(01.24.06) There’s a lot of people making noise out there, but none, in my estimation, makes it with quite the same cinematic verve as Jonas Johansson. I’ve been a crack whore for his work ever since his first release on Ad Noiseam. His latest record, the Tintorama EP, released by Low Res Records as a 12″, shows that Johansson isn’t resting on his laurels, dropping any old noise bit of garbage for his ardent fans. No, Johansson is still experimenting with the collision between organic synthesizer melodies and cataclysmic noise explosions, still punishing boundaries in an effort to break everything down into a single orgiastic implosion of melody and chaos.
Imagine: a bit of Disney animation, swiped from Bambi or some such animal friendly flick, where the bunnies and squirrels are at play in the fields. Lovely little flowers sway and bob in the warm summer light, their tiny flower heads all a-coo with winsome little songs. Okay, got that in your head? That’s the opening forty seconds
of “Arsenik”. Then, suddenly, in this idyllic pastoral landscape comes a GIANT STEEL WOLVERINE TWO HUNDRED FEET TALL! It’s teeth are longer than elephants and so sharp they cut the sunlight. Between its knobby toes (equipped with equally sharp nails, of course, because this is a DEATH WOLVERINE OF THE APOCALYPSE!) are the wings of a thousand crushed butterflies. Its breath is the satanic stench of boiled babies and its drool is caustic acid that burns the ground so badly that earthquakes are felt twenty miles away as the planet tries to recoil from the burning spittle. It farts and trees are turned to ash in its wake. It stomps through the field, scattering bunnies and
squirrels, demolishing the little choirs of petunias and daisies — you can hear their little soundtracks being flayed apart by the thundering onslaught of over-saturated beats and the sky-shredding shriek of metallic percussion. The DEATH WOLVERINE OF THE APOCALYPSE loves to destroy the tiny little happy creatures of the woods because — Muwhwhaahahah! — that is its sole purpose in life. Must. Crush. All. Pretty. Things.
Tarmvred will scare your neighbors. Tarmvred makes squirrels fall out of trees. Tarmvred raises blisters. Johansson makes noise like no one else and he’s just getting better with every record.
The Tintorama EP is out now on Low Res.
- Low Res
- Tarmvred
