s you’d expect with one of John Olson’s American Tapes releases, this two disc set is a suitably lurid green and paint-flecked looking affair. The pairing of Taurpis Tula on a release with Olson’s solo (and away from his Wolf Eyes day job) Spykes projects is a well chosen one; there are at least some similarities in the darkness of their styles. Where Taurpis Tula apply pedal steel, guitar and the never ending possibilities of Alex Neilson’s percussion to their explorations, Spykes mash electronics, abuse horns and generally grind things into an uglier shape altogether.

The Taurpis Tula set is a live one from November 2005 at Newcastle upon Tyne’s Morden Tower venue (which I was lucky enough to witness), and Spykes offer four pieces of studio abuse with title tributes to the same venue. Even though I’ve been mythologizing the Taurpis Tula performance in my head for a few months, I was prepared to hear a totally different set with utterly unremembered moments; live LPs rarely give the same picture as the actual experience. How can someone not make myth of a performance where the audience were scored with noise lit only by candlelight and speaker LEDs?

The two tracks here are much darker interactions than I remember. Keenan manages to batter both melody and discord from the six strings coming across like a hybrid of the good cop bad cop brothers Reid, a one man wild-eyed Mary Chain. A lone harsh chipping starts off “I Can’t Be Satisfied,” creating a musical loop of sorts, but is soon ushered aside as Neilson’s rolls make the loosening guitar and drums the focus of the piece as Heather’s serene vocals ride oblivious to the damage below. The guitar’s squalls chased down the lean higher wash of Leigh’s pedal steel. There are droning chimes aplenty with the music groping around in the dark with triple jointed fingers trying to snake its way around each of the members. Neilson’s energy is positively (in both senses of the word) spinning off the guy and the fireworks of his sticks on skins rise and fall taking sounds bleeding into the atmosphere or sending them crashing into the windows of 4x4s sending glass splintering in slow motion.

There is an underlying tension to both pieces (though particularly the opening “I Can’t be Satisfied”) where the band appear on the edge of maelstrom in their desperation to communicate what they’re sharing with the audience. It’s a shame that someone already popularised the phrase "experimental music at the apex of flesh and metal" as this is the perfect summing up of the clang and ache in Taurpis Tula’s sound. Many of the multitudes of noise/drone/free ever shifting collectives can seem like infantry, steadily marching through their paces. Taurpis Tula appear here as some branch of the underground’s Special Forces.

The much dronier “Kingdoms Come to Earth” rounds off the Tula disc with a much stronger Heather influence. The strings are skirted along and torn at sensitively bearing sounds from a tranquilised Lion’s dreams. Neilson takes out of his heartbeat to batter the kit like a pit-bull with a ham stuffed rag doll, charging everyone up to follow the pace set. There’s a pedal-created guitar loop before the song’s ending lull that’s built of gorgeous faded feedback scars that continuously burn. But as good as this is, it’s superseded by an Ipcress-style spy theme melody that circles till the song smoulders out.

The Spykes disc begins in a ‘been there done that’ style with “Morden Towering 1,” which sounds more like an introductory workout and a rattle of kitchen implements than an actual intentional recording. This wrong-footed start is soon righted with the unexpected vividness of the other three “Morden Towering”’s. Both “2” and “3” are more varied affairs which let their gongs, faulty sines, and workbench antics breathe into rhythmless ballroom blitz over fourteen minutes. Through the meltdown electronics there’s even an almost Heather Leigh-ish vocal effect in the background at certain points interrupted by the on/off spluttering. The final track, though, sees Olson let it all hang out with the carcass of his free horn put through the body-dissolving lime percolator. These once robust sounds are reverberated and crushe—like listening to Peter and the Wolf through a rumbling hangover. From these blaring and glaring shards of sound, only the top registers pierce the cloud cover. This is a killer piece of noise and a new high for Olson under any alias.