Just last week we mourned the passing of the seminal experimental guitarist Glenn Branca, the link between the anarchic orthodox no-wave fascinated by free-jazz and the noise rock of the’ 80s, with is revolutionary approach in combining the guitar noise of punk to the avant-garde minimalism, mentor of Lee Ranaldo, guitarist in his debut album “Ascension” and Thurston Moore, founders of that will become the noise rock band by definition Sonic Youth.
Precisely to this guitar noise legacy, rooted also in DIY punk and hardcore, relate London 3-piece Camp X-Ray [CXR], fresh from releasing their debut 7-track tape “Hard Time Killin Floor Blues” via Blank Editions.
By still mentioning Teenage Jesus & The Jerks, Arab On Radar, Psychic TV, Rosa Yemen, Siri Hustvedt, This Heat, Ludwig Wittgenstein amongst their influences, I’ll personally add Butthole Surfers and Big Black too, their debut fully displays the band’s minimalistic guitar driven approach made of complex repetitive, sometime fractured, rhythms, atonality and contrasts, edges and tensions, crafting a beautifully dynamic and texturally intense bursts of excruciating and visceral, hardcore hugging, noisy dissonant punk with glimpses of pure agonizing beauty behind walls of noise.
“Red Hot Poker”, the more direct and urgent of the lot, is an evocative, psychosis-inducing ritual of relentlessly raucous, driving noise punk with a background of thunderous drum hits, heavily distorted bass tones and abrasive and churning guitar riffs, the voice, weaving through and above the ominous and menacing atmosphere, is eerie and icy as it is harrowing and possessed, laced with sheer torture and frustrated agony for desires that seem out of his control and nobody share.
A darkly catharctic, emotional noise that perfectly embodies the deep sense of anger and frustration from these troubled times.
Keep up with Camp X-Ray [CXR] :
CXR by Natasha Rukavishnikova
