Mittimus - Event Horizon

'Event Horizon'
Mittimus
2014

(Band Submission)

Review by Brayden Bagnall

Genre/s: Free Jazz, Free Improvisation, Noise, Avant Garde, Experimental
For Fans Of: Fushitsusha, Zu, Borbetomagus, Skullflower, Ground Zero

Mittimus are doing a lot of things right - well, at least as I'm concerned. I like jazz, I like noise and I like both of those things when they thrown together with reckless abandon and played loudly. So naturally I was drawn to this band's promise of such things and thankfully I was not let down.
Event Horizon begins like a noise album, with a lengthy, spaced out drone track before sucker punching you with full band, improvisational antics. Entanglement the second track introduces you to the highly syncopated, disjointed and oh so good band dynamic that is Mittimus - via call and response instrumentation, challenging tempo changes and tasteful post production manipulation. From there on in you're in for a veritable sonic rollercoaster, that'll see you exposed to harsh guitar drones, synth freakouts, noise rock tantrums and snide jazz outbursts. If you came into this album expecting to be able to place your finger on an exact genre by the time it's over - than you're in for a good couple of hours of head scratchingm friend-o.
Event Horizon is 18 tracks long, with more than a few tracks stretching past the five minute mark. While that may seem long, it never feels that way, due to the band's constant exploration of sound and incorporation of new musical elements. The constant change-up of styles may come of as jarring to some listeners - but honestly I find it to be rather refreshing. To see a band explore more ideas in one release than another band might explore in their entire career is pretty impressive, to say the least.

TRACKLISTING:
1. Piercing the Singularity
2. Entanglement
3. Door to the Edge
4. Dark Matters
5. Passing the Event Horizon
6. Spaghettified
7. Sagan the Father, Hawking the Sun, Tyson the Holy Ghost
8. The Only Signal that Escaped
9. Light from a Million Years Ago
10. Solar Blizzard
11. Voyager's Reply
12. Reflection on the Death of Time
13. Perpetual Flight
14. Universe Bleeding at Edges
15. The Tyranny of Physics
16. Oceans without Gravity
17. Circumstellar Disk
18. A Path Impossible to Retrace

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Little Women - DISCOGRAPHY

DISCOGRAPHY
Little Women
2007 - 2013

Review by Brayden Bagnall

Genre/s: Avant Garde, Jazzcore, Noise Rock
For Fans Of: Last Exit, Naked City, Borbetomagus, Ornette Coleman

Jazz and all it's many, many wonderful forms are often overlooked by those in search of fucked up, scary music - which is unfortunate, as the genre has spawned some of the most cacophonic, dissonant recordings in the history of music.
Case in point: Little Women.
Little Women are a jazz quartet out of Brooklyn, New York comprised of two saxophonists (alto and tenor), a guitarist and a drummer. While they may be confined to instruments typically known for jazz, Little Women's compositions include elements of punk, math rock, noise rock and more typical jazz, all translated into some sort of hellish skronk nightmare. Better yet are the tracks where the band members incorporate vocals, never before have I heard such frightening, eerie sounds escape the mouth of a human being.
 Deliberately jarring, and objectively transcendental - Little Women's music teeters precariously on the line between chaos and order, with delicate subdued passages the buffer between the chaotic, improvisations that dominate these recordings. This band gives whole new meaning to the word 'sporadic' and it seems a little offensive to use the word 'unpredictable' because somehow, I think these guys knew exactly what they were doing.
You don't have to like jazz to like this - anyone with a profound appreciation for challenging music will be able to enjoy this, and on the flip side, jazz aficionados may find an entry point into the world of noise. Either way, Little Women are a force to be reckoned with, and further proof that avant-garde music can and always  will run circles around other 'heavy' genres with their vicious, alienating and completely unrelenting compositions.

TRACKLISTING:

Teeth (2007)
1. I
2. II
3. II
4. IV
5. V
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Throat (2010)
1. I
2. II
3. III
4. IV
5.V
6. VI
7. VII
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Lung (2013)
1. Lung
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Last Exit - Köln

'Köln'
Last Exit
1986

Review By Jerry Kahale

Genre/s: Free Jazz, Experimental, Noise Music, Bebop

For Fans Of: Peter Brötzmann, Sonny Sharrock, Naked City, Albert Ayler, The Flying Luttenbachers

So my last review (not counting the band submissions) was a band called Final Exit, so i'm going to be a smartass and review Last Exit. Don't worry though its all still very noisy and destructive, and no its not the British power electronics project either (Cheers last.fm). Incase you aren't familiar already Last Exit is an experimental free jazz supergroup consisting of oddball jazz instrumentalists including saxophonist Peter Brötzmann (Machine Gun), the late drummer/vocalist Ronald Shannon Jackson (collabs with Cecil Taylor and Ornett Coleman), bass guitarist Bill Laswell (collabs with Herbie Hancock, Yoko Ono, Iggy Pop and heaps more) and the late guitarist Sonny Sharrock (collabs with Pharaoh Sanders before being his own artist and is most renowned for the Space Ghost Coast To Coast theme song). 

Do you like musical notes, well constructed harmonies and a rigid time signature? Tough titties, because even locking up wild wolves in a music store would not be anywhere near as violent and bewildering as these madmen. Last Exit is a civil war of  noisy jazz music titans to see who can fuck shit up the most. This is by no means an easy listen. There is nothing easy here, even trying to point out a particularly unique part here is an impossible task. All the musicians, even the odd bouts of vocals, are non-stop crashing into each other like a derby, only occasionally letting one person a chance to shine on its own. Its far from a wank however, even amongst this chaos it still has all the professional marksmanship of years and history of world class musicians that defied the common ground and travel on their own path in a truly honest and unique journey. It should be pointed out that they only ever did one studio album and the majority of their releases, including this one, are live albums and presumably improvised too. 

Its a shame that Last Exit is often overshadowed by the equally eccentric Naked City, who formed a little later after Last Exit and both bands were active around the late 80's/early 90's but where Naked City tends to straight up assault towards as many genres and styles as possible in a hyperactive stupor, Last Exit is drawn more to destroying all the relics of conventional musicianship in a ferocious and rebellious fury that has yet to be matched.

TRACKLISTING:
1. Hard School
2. Brain Damage
3. Taking A Beating
4. Last Call
5. Dark Heart

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