VA - 2009 - Frequency Of Decomposition Vol. 1

 

Xerxes – FOCD:0001  401.67MB FLAC

Frequency of Decomposition Vol. 1 is assembled less like a conventional compilation than a sealed laboratory in which thirteen different organisms have been left to contaminate one another. The cover announces this beautifully: botanical growth, insects, birds, human figures, reels of tape and an enormous piece of scientific machinery coexist in a strange ecology where nature, technology and recorded sound have ceased respecting their assigned categories. “Decomposition” therefore means more than decay. It describes the breakdown of distinctions between instrument and accident, composition and malfunction, living system and mechanical process. Released in 2009 by Yasutoshi Yoshida’s Xerxes label, the collection captures an international harsh-noise network that had been developing through physical mail, touring, cassette exchanges, CD-R labels, personal websites and small printed publications. The CD is not merely thirteen tracks gathered onto a disc. In its original oversized sleeve, accompanied by Japanese-language interviews and a report on American noise activity, it becomes a portable document of how information moved through the underground before social media flattened every scene into the same endless feed.

Jazkamer begins the procedure with “Ass Fucking Murder,” an interpretation of a Brainbombs composition. That is an inspired point of entry because Brainbombs and Jazkamer approach brutality from almost opposite directions. Brainbombs traditionally depend upon repetition, primitive rock structure and a deliberate atmosphere of moral ugliness; Jazkamer can treat sound itself as unstable matter, capable of suddenly changing density, velocity or physical state. Removing a Brainbombs piece from the stubborn machinery of a band and feeding it into Jazkamer’s noise vocabulary does not cleanse the original. It strips away the recognizable body and leaves the aggression wandering without its skeleton. Kakerlak’s “Nymphal Mechanics” follows with a title that could serve as an alternate description of the cover art. Kakerlak’s work has always suggested infestation as an acoustic condition: rust, granular distortion, constricted movement and the sensation of something multiplying inside a wall. The transition from Jazkamer to Kakerlak establishes the compilation’s early language. This will not be a parade of interchangeable loudness. Each artist is being asked to reveal what kind of material their noise appears to be made from.

Astro, the long-running project of Hiroshi Hasegawa, answers with “Unknown Scratch.” Hasegawa’s electronics often reach beyond industrial imagery toward something astronomical, where oscillators resemble magnetic storms, damaged transmissions and immense events observed through inadequate equipment. The word “scratch” grounds that cosmic scale in a tiny act of friction. It might be a damaged surface, a needle crossing an obstruction or a wound in the recording itself. Kazuma Kubota’s “Crushed Amplifier” then brings the signal back into a more intimate zone of pressure and emotional rupture. Kubota was still relatively early in his recorded development when this compilation appeared, but the title already identifies amplification not as a neutral delivery system but as an object that can itself be broken, compressed and made expressive. His later work would become known for an unusually sensitive form of cut-up noise, capable of making violent edits feel almost vulnerable. Heard within this sequence, his contribution occupies the point where equipment failure begins to sound autobiographical.

Linekraft’s “Devil Smoke” supplies the compilation with a heavier industrial body. Masahiko Okubo’s project is associated with metal percussion, severe programmed structures and the physical vocabulary of factories, militarization and historical machinery. Linekraft does not merely imitate industrial sound; it treats industry as a system through which human beings organize violence, memory and obedience. “Devil Smoke” feels like a particularly condensed title for that approach, joining combustion with superstition, material production with an invisible contaminant. Azoikum’s accurately timed “4 Minute Psychosis” follows as both a promise and a formal boundary. Psychosis here is not presented as an expansive psychedelic voyage. It has been measured, packaged and allotted four minutes, suggesting that even psychic collapse can become an engineered product. The first half of the compilation repeatedly performs this trick: chaotic sound is placed inside extremely deliberate containers. Track lengths, sequencing, titles and physical packaging do not tame the noise, but they give its instability a sharply defined frame.

PCRV’s “Glencoe” shifts the geographical and emotional atmosphere. Matt Taggart’s PCRV emerged from the American cassette and mail-art continuum, using electronics, contact-based sounds and rapid improvisational decisions to create noise that often seems to think while it is happening. The title “Glencoe” is unusually open compared with the bodily violence, machinery and psychosis surrounding it. It may signify a location, a memory or simply a word carrying private weight. That ambiguity gives the collection a useful pocket of distance. Thirdorgan’s “The People Who Own the Dark” immediately fills that space again. Akihiro Shimizu has been producing noise since the beginning of the 1990s, and Thirdorgan belongs to a Japanese tradition in which density can become a form of ecstatic excess rather than mere confrontation. The title introduces social power into the darkness. Darkness is not empty, natural or democratically shared; somebody owns it. Noise becomes a method of entering territory whose boundaries and landlords remain unseen.

Defektro’s “Horizontal Blue” is one of the compilation’s most intriguing conceptual turns. Founded by Hirofumi Uchino, Defektro has long used handmade machines, mechanical devices, sonic weapons and junk constructions, allowing the equipment to behave as sculptural performers rather than obedient tools. “Horizontal Blue” suggests a line, field or atmospheric band rather than a collision. Coming after Thirdorgan, it opens the compilation outward. The sequence now begins moving away from concentrated harsh noise and toward stranger hybrids. This is where the curatorial intelligence of Frequency of Decomposition becomes clearest. A less thoughtful noise compilation might try to maintain maximum impact until the final second, producing an hour of diminishing returns. Yoshida instead allows the disc to decompose its own initial premise. The shared harsh-noise language established at the beginning gradually breaks apart, exposing voices, spiritual imagery, personal memory and eccentric electronic composition underneath.

Venus In Vergo’s “The One Path--Is The Infinite Light” is the decisive rupture. Sumihisa Arima’s electronics support lyrics and vocals by Reiko A, bringing the human voice into a collection that has largely treated humanity as something submerged beneath circuitry. Even the title changes the philosophical temperature. After murder, infestation, crushed amplification, devil smoke, psychosis and darkness, an infinite light appears. It would be too simple to call this relief. The spiritual vocabulary is so absolute that it becomes uncanny, particularly when surrounded by artists who distrust stable meanings. The track proposes transcendence while the compilation’s structure quietly asks what transcendence sounds like after machinery has dismantled nearly every familiar musical sign. Rather than weakening the harsher material, this contrast reveals how narrow the standard definition of extremity can become. A whisper, declaration or devotional gesture may be more destabilizing than another wall of distortion when it arrives in the correct place.

Government Alpha’s “Sight Seeing In 1994” brings the curator himself into the sequence, but the title looks backward rather than claiming the present. Government Alpha began in the early 1990s, so 1994 belongs near the project’s formative period. “Sightseeing” is a strangely casual phrase for retrospection, suggesting movement through one’s own past as though it had become a foreign city. Noise is particularly suited to this kind of memory because it does not preserve events cleanly. It retains pressure, texture, interruption and emotional voltage, the parts of experience that often survive after chronology has dissolved. S.Isabella’s “Quotidian Queasiness,” produced and mixed by Yoshida, then reduces disturbance to an everyday condition. “Quotidian” means daily, ordinary and recurring. Queasiness is no longer a dramatic crisis but the background sensation of normal life. The compilation closes with pheromonsterDISK’s wonderfully ambiguous “Henry_OK?” Instead of a grand conclusion, it leaves a message hanging in the air. Who is Henry? What happened? Is “OK” reassurance, a technical status or a worried question sent to someone who has stopped responding? After so much sonic certainty, the final punctuation is doubt.

What makes Frequency of Decomposition Vol. 1 valuable is the way it preserves noise as a conversation rather than a genre checklist. Norway, Japan, Germany, Australia and the United States are connected here not by uniform aesthetics but by a common willingness to treat sound as physical evidence. Some contributions grind machinery against the listener; others resemble nervous systems, damaged communications, private rituals or contaminated memories. There are moments in the central harsh section where the artists’ vocabularies nearly merge, but even that temporary blur is informative. It demonstrates how international underground networks can develop a shared language, then shows individual personalities escaping from it again. The physical fanzine and interview material were therefore not decorative bonuses. They belonged to the same process as the audio, extending the compilation through words, reports, correspondence and scene documentation. Anyone who owns the complete package, remembers ordering it directly from Xerxes or knows more about the sessions and the mysterious final pieces is invited to add that knowledge. A compilation like this was created by a network, and its history is best preserved by allowing that network to keep speaking.