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 7”’s, 12”’s, 3” CDs, EPs, and MP3 only releases.

Throbbing Gristle
Now (Four track EP)
[Available only at 16/05/04 London gig, 2004]

You need this record. Shove all this Prince/Morrissey/Cure bullshit hype. This is the reformed band that you need to hear this year. P-Orridge’s vocals are sounding lower and a little rougher than his Thee Majesty work, but he and the others are still on top of their game sounding focused and with a slightly more subtle grasp of rhythms and noisy counter melodies. Who else could create something like “How do you Deal” as it rattles superbly through laptop emissions of clattering conflagration and cacophonous distortion like some fucked steam train from NY to Moss side? The perfect band; the brains, the attitude, the technical abilities, the vision, the tunes, the edge, an amazing past and the infinite possibilities of the future.
[Scott McKeating]

Andrea Neumann / Michael Renkel / Olaf Rupp / Serge Baghdadassarian
Berlin Strings (4x3”)
[Absinth, 2004]

Like few other branches of music, local factors distinctly mold improvisation. Everything from a city’s economic climate, the acoustics of its venues, and even the views from its windows (to paraphrase Cardew) leaves subtle traces imprinted in its musicians. Marcus Liebig’s Absinth label offers a window into this local character with its unique collections divvied up by locale and instrument type, presenting four solo efforts from a city’s artists and leaving the listener’s ear to map out the sinuous connections.

Serge Baghdadassarian opens this collection of stringed explorations with a rusty pileup of e-guitar and mixing desk scuzz, piling up stuttering repetitions until the few scraps of the guitar’s physical form dissolve in a burst of manic energy. Innerklavier wizard Andrea Neumann follows an equally abstracted course as she carves ruts into dusty plains of static and distortion. Only the unsettled coda of “End of a Motor Noticed by Five Pickups” hints at its piano-gut origins as it tracks a single string clatter through disorienting shifts of perspective. Michael Renkel and Olaf Rupp take a more conventional technical approach to their tools yet sacrifice little in the way of focus or sonic oddity. Tweaking an acoustic guitar and zither with metallic preparations, Renkel delivers tender slivers of sound between anxious silences to create an eerie blues that suggests Morton Feldman by way of Tetuzi Akiyama. Olaf Rupp’s rowdy closer breaks the concentrated lower-case atmosphere with deranged pyrotechnics, all fingerpicked fireworks and sputtering fuses. Boisterous and unforgiving, Rupp’s hysterics amount to a rude burp after three tenderly prepared courses, even as they offer a firm counter to those who’d accuse the Berlin’s improv community of singularly serious groupthink—a provoking grain of agitation in this otherwise sumptuous set.
[Joe Panzner]

Davenport
Springtime on Saturnalia 3” CD-R
[PseudoArcana, 2004]

Clay Ruby of 23 Productions leads the Davenport quintet, and if every half-baked psychedelic drone disc carried this outfit’s pirouetting refinement in their satchel, I might not call the sonic weaponry on the tinkers. Stumbling inconclusively around their instruments, Davenport eventually finds their ley-line, drawing loose threads together, binding them around a balustrade of polyglot clatter, and sending the piece direct to your navel via Florian Fricke’s third eye. So much so that the Springtime on Saturnalia’s build to climax crawls up your back almost unnoticed. The Third Ear Band may have a lot to answer for, but these children are well-behaved, if not quite as lysergically directive.
[Jon Dale]

Hair Police
Rattlers Echo 3” CD-R
[Chondritic Sound, 2004]

On the first track, waves of angry electronic noise build an atmosphere of buzzing insectile dread, the moment before the killer bees attack, and the haphazard drums sound like they’re being played on a kit made of metal. And Mike Connelly’s screams! Those demonic, haunted screams, scratchy and high-pitched and evil, that are as much black metal as they are hardcore. This is truly it, if “it” means the most demented, genuinely frightening, warped noise that could possibly be made by humans. And the second track is an equally fucked up “ambient” excursion remixed from the b-side of a previous 7”.
[Ed Howard]

Shadow Huntaz
Vampire 12”
[Skam, 2004]

Convening in a studio for the first time, Dutch producers Funckarma and American emcees Breaf and Non return for this 12" follow-up to their futuristic debut Corrupt Data (assembled long distance via e-mail). Of the four tracks, the dark opener "Fasho" is especially stunning, with a laconic rap dropped over hammering breakbeats and towering sci-fi synths. The final two tracks impress less for hewing more closely to conventional hip-hop. The rap on "Dont got" (sic), for example, is coloured by a customary braggadocio, although instrumentally the song is nicely enhanced by piano. At four tracks, the 12" is a teaser but enough for one to get a sense of the group's distinctive hip-hop style.
[Ron Schepper]

Connelly
Werewolf Break 3” CD-R
[Chondritic Sound, 2004]

The Hair Police/Zombi frontman lays down a solo disc of seething electronics with his screamed vocals blended in so that man and machine become nearly indistinguishable. This is by turns blisteringly loud and creepily low, and I’m still not quite sure which is more disconcerting. The disc is bookended by two phenomenal tracks, the first a sinister and sparse wasteland over which swooping screams dive and soar, and the fourth some kind of rewired kitchen appliance gasping for air and then being tortured into a staticky howl. In between is a treacherous stretch of exhausting harsh noise.
[Ed Howard]