Olekranon: Gaitan
Inam Records

Sujo: Sujo
Inam Records

Olekranon's (real name Ryan Huber) Gaitan throbs with forty-two minutes of black noise fury. Make way for ten electronic-ambient-noise instrumentals of pounding beat structures mauled by seething howls of metallic guitar noise and shuddering electronics. The effect is sometimes both awesome and terrifying when Huber unleashes the full force of his attack. You'll feel as if the farthest corners of your cranium have been wiped clean when the title track rolls out its massive wail, for instance. But Huber's got a few surprising tricks up his sleeve, too. He mercifully lets a bit of light in during the relatively becalmed ambient set-piece “Black Sands” though even here the track's restless churn suggests its longing to explode. A hint of hip-hop even sneaks in to the downtempo beat flow of “In A Day” and “Bundles” though one's always aware of the noise roaring outside the door, desperate to intrude (which eventually happens in the latter when convulsive, low-pitched waves push the beats aside). “Amilda” could be characterized as a particularly aggressive take on post-rock, while “Skipjack” ends the set with a brief setting of tranquility where analogue synths dominate and beats vanish altogether.

Sujo (no real name provided) weighs in with three heavy tracks of monolithic guitar sludge on his/her/its three-inch EP. Opener “Clotted Wing” grows into a fuzzy howl that pretty much buries the lulling guitar playing and drums that plod so cavalierly underneath. The aptly-titled middle piece, “The Dawn of Disease,” opens in detonation mode before pulling back to let a fiery guitar theme be glimpsed at the maelstrom's center. Midway through, the track quietens ever so briefly before an escalating churn of noise kicks in, swiftly banishing the calm to some other galaxy. Finally, a towering guitar theme inaugurates “Dirt Cover” like a slow-motion fireball hell-bent on incinerating everything in its path. A tsunami of feedback almost obliterates the grungy guitar theme but, having flexed its muscles, politely retreats before attacking a second time. Heavy, yes, but not unmusical and, at eighteen minutes, just the right length.

April 2009