 |
|
Iron Fist of the Sun, "Who Will Help Me Wash My Right Hand?"
While it often feels like the sun has probably set on the golden age of noise, no one seems to have told Lee Howard, as this effort sounds like the culminating masterpiece of a man who has been single-mindedly hellbent on perfecting power electronics for years.  It was time well-spent, as the album's better pieces remind me exactly why I became excited about noise in the first place, as there are few things quite as bracing as a masterfully crafted blast of gnarled brutality.  Thankfully, however, Howard does not rely solely upon force alone, wisely balancing his remarkably articulate ferocity with subtle musicality, clarity, and a highly developed understanding of space, traits which elevate this album far above just about every other recent noise release that I have encountered.
Before I heard this album, I suspect it would have been extremely difficult to convince me that one of 2013's best albums would be by a British PE guy with an unhealthy Princess Diana fixation, but Who Will Help Me Wash My Right Hand? makes quite an unambiguous case for itself.  Of course, Lee Howard is no ordinary purveyor of power electronics, as he makes immediately clear with the opening "For You I Will," which is built upon little more than an undistorted bass riff, an oscillating hum, a high-hat, and Lee's treated vocals.  Aside from the distorted vocals, the piece bears almost no resemblance to any PE that I have heard, as it is remarkably minimal and boasts a likable "rock" groove, which is probably the most un-PE thing imaginable.
Somehow it all works though, which I attribute almost entirely to Howard's unusual vocals: rather than howling about rape or serial killers, Lee sounds like a man trying to deliver a fitful monologue through a broken microphone that hopelessly clips everything he tries to say.  Buried much deeper in the mix, however, Howard's vocals seem to continue in radically different form, resembling heavily reverbed inhuman howls.  Thanks to the elegant simplicity of the stripped-down music, the strange after-images and echoes of Lee's voice are allowed to be heard and appreciated with complete clarity.  It is an impressive feat that Howard replicates once again with the following "This Dog Has No Master" with slightly different components: conveying simmering menace by moving slowly and leaving a lot of space for his ruined-sounding nuances to make their full impact.
Lee is not always quite that restrained, though, which gives the album some much-appreciated dynamic variation.  The best example of Howard's more ferocious, unhinged side is "Be Forever Green," which begins with a seemingly regressive and shout-y static-fest before it beautifully coheres into a relentless march of massive buzzes of gnarled dissonance that sounds like an unstoppable army of robots slaughtering their way though a post-apocalyptic waste-scape.  On any other album, such a piece would have unquestionably been the highlight, but Howard immediately eclipses it with the epic (and brilliant) "Saltpulse," which more or less tore my head off.
Like "Be Forever Green," "Saltpulse" begins in relatively unpromising fashion, opening with a low drone, a persistent buzzing, and obsessively repeating wobbly swells of mutant bass.  After several minutes, however, it starts to resemble Sonic Youth trying to tune up inside a working trash compactor–still not entirely promising, perhaps, but certainly unexpected. Eventually it starts to sound like everything is shorting out and the song is ending, but then a beautifully melancholy hum slowly fades in from beneath the stuttering wreckage and gradually takes control of the song.  Lee eventually takes the microphone to shout a bit, but the underlying melody transforms his howls and the surrounding crackling entropy into some kind of haunting, ravaged, and rotted elegy that stands as one of the best pieces that I have heard in a very long time.
Naturally, the closing title piece cannot help but be a disappointment after such a tour de force, but its strange 5-minute flurry of lurching swells, bleeps, and oscillating chaos is objectively not bad.  It may not be nearly as compelling and memorable as the preceding four songs, but it does not ruin the spell either, which is the most important thing: any hint of tired PE cliché would have dragged down an otherwise flawless effort.  Rarely have I heard such a perfect mixture of exacting focus, restraint, concision, and intelligence mingled with such crushing heaviness.  This is a truly great album.
Samples:
