
hailstorm of sonic textures. Around the seven minute mark one can almost
make what sounds like a human voice imitating an animal in the thick
mix, yet the absurd thing is that's probably what it is not. Around the
15 minute mark strands of what sounds like violin emerges like sunlight
penetrating a foggy day. The last ten minutes sounds like layered sonic
rumbles as high pitched searing frequencies outburst with unnerving
back. The violin like sound drifts over sounding like an inquisitive
extraterrestrial or a drunken elephant dying. Overall, Das Zerstoren...
stands out as the thickest musical composition I've ever heard. It will
destroy your mind, then demand you reconstruct it wide eyed wild. Stereo
Subversion
A live recording of rich and dense compound noise. Like their first
album Changez Les Blockeurs, sharp edged attack full of shrills.
The sound of chaos. Any attempt to find a meaning in the sound gradually
disappears, and all you have to do is bathe yourself in the rich and
dense noise. I must confess that this is my most favourite TNB work so
far, and I'm listening to it repeatedly. In fact, I'm playing the disc
twice a day. It is important that I can listen to this every day,
because there must be a reason why I can listen to it repeatedly without
getting tired of it: Firstly, I came to feel that the length of this
album (49 minutes) is not lengthy at all. Das Zerstoren... consists
of input/sounds from different contributors which creates an
ever-changing soundscape and you lose all sense of time while listening.
It is not so easy to produce such richness and density of hard-concrete
sound texture, it is what only expert Noisicians can do. abh
Das Zerstoren... is completely different from other TNB live
recordings: Final Live Performance was done in a sort of
Assemblage / Music Concrete / INA/GRM style. 20th. Antiversary
Offensive was peculiar sound collage, and it was controlled piece in
spite of wildness of the raw materials. I feel that Das Zerstoren... is
a kind of Rock music. There are no drum parts or guitar solos, but there
is a catharsis of Rock music in the way of using feedback. Other live
performances were extremely objective and static, but Das Zerstoren...
reminds me of Sonic Youth's live improvisations. In Live at
Anti-Fest we can hear fierce feedback noise, which seemed to be a
denial of music itself. In Das Zerstoren... feedback noise is a
tool to move music forward and to liberate sounds from restrictions. The
last 15 minutes sound like Sonic Youth’s ‘Express Way To Your
Skull’ or ‘Death Valley 69’ in live performance! This is nothing
but Rock music - ‘TNB will Rock you!’ In a sense, this final live
recording is their most accessible work. Siren
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