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

A darker and more driven descent into the abyss than Mike Vest’s Blown Out project, Haikai No Ku nonetheless stays true to the guitarist’s ideal of formless, eternal sprawl. Clearly very much informed by the pitch-black, ‘crushing nihilist white-out’ vibe of classic Japanese psych-noise, Haikai are wise enough to retain the ‘feel’ of Haino and Mitzutani’s work without directly imitating them.

Instead, ‘Dead in the Temple’ sets the tone here with an evilly plodding, lock-step groove, over which Vest drops a gargantuan pure doom riff that could have been lifted straight from his work with Bong, instigating a solid ten minutes of black-hearted head-nodding as multiple layers of echoing vibrato lead shred and carefully manicured feedback shriek-drones accumulate, occasionally pulling together into a deafening, primordial uber-riff of malevolent awesomeness.

Subsequent tracks march forth with little in the way of variation - dense curlicues of manicured feedback howling at the desert sun as thunderous clouds of bass-heavy mega-skree throb and bleed beneath, the rhythm section pounding away in the distance, regimented and swing-less as a military parade trudging from the centre of some chaotic, Elder God-infested black hole.

In spite of all this apocalyptic jollity though, the slightly ‘shiny’, reverb-heavy production here sat rather poorly with me during my first few listens to this one, sounding rather too distant and well-scrubbed to really do justice to this kind of sonic blitzkrieg. But, as Vest’s label name so clearly implies, volume provided the key. Rescued from laptop purgatory and whacked through a mono guitar amp on the upstairs turntable, this shit hit big-time – as devastating a dark-noise blissout as you could wish for. If it lacks the overblown, beyond-the-red clippage of ‘Heavier Than a Death in The Family’ or Fushitsusha’s ‘Live 2’, the sheer density of sound that is revealed here when pushed through some appropriate speakers is almost as mighty.

More than anything in fact, ‘Ultra-High Dimensionality’ reminds me of Birchville Cat Motel’s classic ‘Our Love Will Destroy The World’ set. The pace is slower maybe, the riffs gnarlier, the basis in power trio rock more tangible, but the same power is there; that same sense of being sucked through a giant, cosmic vacuum cleaner, that same exhilarating vision of every self-described ‘shoegaze’ band in the world cowering in abject terror as their matchstick sonic cathedrals crumble to dust amidst the hundred-stack hurricane of some proper fucking cosmic noise.

In summary then: 2014’s best headcleaner / ear-wrecker – no contest.

Listen and buy from Visual Volume.

Labels: best of 2014, Haikai No Ku