Right, more Vestage (Vestism?) here, with what, for me, was Mike V’s best release of 2016, the third LP from his more noise-orientated three-piece, Haikai No Ku.

Far more of a studio project than Blown Out (they’ve never played live to my knowledge, which is unsurprising given the sheer density of guitar/noise tracks stacked up on their recordings), Haikai trades that unit’s head-nodding groove for an exultation of grim, cyclopean excess, and, for those who picked up on their previous LP (Ultra-High Dimensionality) the recipe here is not much changed, with the full-spectrum saturation of Vest’s Matthew Bower-esque guitar/FX conjurations sprawling across the baleful, stentorian lock-step of the rhythm section.

In fact, it’s easy to picture Jerome Smith (bass) and Sam Booth (drums) taking an early bus home from the studio whilst Vest works long into the night on these cuts, crafting an apocalyptic, city-levelling sound that mirrors (in feel, if not necessarily content) the likes of band-era Skullflower (natch), Fushitsusha and other extremist rock/noise outfits through the ages. (I’d also like to imagine the studio engineer staggering from the building after dawn, bleeding from every facial orifice, but don’t want to get too carried away with such fantasies.)

Opening track ‘Saltes of Human Dust’ – it’s title taken from the alchemical quotation that opens H.P. Lovecraft’s ‘The Case of Charles Dexter Ward’ (what is it with people from Newcastle?) – is, appropriately, an absolute monster, Vest’s queasy, scooped guitar tones suggesting a sickly green hue, even as the high end white noise torment that gradually envelops the low/mids drives things toward pure black on the synaesthesia scale, a terrifying conjuration of electric obliteration that at one point features a sound almost exactly like a biological electric guitar letting out a strangulated shriek. ‘Temple Factory’, which follows, is if anything even more relentless, the lumbering, two note doom riff presided over by the rhythm section propelling the accompanying FX white-out toward ‘Akira’-level visions of rubble n’ twisted steel demolition.

After the transitional ghostly tumult of ‘Blind Summit’, side # 2 is a somewhat less sadistic experience, reigning in the euphoric overload of the A side for ‘In the Garden of Eclipse’s somnambulant, depressive drift of decaying chords and amp debris, bass and drums treading water in a manner reminiscent of Vest’s comrades in Bong. And, in closing, ‘Sea of Blood’ picks us up again with an almost Rallizes-like bass-line and laser-blast lava-monster guitar, shaking up a monolithic, head-nodding grind before a disappointingly early fade – a brief palette cleanser preparing us for whatever the hell comes next…

I’m not sure at what point in my life I began using the word ‘sadistic’ in a positive context with regard to the critical assessment of recorded music, but, sometimes (and with increasing frequency in my case it seems), we all need an absolute noise-wall white-out - and when that time comes, it’s a god-send (though who knows which god) to have one as pungent and hypnogogic as this to fall back on.

Available to stream and download direct from Mike Vest via bandcamp; the LP still on sale from Box Records.

Labels: best of 2016, Haikai No Ku