A split between Sweden’s des Esseintes and Australia’s E.P.A., AZ50HD adroitly demonstrates that power electricians aren’t just bashing machinery without plan. Not all noise and thunder is random fortuity; in most cases, the decision to create howling walls of noise is a conscious one and not just a studio accident that occurred when the artist left tape running and stepped out for a sandwich. Both Magnus Sundström (des Esseintes) and Darrin Verhagen (E.P.A.) have much more classically inclined projects and, in the case of AZ50HD, they each reconsider a piece by the other in this vein.
While strands of noise curl and spark in the background, a chamber orchestra plays out a soundtrack for an action film chase scene (complete with the rising and falling sound of police sirens) for Shinjuku Thief’s remix of the des Esseintes track. It’s an interesting juxtaposition, especially as the remixes come before the original tracks on this split release. Unlike pop song remixes which are all about adding a techno beat to the core elements of the pop song, the remixes here are collaborative efforts where the baseline of a track is simply a suggested mood and everything can be further changed to realize the final mutation. des Esseintes’ original track isn’t as orchestrally cinematic as the Shinjuku Thief remix; that piece is better suited as accompaniment to the growing tension of a supernatural film.
des Esseintes redrafts E.P.A.’s “With Shredding Rubber,” distilling the thirteen minute noise excursion into a five minute symphony of slumbering martial drums and glacial tones that struggle to break through the coruscating shower of noise. The full fury of “With Shredding Rubber” is a frontal assault on your cranial receptors and des Esseintes “recap” is a bombastic redrafting of the shrieking fury of E.P.A.’s power noise. If the E.P.A. track is Ragnarok, then des Esseintes’ “recap” is the final approach, the last outpouring of courage and strength before being consumed by the conflagration at the end of time.
As both original tracks are pulled from other CDs (the des Esseintes is a Malignant Records release while E.P.A.’s can be found on Dorobo), AZ50HD is not just an exploration of the cinematic skills of Sundström and Verhagen but also a sampler of other noisier releases. As a fan of both aspects of these creators, I found AZ50HD to be a great summary of their work: a little bit of noise (which is all one really needs) to cleanse my head of idle synaptic garbage and a bit of gothic orchestration to properly color my day.
AZ50HD is out now on Fin de Siècle Media.
