Brandon Nickell - And If You Set This Mind Of Mine Afire Then On My Bloodstream I Yet Will Carry You (Isounderscore, 2010)

Brandon Nickell - And If You Set This Mind Of Mine Afire Then On My Bloodstream I Yet Will Carry You


Brandon Nickell is one bad motherfucker. The dude owns the incredible Isounderscore label, runs, like, 8 miles a day, puts together kickass shows, and makes ridiculously awesome noise. Also, he must never sleep.

His new poetically & cryptically tongue twisted album, And If You Set This Mind Of Mine Afire Then On My Bloodstream I Yet Will Carry You, has been in the making for years and it's finally seeing the light of day. I can 100% money back guarantee it was totally worthwhile to wait that long because this is a fucking beast of a record.

The 12 minute opener is a game changer. Album openers got a lot to live up to after this. Coupling high end tinnitus inducing bells with soothing somber organs equals uneasiness that knows no bounds. It's constantly vibrating, like a sea of electrons buzzing around a nucleus hell bent on explosion. Metal bowls, clanging chimes, a fury of burning metal that somehow manages to be highly enjoyable & pleasant.

The title track drops it down into the purest evil dronenoise I've ever heard. Maliciously relentless on your eardrums, panning and growling, screeching and crackling, this is honestly one of the best pieces this year. I'm damn near certain this is what it sounds like getting your head stuck in a hornet's nest that's being struck by lightning. Oh my fucking GOD it is so intense. The record could've just been this one track and people would still be praising him.

3 more tracks & over 20 minutes to go, you get yourself into some serious shit. Static poison blow darts knock you out so you can't run away and a pack of striped hyenas brutally assault you with cattle prods. Haunted minimalist house of glowing specters, creaking sparks, & piercing refractions. Swirling luminiferous aether, a scathing plasma seeping into your pores, taking over your body one cell at a time.

Nickell is clearly a supreme crafter of sound. And If You Set This Mind Of Mine Afire is easily one of the best noise records of 2010. The guy just totally fuckin nailed it with this record. If I have to wait another 5 years for Nickell to put out another record this insanely good, that's just 5 more years spent obsessing over this.

Acre - Isolationist (Isounderscore, 2009)

Acre - Untitled 1


I've had this for wayyyyy too long, and while I can make excuses for not having written about it yet (like I moved and couldn't find my copy to scan for the artwork, or I've been too busy, or I couldn't think of anything to say because it's so fucking brilliant) they're all pretty much irrelevant. Reason being: Acre's Isolationist is unbelievably amazing drone.

Let's face it. Winter's coming (southern hemisphere excluded). And like a bear fattening up on salmon and squirrels for the long hibernation, you too should be gathering as much cold weather appropriate tunes for the forthcoming blizzards. Isolationist is a necessity for your stockpile.

Acre's drone is the fucking best. Super long form, like Wada or Niblock except with the lushness of somebody like White Rainbow or Eluvium. It's so thick and dense and warm (key word here). It's like a golden blanket from the gods sewn with threads of magic from the fabric of clouds to keep you blissfully cozy no matter what hardships you must endure.

This is the kind of drone that's maximized at full volume. You need this shit to envelope every atom of your being. Let it hug your bones. It'll keep you warmer than that quilt Grandma made for you last Christmas.

And the image up there looks nothing like the actual CD. The artwork is neon orange and there's a geometric pattern that isn't so much a color difference than it is a textural one. Totally awesome. You need to see it irl.

Dimmer - Remissions (Isounderscore, 2009)

Dimmer - Sun Dog


Dimmer is a couple of guys from California who've gotten far enough in their tape manipulating life to put out Remissions as their second full length. And with 4 epic side long noise pieces, I have a feeling this slick double vinyl might be pretty fuckin hard to follow up.

All together, Remissions runs about an hour and it's one of the most teeth clenching experiences you'll ever have listening to a record. "Sky Wire" is a song full of tape hiss and electronic washes, that sounds like the wind blowing through humming electrical wires (Aeolian effect!), creating enough static electricity to shock down telephone poles.

With the exception of flipping the record over, things move seamlessly into "Sun Dog." It starts out all sweet and chill, but builds up this ghostly alien forcefield around it. And god help you if you want to go through it, 'cause shit gets nasty. Shrill squeals and laser rays penetrate your skull, until you back off and start seeing phantoms made of reverse photons. And then the bees come. The multi-dimensional bees that only pop into our reality for seconds at a time, just long enough to scare the shit out of you and think you're suddenly surrounded by a swarm of pissed off stinging insects, and then they just pop back into some other reality, leaving you alone to contemplate your sanity.

"Gases That Emit Light" is one of those so-appropriate-it's-crazy song titles. It sounds, quite literally, like gas emitting light. Except the gas is mustard gas and it's emitting ultra-radioactive infrared light. IT'S KILLING YOU AND YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW IT. Slowly, your ears fall off, then your skin starts dripping from your bones, and by the end of the song, you're a glowing pile of liquid carbon. All while listening to this seemingly innocuous piece of tape noise with a pretty name.

The final track, "Giant Eagle," is, of course, the most unsettling. You know that moment in horror movies, right before something really terrible happens? Like, the killer is about to jump out from behind the counter wearing a mask made the pet dog's ass and kill the innocent teenager with a meat cleaver? Well, the music leading up to that scene is always really unnerving. The kind of music that puts you on the edge of your seat grinding your teeth and turning your knuckles white (if it's done right). The reason that's tolerable is because it only lasts for a minute or two, tops. "Giant Eagle" is over 15 minutes long and is made entirely of those sounds that come just before awful things happen. It's fucking cool but certainly not an easy listen.

So, yeah, Remissions is a fuckin beast, albeit a super subtle beast. It's non-blissful tape drone noise that never gets too uppity. And sometimes it's hard to find bands that do that well. Dimmer is one of those bands. Here's hoping the third record can be even more awesome.