nice review of r.s.r. - black box 3" (dead sea liner).
"(...)
Of the Norwegian artist r.s.r I know very little about. Nearly nothing in fact. Apart from he comes from Norway. Which is as little as you can get without using the words ‘fuck all’ in a sentence. ‘Black Box’ is a 3 inch CDr and comprises one long 21+ minute track of ‘Noise’ music. I took Allan’s advice…taken from his website… and listened to this firstly through my headphones. Which was a cracking idea. Though my ears might argue otherwise. And my brain come to mention it. My bones aren’t exactly applauding that decision either. The wall of electronic malevolence that burst through the foam ear pieces nearly floored me. I swear I thought I had burst my ear drums. I half expected blood to be trickling out of both ears. Luckily for me they weren’t. Then I turned the volume down. Something I should have thought of prior to hitting the ‘play’ button. Like…duh!! Even with the volume lowered this piece of music was deafening in the extreme. It attacks from all angles, hitting the senses running at full pelt, and never gives up for one moment of its duration. Wave after wave after wave of throbbing high frequencies and distortion jackhammers away in a maniacal conglomeration of disturbing visceral uproar and putrid sonic overload.
The only question going through my head was when would it end? 21+ minutes later was the answer of course. I was at that stage ready to write this off as just another ‘noise’ release, good as it was, but felt that maybe I was missing something in the overall picture. I took a short break to give my quivering body time to recover. My ears were still ringing 30 minutes later. Refreshed I gave it another go. Then another. Then another. At lower volume in case you thought I was a masochistic pervert. Listening to ‘Black Box’ this way opened up dimensions that I hadn’t noticed on the first aural assault. Yes this could in fact be classified as a ‘drone’ release after all. There was this, almost hidden, eddying tune of sorts that seemed to stretch indefinitely that was playing discretely in the background which I had missed amongst the overlaid turbulent effects. Now I saw what Allan had meant. And he was right all along. I’ll even concede that at a push it could also be a piece of ‘black ambient’ music. Not the sort of everyday ‘black ambient’ music you’ll normally encounter on your travels I will add. ‘Black Box’ is therefore not, if you’ve been paying attention and actually reading this fucking review, the easiest of recordings to get into. Not on the ears anyway. The artist r.s.r has made it deliberately so. He’s laid down a piece of music that resonates resolutely with a disturbing violent intent and is very hard going in places. Which sat well with me in the end. After I had recovered from the initial shock of the piece. A fine example of ‘Noise / Drone’…and ‘Black Ambient’… music all yours for the paltry sum of £2.50. With that you can have nothing to quibble about."
- Alan Milne
Heathen Harvest
