Monolith Zero / Never Presence Forever Split CD

Source: Industrial.org
I'm not sure if this disc has a title beyond "split" but if I was called in as a freelance image consultant on the project I would have pitched it as "oil and vinegar: two acts sharing a duo of classic ingredients - soothing oily hum and stinging static which combined make for something quite different". OK, OK. . .I won't quit the day job.

Monolith Zero's opener is a bit like walking outside on a fresh fall morning, appreciating the crisp taste of the clean air as your steps take you further into the world until you are icily interrupted by the insectoid, creepy shock of walking face first into a massive spiderweb. In a split second you go from placid calm to electrified freakout scrabbling at your ears, eyes and hair to get the unseen ugliness off of you. Chilled drones, very much in the "annoy your dog" realm make up the majority with widely separated instances of rude and abrupt glitchdom to make sure that you are always waiting for the bloody shoe to drop on your temple. The absolute opposite of soothing. I wouldn't exactly call it aggravating but if you have a head cold I wouldn't suggest lingering around for very long unless you have a large supply of ibuprofen handy.

As noted, it is mostly dronish stuff (or plain old silence) but very dry tasting even when wet with distortion. It varies from high pitched sinusoid to stretched out white noise but within those guidelines is a surprising amount of variety, even without the Japanese horror flick commercial abrupt editing style. The second track definitely offers more flavours initially but whether it is the fact that it tones it down with all the glitchy wet wrigglies in the ear towards the latter half of the track or the calm which makes me prefer it is hard to say (a rest after tough stretch is hard to refuse).

Never Presence Forever remind me a little of acts like Magwheels due to the use of resolving swells, still nowhere near as melodic as that act but they definitely share a similar (un)muting of the spitting chordal frying pan approach. This set is fuzzy as an old sweater and almost as warm (most of the time) though whether this is due to it's insulating properties or the digital sparks sputtering towards the end of the third track is hard to say. These pieces tend to drift off mid sentence, not to silence but to a an all enveloping, comforting hum. Once the disc melts over into the closing track the urge to lay your head against the side of speaker and close your eyes gets stupidly strong, like the need to sleep after falling off of your bike head first or to inhale when laying on your back under the warm water in your bathtub. It's a little quiet at times (had to bump up the volume at least once to compete with my PC whir) but the approach ramps are highly accessible and when the sand paper comes out in the last few minutes you want to push your face directly into it and smile.

Of the two recordings here the latter from Never Presence Forever is definitely my preference but that could easily be due to it throwing fewer tantrums thus being easier ye olde anxiety level. The initial tracks are a bit like having to test your metal before being allowed to enter the grounds proper, trying at the time but worth the effort in retrospect. All in all though, an interesting dose of pure electronics. - Moron

Source: Joe Lombardo
Monolith Zero/Never Presence Forever - Split CD on www.804noise.org Track one by Monolith Zero is a very experimental, soft wind blowing like sound that loops with a tinge of distortion although in time jumps into a extremely high pitch sound while increasingly intensity and nearly unchanging for some time until the very end and beginning of the next track. With the first track a bit predictable, the next is anything but. Sporadic blurts of noise and rancid clam transcend a disturbing ambience in the room, making the clash of silence, harsh out bursts and distant audible sound an interesting mix. Contact Adam at phantom_sound@.... The third track is from Never Presence Forever. Seemingly a very monotone piece with very subtle changes in the texture of the static like noise and gently soothing the air like a fragrance more so than sound, the entire track comes to a climax when at around the ninth minute the volume increases as does the amount of noise in general and spurts like the very last of sparks in a firework's cone. The last track is very moody with plenty of atmosphere and even some conventional musical sounds with a massive build up of noise in the background, continuing with an ambient flavor that will make you think twice. Not bad at all, not always my cup of tea, but something I can see my listening to more than once and even look for when I am in the mood. Contact Andrew at www.holyterror.com/neverpresenceforever/

Source: Vital Weekly
Both Monolith Zero and Never Presence Forever are new names to me, and so is the label, 804noise Records. They hail from Virginia and focuss on artists from the Richmond Area, I assume it's run by the artists who release on the label. Monolith is one Adam Hudson and he presents two tracks of electrically charged electricity. In the first piece this works out in smaller sounds, produced while rubbing contact microphones against each-other, interrupted by short loud bangs. Quite an intense piece of music going on here. The second '_0_' is a much louder piece of machine hum, distortion and feedback, but presented in a good collage form, balancing the noise with silence. In the second half of the piece things move into quieter water before arising from the swamp. Never Presence Forever is Andrew Westerhouse, who remixed Merzbow before. His music sound 'swedish' to me, which means echoing the likes of Cold Meat Industry and their 'death ambient' bands. A rather subdued form of noise or a violent form of drone music. Never Presence Forever takes the sounds of 'transformer hum in a vacant lot littered with refuse, a blast furnace echoing in a concrete stairwell', and puts on a bunch of electronic processing to create a dense, layered mass of sound, in a careful built pieces of great music. Lovers of Megaptera and Lustmord with a healthy dose of noise, should find their way here. (FdW)