The Rubber Room column is a weekly look at recent and notable releases that don’t fall into the rubric of traditional reviewed material—namely 12”s, EPs, and MP3 only releases.

Gert-Jans Prins
Risk (3”)
[Mego, 2004]
{7}

While Prins makes for a volatile collaborator, most of his solo offerings succumb to a certain monochromic exhaustion. His homemade mutant FM receivers and feedback devices never fail to churn dynamic, rhythmic storms, yet their impact is easily deadened by extended exposure to the unrelenting grayness of his material. Served up in this attractively bite-sized portion, however, Prins’ barrage loses little of its visceral charge. Corpuscles of crap commercial radio coagulate in taut capillaries of feedback soon flushed clear by the arterial gushes of static lurching within the circulatory system of some epileptic boom box. Prins’ most accomplished work to date.
[Joe Panzner]

The Cure
The End of the World (Live Performance on Jay Leno)
[Tonight Show, 2004]
{8}

Leno announces them as a ‘critically acclaimed band from England’ as if that will explain away the shock of a gravid Robert Smith in pastry thick makeup to late night America. Well, whatever I thought that Ross Robinson’s production might have brought to the band, its certainly not on display here; a join-the-dots Cure by numbers pop song with an analoguey “12:51” solo followed by some “ooohs”. I’m going to wear all white for a week in protest.
[Scott McKeating]

Organum & Z’ev
Tinnitus VU
[Touch, 2004]
{9}

Organum and Z’ev have chased the white rabbit further than most artists ever dream of. The sacrifice was worth it if their tinnitus sounds like this. Mine is just thin and annoying. Tinnitus VU is immersing your naked body in a pool of cotton and floating haphazardly into tuffs of sticky milk weed; elsewhere, the amplified sound of snowflakes being crushed. At just over sixteen minutes, it’s an angel that appears only to vanish. Each track is anchored by one traditional piano chord struck once, perhaps twice. Barnett Newman where are you? The ice in my veins just got colder.
[Bryan Neil Jones]

Proof
Play with Myself (MP3)
[Big Proof.com, 2004]
{8}

Proof jacks one of Primo’s greatest beats for some celebrity sex rhymes inspired by his friend’s dirty magazine. Under the ruse of going to the bathroom because he needs “a shit real bad”, Proof heads off for some quick tension relief in a nearby bathroom with a handful of shampoo. An unlikely cross between “Ya Playin' Yaself” and “Dreams of Fucking an RnB bitch”, he reels off a list of his favourite adult entertainers and imagines the cheeky bedroom antics inspired by his chamber pot reading material. Benzino, Esham and Ja can now call him a wanker without fear of a lyrical reprisal.
[Scott McKeating]

Jazzkammer
New Water (3”)
[OHM, 2003]
{7}

Lasse Marhaug and John Hegre reprise their previous rough-and-tumble OHM 3” with their typical flair, trading its predecessor’s skull-crushing density for a more stratified assemblage of prepared guitar death rattle and hard disc shrapnel. This noise etude shudders to life with bleats seeping through a mess of tangled strings and computer crud and dies in a whirlwind of scrambled distress signals, having traversed a landscape of fizzling power lines and scattered islands of digital debris. It sounds like the sort of thing Jazzkammer could make in their sleep, but there’s something in their reckless enthusiasm that renders this outing a little sucker-punch of entertainment.
[Joe Panzner]