Disquiet

Waldchengarten is the first act to get a release entirely to itself on the Noisejihad netlabel, based at noisejihad.dk/netlabel. Noisejihad releases free downloads of live concerts, and previous entries in its series have paired the likes of Zbigniew Karkowski and Fl/ex’0, and Ryfylke and Danny Kreutzfeldt. The twofers have helped because noise is often so abstract and amusical (not that all Noisejihad albums have dispensed with rhythm) that having two sounds sit side by side puts each of them in some sort of context. Fitting, thus, that Waldchengarten’s 40-minute industrial ambient sprawl gets aural space to itself, because any such pairing or context might have risked diminishing its breadth, its magnitude, its sonic omniscience. Waldchengarten’s set, recorded live on May 26 at in Aarhus C, Denmark, moves from stage to stage like stark, emotionally neutral sound-design set pieces in some wasteland of a narrative, from suffering welps of static, to alien atmospheres washed on occasion by whisps of wind, to locked-down tunnels pummeled by unseen forces. More on Waldchengarten at waldchengarten.dk.

By Marc Weidenbaum