split by ORiFiCE / EXEDO

released August 18, 2013

Two full-size transparent CDs, yet only the 3 inches in the centre are playable – their special design enhances the graphic opulence of this series, where collaborations of two artists each come in packages with original drawings by Fabian Otto. The first release confronts different takes on noise by ORiFiCE and Exedo.

If noise is the other of music, then ORiFiCE plays out their contrast to full effect: each of the first three pieces here starts with lush, krautrock/ambient-style synth chords, only to be superseded more or less completely by noise textures far from the all-out hiss and distortion of HNW practitioners. Instead, these “noises” have a grainy, textural quality, they sound like pebbles being rubbed against each other or objects bursting in a fire. The fact that they work together with the more traditionally musical aspects of the tracks only highlights their beauty. In the fourth and final piece by ORiFiCE, though, we hear the harsher side of the noise music spectrum. Exedo’s reworking of ORiFiCE’s material magnifies the pebbles into a landslide, and the bucolic chords become the drones and hissing of a welding factory. Contrasting with this are deceptively quiet, almost silent passages. Gradually, rhythmic loops emerge and quasi-harmonic drones come to the fore, only to be interrupted by stabs of almost-white noise. And out of the final silence rises an eerie little melody, as if somebody was whistling at a gravesite. If this is noise, then it’s epic, cinematic, Technicolor noise of the highest order.