Disquiet

Overdose Kunst is two Japanese musicians, Takeshi.f and Ryuta.k, who are well represented by a pair of recent five-track netlabel releases. War of Kelgenetu, on Umbrella Noize (umbrellanoize.com), moves easily from brash static to light field recordings to somnolent tunefulness, the highlight being the title cut, in which drowsy piano and a loping, skipped beat support a near inaudible vocal (MP3). And Non-Form Material Machine, on Postmoderncore (postmoderncore.com), ditches the noise in favor of something more folksy but at times no less discomforting, especially the tinges of backward masking that make “Requia for Ethnic Cleansing” (MP3) a study in motion sickness; there’s some consolation in the mashed found sounds of “I Should Want to Be Alan Lomax in New Domain” (MP3). But even console cowboys get the blues, as evidenced by the guitar’n'clicktrack “Medium’s Message” (MP3).

By Marc Weidenbaum