Noise/Girl: Discopathology
Killer Pimp

While I'm hardly the world's foremost noise authority, I suspect Noise/Girl's Discopathology might represent some kind of noise nirvana for aficionados of the genre. Tailor-made to single-handedly incinerate disc players and stereo systems throughout the globe, the disc is a seething forty-minute wail of feedback squall that makes Merzbow sound like John Denver.

Noise/Girl, which had made a name for itself within the Japan noise community during the late ‘90s, disappeared suddenly in 2000. The group's figurehead Luke Cypher recently resurfaced with live performances and a 'final update' of new, rare, and unreleased material issued by Brainwashed on its Killer Pimp label. Peel back the eight pieces' decimating howls and squeals and you'll actually catch faint traces of tribal gabba (“Alive”), breakcore (“Smoke ‘N' Mirrorz”), and, yes, even disco (“Discopathology”).

Though “Before the Carnival” initiates the album spookily, it's not overly threatening or overwhelming. But gradually the distant screams and whistles escalate into a wave of rippling noise that's awesome in its engulfing magnitude. The title piece then roars in, a gargantuan, bulldozing booty-shaker that flails, screeches, and twitches convulsively yet—unbelievably—is a mere teaser for the merciless onslaught ahead: “Honeyfunk,” an insane hailstorm of brutal blasts and violent ruptures. If nothing else, one must at least admire the band's perverse sense of humour: it very well may be Michael Jackson's voice that wails from the depths of the cauldron that is “King of Pop,” for example, but it's impossible to tell when it's buried under an avalanche of noise and, needless to say, “Alice in Boogie Wonderland” won't be played at your local dance club any time soon. Fearless masochists eager to brave the trip might want to know that only 500 copies were issued.

November 2005