V/A - Popular Music For Popular People

"Lots o' Noise by plenty o' folk." No matter how quietly you listen to it, it's loud and abrasive. Then again, that's the point. That's how most music on the Gameboy Records catalogue sounds. This compilations is a good show of some of the bigger names in the noise underground (excluding stiff like the Boredoms and Merzbow. This also highlights some lesser known stuff like DJ Smallcock and Dan Bodah. Government Alpha's "A Hollow Tree" sets the stage for some major noise mess-about, as it is constructed of warped melodies backed by a loud "channel one" style crashing. This song is absolutely crazy. Good ol' Japanese noise. Then comes Cock ESP's powerful "In Need of Your Love (For Al)." This "love song", with screechy brass (?) instruments and old teen-flick samples, is definitely worthy of the title "awesome". Next comes Bob Marinelli's musical mess "With Standing." This is different from the others because instead of a solid wall of noise, this has constantly changing and in-and-outing noise. Then comes big-wigs Spastic Colon's "Dance of Diverticulum." With a haunting, brassy background and a high-pitched tone in the foreground, or is it the other way around? Then comes Contamination Diet's "Beryllium Exposure," which sounds almost like a train (similar to XTSW's "Bridge"). Then Lockweld's "What Have We Accomplished?" which is a short, noisy blast of fun. Then comes DJ Smallcock, who uses field noises and puts them together to create some happy-go-lucky fun in a world of noise that's seemingly always full of hatred and blackness (although occasionally not). Could he be the next Cock ESP? After that are wonderful efforts from MSBR, Noumena, Goat, Fruehauf, Sodium, Dan Bodah and John Weise. Personally, I really like Noumena's guitar-throbbing effort and Sodium's short but sweet scream-bird-clarinet-noise-fest. Dan Bodah's staticy, crunchy song is good, too. And so are the others. Mmmm… noise.

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