This review has been a few weeks coming.
Noise Research Institute, the latest project from Spike Vincent, longtime fiend and all-around perpetrator of crimes against humanity, makes no subtle entry with this initial effort, Domestic Nuclear Shelters. The album opens with the inconspicuous grace of a drunken football hooligan, likewise blasting eardrums and expectations without apology or concern. It is an abuse of sound, depraved and vile; like an electric razor chewing through Fabergé eggs. An abuse so far beyond the pale that it daunts all but the initiated: who are sure to revel in the debasement and affront to common decency.
The appropriate mood established, the album navigates through familiar noise territory as if guided by some preternatural force, sweeping through rumbling lows and piercing highs. Tortured organic wails wash walls of crashing sound against electronic backdrops both soothingly harsh and brutally serene. Massive, monolithic towers of sheer noise rise precariously above the fray, threatening to topple under the weight of their aural might, burying the listener in an avalanche of atonal rubble. Just as the Good Lord™ intended.
Perhaps the most impressive feat of this release is in its depth. Many newcomers launch themselves into the genre with little appreciation of its subtleties and little understanding of how noise can, and should, carry emotional weight; how it evolves both sonically and symbolically. Though lacking in some of the detail that more seasoned artists may have applied, the album has a solid foundation and demonstrates a firm grasp of the fundamentals that define the style.
Domestic Nuclear Shelters is proof positive that an old dog can learn new tricks. And I hope to be around to hear a few more of these new tricks.
[Rating:4/5]
Cheers, Spike.
Post Script: I really need a proof reader.
By the way, I don’t have a URL for you, or cover art for the album, otherwise I would have added them to the review. And, in reading over this, I will probably come back later and add a little more – at least another paragraph.
There. Now that my attention isn’t divided, I feel that I was able to better capture my thoughts on the album.
Cheers Dude! It’s not on line yet,also no cover for either album yet – I’m having many domestic issues that are getting in the way of creativity…Also,it’s called Domestic Nuclear Shelters – a pamphlet issued in the early eighties by the Thatcher Government explaining how to survive Nuclear Holocaust by piling soft furnishings around the table and painting the windows white.Oh what times I lived in.Praise from someone such as yourself is high praise indeed,and I truly mean that.
Ah. I must have mislabeled the disc when I ripped it to MP3. Appy-polly-loggies, sir. The actual title makes more sense, and the story behind it is great. Do you still have a copy of the pamphlet? That would be a brilliant source of art for the cover…
If you want to release it for free online, I can point you to a few netlabels that are geared toward this type of material.
Oooooh, goodness.
http://www.grandnationalchallenge.com/SM-24.pdf
I indeed have a copy,and it’s also online somewhere.Probably under “Protect and survive” the main theme of our at the time impending nucular doom.Which of course immediately became protest and survive..We were advised to take our transistor radios into our flimsy shelters to get an update on when it was safe to come out.So the album is what we would have been listenining to..
Oh,btw,did you get both disks?