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, cassette-only and MP3-only releases.

Newton/Japanese Karaoke Afterlife Experiment
Split C60
[Quone, 2004]

Newton, founder of Breathmint Records and all around insane dude, contributes a side of processed feedback and static. What seems formless at first eventually coalesces into quite a pleasing shifting field of noise. Japanese Karaoke Afterlife Experiment, on the other hand, combines simple drum grooves and noisy electronic tomfoolery. The highlight of their side is a cover/remix of Four Non-Blondes “Wake Up,” periodically destroyed by blast beats. The end of their side is a cruel joke—a catchy, danceable tune cut off prematurely. This, along with some directionless sampler fiddling, points to their biggest problem: careless editing. Try songs more!
[Ian Johnson]

Yasushi Miura
Mooncat 3” CD
[Instant Construction Series, 2004]

Hotwired cellphones playing feverish ringtones, all synced up to the master gabberkick? Yashushi’s 31st entry into the Instant Construction Series has cartoon cats on it and garbage text. Throughout, we are offered bright slices of schizophrenic CD skips, harsh white noise, microsound-style UHF, non-western melodies, Kid606 distortion, aliasing, Nyquist frequencies, jitter and dither. It’s like listening to Merzbow: it hurts to listen but you keep wanting to hear where he’s gonna go next. When I google Yasushi Miura, crazy shit comes up, like molecular medicine and physical volcanology. Maybe those are his part-time day jobs. No idea. But I like his music. I think.
[Francis Henville]

Erast
Goodair
[Laboratory Instinct, 2004]

On Goodair, Erast (Nika Machaidze from Tbilisi, Georgia) injects remarkable new life into jungle and drill’n’bass genres by first crafting elegant compositional structures and then devising natural ways to weave incredible beat constructions into them. A case in point is “Argentina” whose stunning drum patterns never overpower the acoustic guitars and strings that imbue the track with Erast’s customary exotic, melancholy feel. Deft programming skills are showcased by the frenetic, clattering breakbeats in “Masa” but again they’re there to serve the composition. Maintaining the breathless pace to the end, Simon Pyke’s Freeform “Goodair” remix adds some African-flavoured buoyancy to the original’s dancing string patterns.
[Ron Schepper]

The Cherry Point/John Wiese
Pyramid Suites, Vol. 2
[Troniks, 2004]

There’s only so much John Wiese any reasonable noise fan (does such a thing exist?) can get their grubby paws on. I’ll make it easy for you: this is one you should get. Cherry Point’s side: five minutes of the most engaging harsh noise imaginable. It’s rough, raw, and dynamic without being random or jumpy. Wiese’s side, on the other hand, is a Sissy Spacek-style cut-up, fast knife-cuts of noise followed by quick splices of beeps, radio static, and distorted rhythms, interspersed with momentary pauses that give the whole thing a strobe flicker effect. Two different approaches, both equally compelling.
[Ed Howard]

Laszlo Beckett and Steve Taylor
Work
[Hand on the Plow, 2004]

With the entrancing chant of “Got to Work/Work with what you got,” Beckett and Taylor transform DIY from buzzword-overkill into a mantra. Work is set in a flurry of micro-edit seams, reminiscent of Isolee and Akufen, that pays equal attention to proletariat bar-room moans, as found on “Hand on the Plow.” Beckett and Taylor make self-proclaimed ‘Broken Gospel Click-House’—a genre description that surprisingly doesn’t sound painfully simplistic or over-explained. Instead, we’re treated to four explorations into shambling euphoria, from laid-back and strangely metronomic “You Gotta Work” to the glitchy-minimalism of “Yonder.”
[Nate De Young]

Various Artists
Rabimmel Rabimmel Rabum Bum Bum
[Areal, 2004]

I only really write about this to point out one track and one thing (although Basteroid, Konfekt and Metope all turn in outstanding contributions and need to release LPs as soon as possible): Ada is currently the most euphoric producer working right now in microhouse and “Bum Bum” is one of her finest tracks to date. It won’t make sense until you hear it. And it won’t even make sense until two and a half minutes in, but you have to trust me on this one. Glorious stuff, as usual, from Areal.
[Todd Burns]