Really, you only need a couple folks to make a boatload of skree. Seriously, cut the dead weight. Brave? Follow the solitary examples set by Merzbow, Jim O'Rourke, Keiji Haino, Tyondai Braxton, et al, and break eardrums by your high lonesome. And if the rugged solo thing isn't up your alley then consider the toxic chemistry that emerges when two artists decide to stop just short of a trio.
At least in the more rambunctious rock section of my record collection, two is often the magic number for the creation of the headiest of discombobulation. Off the top of my head, I'm thinking of couplings like Harry Pussy, Climax Golden Twins, The Hospitals, Orthrelm, Hella, Pink & Brown, and godheadSilo. Most likely, though, the first two-person hardcore noise act to jump into post-Oops! minds is Fort Thunder's premiere export, Lightning Bolt. Over the past couple of years, the Providence, RI twosome has uncharacteristically flirted with the musical "mainstream," first via 2001's Ride the Skies and then through the absolute stunner, Wonderful Rainbow. But whatever the hipster down the streets tells you, these high-profile lads were just the tip of an ever growing iceberg.
You needn't travel far from there to consider Mindflayer, another Providence one-plus-one battle ax connected to the aesthetically correct Fort Thunder. Comprised of Lightning Bolt drummer/screamer Brian Chippendale and analog electro-terrorist Matt Brinkmann of Forcefield, the pair offer a less psychedelic sandblast, subsisting on lapidary, alien-abduction blast-offs. The change in dosage is largely due to instrumentation. Mindflayer trades bass for a pile of electronic bursts, which means they often sound like they've buried themselves in a flooded basement, surrounded by bright plastic toys and demolished spiderwebs. Where I often imagine the triumphant Lightning Bolt sending its open-ended blitzkrieg down from an ice-capped mountain, Mindflayer's approach is of the murkiest, damaged swamp-monster depths. The duo's hermetically overstuffed take on tribalism lacks the wiggle room to allow for anything as starkly arresting as Wonderful Rainbow's title track, and Lightning Bolt do make better dance music. Despite the obstacles, though, there's something to be said for music this crackly.
Bedecked in Happy Flowers' naive art, It's Always 1999 was originally released at the macrolevel in 2001 by Ooo Mau Mau. Recorded prior to last year's first proper recording, its 21 salvos offer a little peak at an ecstatic earlier offering. (To be fair and accurate, the band's been around since 1996, so even when this was put to tape in 1999, they were hardly newcomers.) Enjoyable for its gusto and ramshackle territorial pissing, most of these all-too-brief compositions would benefit from considerably longer lifespans.
The abridged tracks like "Mud Lazer Lazy Lazers" or "A Worming Is Coming" have merit, but feel like tonal exercises or ColecoVision outtakes, not burly rockers. The skeletal "Argamnimals" shouts for additional crunk from Lil' Jon. "Five Minutes of Sporadic Beats" lies about its length but remains pretty spot-on regarding the rest of its physical make-up. We all know it takes time to unearth transcendence, right? Well, much of the clipped efforts here crash back to earth just when you start nodding elsewhere.
Most successfully, "Revenge of Whales/Whale War"-- part one of a slight, but intriguing series of whale-centric tracks-- builds a rhythm of drum/flange rolls into a towering edifice of torturous Hendrixian feedback. It's a lovely climb, my boys. Less caustic, the fluttering lock-groove of "1999 Animals Revenge" is my idea of an unhinged booty jam for over-sexed pterodactyls in Gap t-shirts. And while I'm at it, the equally longwinded "Psychic Fields of Animal Town" blows a huge psych bugle into your mind's eye: As the drums pick up in the final few seconds, it's like experiencing a midtempo 80s hardcore show from the bottom of a sweaty pile of wasted delinquents.
While It's Always 1999 remains an unrelenting serving of dark stew, it at times wades into the entropic (not always in the positive Melvins-esque or Sleep meaning of the term). There are more highlights, more duds, and some that fit both categories. Still, given the highs and lows, Chippendale and Brinkmann have such a raging dual chemistry that even their unsuccessful overdoses spit and kick and tell you to fuck off like a couple of anarchic hoodlums snuffing out the world on their way home from school.
