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Killer Bug, "Beyond the Valley of the Tapes"
Kazumoto Endo is a name sometimes referred to by harsh noise artists as the man that changed noise for them. Typically displeased with how noise came across on record, Endo's work was fresh, an attempt to generate new perspectives in a genre that could seem stale. Beyond the Valley of the Tapes collects a lot of his early and out of print material in attempt to bring that same perspective to a larger audience.
Troniks/Ninth Circle Music
This double disc set from Troniks and Ninth Circle Music collects a lot of noise. The combined running time is 144 minutes and two seconds. Listening to both of these discs straight through is like asking for a migraine and then a boxing match with a bulldozer. Despite being two discs long, there are only eleven tracks on the collection, most of them running between nine and 20 or so minutes long. Just getting through the first half of the first disc can be a bit of a chore. The first three tracks are from a demo tape Endo released in 1994 and the fourth track is the first side of the Brutal Rainbow tape originally released in 1995. That series of noise is over an hour long all by itself. These tracks are definitely loud and definitely harsh, but every time I listen to them I have trouble finding whatever unique qualities others may have heard in those pieces. It isn't until the four shorter pieces start that I'm really taken by Killer Bug and what he did with noise.
The Cunt Explosion! and Your Wife Is Mine EPs were both released in 1995 and it is easy to see why they would have garnered some attention from the noise community. The tracks from those EPs that are included on this disc are short, roughly two to three minute long bursts of cluttered sounds, screams, junk being tossed around inside a metal box, and total feedback. Instead of being densely layered clouds of almost total chaos, Killer Bug's sound is more refined on these EPs, slightly easier to take in, but no less harsh for it. It's easy to think that these were more closely watched and more caringly constructed sound pieces than just freeform noise riots. Both "Masked Porno Star" and "Slaughter on the Beach" are strangely lo-fi sounding extracts of freaked out equipment buzzing and burning away in a series of rapid flashes and blazing edits. Listening to them is a lot more fun than trying to get through the first half of the disc in one sitting. I've been able to listen to these over and over with a great deal of pleasure. Though the first half of the disc is both uneven and sloppy, listening to a track here or a track there without feeling the need to associate them with anything else on the disc is nice. It at least provides a sense of movement in Endo's composition, showing exactly how he grew in the year between his demos and his earliest releases.
The second disc, with the exception of the live track, is much like the first half of the first disc. Live, Killer Bug must've been amazing. Despite the recording being slightly muffled, it's clear that Endo enjoyed throwing sucker punches at his audience. Everything from high-pitched synthesizer-like belches to unhinged screams populate his live performance. If his longer compositions had been as entertaining as his live performances were, sitting through the first fifty minutes or so of the second disc would be much less of a task and far more exciting. And this is evidently Killer Bug's first live performance. He came out strong, so I can only imagine his live material got stronger.
Regardless of whether or not all of the material on this relase is amazing or not, Killer Bug's material has its merits. "Steaming Gash," if listened to by itself, is a thrashing groan of cut up and destabilized anger punching its way through twenty minutes of sudden left turns and unexpected pitfalls. Trying to keep up with Endo's approach is fun enough, but trying to understand where it all came from is even better. It's as though Endo knew just how to open up his machines so as to make for the most insane ride of static eruptions and nose bleeds. The two EPs included in this collection are excellent slices of short, abusive noise that can't be found anywhere else. Everything else on the collection is worth hearing to some degree, but just make sure to listen to it a little bit at a time. Otherwise the whole collection can seem a little too intimidating and sometimes a little too repetitive.
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