Disquiet

To paraphrase Pavement, “Music scene is crazy/ Netlabels start up each and every day/ I saw another one just the other day/ A special new netlabel.” Yes, there’s a new netlabel, and it’s something of an instant favorite. Noisejihad Live!, at noisejihad.dk/netlabel, posts live recordings of noise acts (no surprise there), and it’s already released three sets this year: Massaccesi and Pol Mod Pol; Ryfylke and Danny KreutzFeldt; and Mag Necro and Ultimate Combat Noise. The tracks are lengthy and sizable (one is nearly an hour, at 50 megabytes), and it’ll take a while to work through ‘em, but it doesn’t hurt to start off with the most recent: Kyoto, Japan-based Mag Necro‘s half-hour guitar performance, a suffering soundscape of improvisatory edgework. Drenched in gloom, it’s a fine example of the axiom that the difference between noise and ambient music is often just a matter of where you set the volume level.

By Marc Weidenbaum