DISCOPATHOLOGY REVIEWS


From Igloo Magazine

Beginning with "Before the Carnival," an uneasy wash of reverb and distortion that is cautiously subdued. The lull explodes into the title track, a rampaging equalizer-killing disco dance anthem. This is where Noise/Girl shines; the mix is clear with high attention to detail. Unlike many of his noise contemporaries, Noise/Girl embraces frequencies across the spectrum, and assigns pockets of the spectrum to various elements of the mix.

If Daft Punk traded their skill with the filter-bank for brutal distortions, the result would bow before the dynamics of Discopathology.

This shit makes your ass move. Harsh noise has never been so fun.


From www.textura.org

"While I'm hardly the world's foremost noise authority, I suspect Noise/Girl's Discopathology might represent some kind of noise nirvana for aficionados of the genre. Tailor-made to single-handedly incinerate disc players and stereo systems throughout the globe, the disc is a seething forty-minute wail of feedback squall that makes Merzbow sound like John Denver.

Noise/Girl, which had made a name for itself within the Japan noise community during the late '90s, disappeared suddenly in 2000. The group's figurehead Luke Cypher recently resurfaced with live performances and a 'final update' of new, rare, and unreleased material issued by Brainwashed on its Killer Pimp label. Peel back the eight pieces' decimating howls and squeals and you'll actually catch faint traces of tribal gabba ("Alive"), breakcore ("Smoke 'N' Mirrorz"), and, yes, even disco ("Discopathology").

Though "Before the Carnival" initiates the album spookily, it's not overly threatening or overwhelming. But gradually the distant screams and whistles escalate into a wave of rippling noise that's awesome in its engulfing magnitude. The title piece then roars in, a gargantuan, bulldozing booty-shaker that flails, screeches, and twitches convulsively yet--unbelievably--is a mere teaser for the merciless onslaught ahead: "Honeyfunk," an insane hailstorm of brutal blasts and violent ruptures. If nothing else, one must at least admire the band's perverse sense of humour: it very well may be Michael Jackson's voice that wails from the depths of the cauldron that is "King of Pop," for example, but it's impossible to tell when it's buried under an avalanche of noise and, needless to say, "Alice in Boogie Wonderland" won't be played at your local dance club any time soon. Fearless masochists eager to brave the trip might want to know that only 500 copies were issued."


From Groove Magazine

It's a pleasure to report that Noise/Girl isn't just a clever name?
This now-defunct Japanoise outfit submerges DJ moves in bathtubs of fuzzin' churn and fritzin' skree until the bathroom's teeming with evil bubbles.
Sometimes the group just goes straight for the madness switch: "Before the Carnival" progresses from faint new age cathedral vocals to gathering-storm fizz-blitz roar, and "Alice in Boogie Wonderland" is a massive, overloaded nexus of nihilism, as though several John Wiese tracks were simply played all at once.
But then on the title track, dance-floor techno gets mutilated by way of level adjustments that render the music a kinetic, corroded blur, and "Alive" perverts the Bee Gees' "Stayin' Alive" into a scowling bad-acid flashback, chewing up the iconic falsettos and polyester-pantsuit beats only to spit them back out coated in bloody phlegm.

Raymond Cummings


From Stylus Magazine

"Even though it�fs relatively tame by Brown�fs own fetishistic standards, it�fs obvious that Noise/Girl aren�ft expecting this career round-up to be taken into the all encompassing motherly breast of the Wal-Mart family. From the cover art to the song titles and label name it�fs obvious that the band aren�ft down with the doom in any serious form; a frontman with the name Lucifer hardly instils fear into the hearts of men in 2005. Having disappeared from view in 2000, this single release is all that�fs left to sum up the Noise/Girl experience with the project having now come to an official end. The band�fs greatest talent might well be in the little known field of messed up disco-industrial, but they also more than adequately insinuate themselves into other aural areas after giving them a brush with the white noise wand. The manipulation of funk, black metal soundscapes, rock, and straight up noise means that Discopathology is more than the sum of its separate constituent assaulted and dazed elements.

In an expert example of tension building there�fs a chilling opening track that skirts between something happening down the end of a long dark tunnel and waves of extreme static racing from the speaker. It�fs this slow bleed that opens the door for a run of relatively palatable but harsh noise, and there�fs a distant element of both the Mary Chain�fs Nineties experiments with beats and the now-pointless but once-mighty DHR. Frontloading this LP with the less unsympathetic tracks makes for a less problematic listen for those of a nervous disposition, especially with the swarming pvc hipped title track, which carves out some diva vocals and wah-wah squelch from an imaginary floor filler and then drowns them beneath the swell and heavy tread of the sweatiest shittiest PA club drums. The whole effect is glorious and demands high volume, stimulants, glitter, and blood as recognisable parts briefly break the surface of sound.

This trick of adding killer elements of dance music to a swamp of noise (or vice versa) is repeated and rejigged on both the ruff white Junglist mugging of �gSmoke �fN�f Mirrorz�h and the Whitehouse / Bee Gees mash-up of �gAlive.�h This song�fs squall of looped rock guitar is the most commercial cut here, lying pinned down by a pounding fuck beat and belongs on either NiN�fs Broken or in the crack fuelled leather clad comedy pantomime of Revolting Cocks.

Things become a little detached throughout the more chaotic pieces, wherein the only lightness of touch comes from the hair metal-inspired song titles. Perhaps the LP�fs finest moment is the demented live take on the soundtrack to Michael Jackson�fs screaming inner world entitled �gKing of Pop.�h If there is a Jackson sample in there it�fs so damaged, bleached black, and crushed that no copyright lawyer will ever find a big enough trace anyway. It�fs as insensitive and hard as any Hair Police sonic beating and provides as clear and as full a picture of Jackson�fs mental health as anyone will ever need to ever mosh along to."


From The NME

"Discopathology is a terrifying record, a messy assasination of some long-forgotten pumped-up house tune that in it's current incarnation deserves to become a big-room floor-filler. Immortality beckons. What a way to go."