JUSTIN K. BROADRICK/ANDY HAWKINS

SKINNER'S BLACK LABORATORIES (SPLIT CD)

 Justin K. Broadrick - Guitar Manipulations
  1/  Guitar One                                 (Broadrick)                   9.02
  2/  Guitar Two                                 (Broadrick)                   7.21
  3/  Guitar Three                               (Broadrick)                   10.45
  4/  Guitar Four/Infinite                       (Broadrick)                   13.35

 Andy Hawkins - Azonic
  5/  River Blindness                            (Hawkins)                     10.04
  6/  Nine Tails                                 (Hawkins)                     13.25

          Tracks 1-4 recorded at Avalanche, England, April-May 1995
          Tracks 5 and 6 recorded at Greenpoint Studios, Brooklyn, New York
          Tracks 5 and 6 engineered and mixed by Robert Musso
          Assistant on tracks 5 and 6: Layng Martine
          Tracks 1-4 produced by Justin K. Broadrick
          Tracks 5 and 6 produced by Bill Laswell and Andy Hawkins
          Sound editing: Guy Marc Hinant
          Mastered by Manuel Mohino at Musica Numeris, Brussels

(1-4) Justin K. Broadrick: guitar; (5,6) Andy Hawkins: guitar.

          1995 - Sub Rosa (Belgium), SR 90 (Subsonic 3) (Split CD)

Note: Bill Laswell does not play on this album.

REVIEWS :

[...] We all know Justin K. Broadrick from Godflesh (/Final/Ice/God/Techno Animal/Sweet Tooth/Napalm Death/Scorn's first album/whatever else) and so it should come as no surprise that his four tracks here tend to play to the heavy/sludgy side of things. Nice amount of dissonance and high-end shrieks and the usual tortured-guitar insanity, but the tracks here all sound like arranged samples. Not that that's a problem but the loop-iness of it can get to you after a while. "Guitar two" is probably the surprise track, being acoustic and kind of...erm...pretty. Pretty in a broadrick sense, anyways. It's not going to be competing with Nick Drake anytime soon, i think. "Guitar three" is a nice, dense path of looped guitar bits but i can never quite figure out if it's weird looping or my CD player acting up - there are some tasty, ugly noises thrown in that sound like alien CB radios being turned on and off. Last track of Justin's is "guitar four/infinite" which combines some limpid clean guitar sounds that have some kind of sweep filter on them with bass and a stark guitar sound that kind of noodles around for a while and doesn't seem to go anywhere specific, but it serves as nice background ambience... it kind of sounds like a 13 minute medley of Codeine introductions, but, well, you know. Overall, i would liken Justin's half of the record to a heavier, structured Main but with the ugliness and beauty of Godflesh thrown in.

Andy Hawkins - phew. "Azonic Halo" was a pretty amazing disc of improvisation and manipulated sound... Hawkins is able to one minute sound like he's yanking off strings with a crowbar, the next coax gentle harmonics out of it and still the next play nice, soothing, extremely distorted songs... "River blindness" combines some of the more song-like, structured stuff with some tablas (it's apparently required to use them in at least one track on each of these discs) and other percussion, and it has that fade-in/fade-out dynamic going on (bill laswell produced it, surprise). It ends in a bit of beautiful, slightly discordant drones. "Nine tails" begins with an emotive moaning guitar that rises into a piercing scream; here Hawkins does some nice tremolo-torture with lots of feedback. In fact this reminds me of the "Halo" album's noisier bits, with lots of cacophonic dives into low-end rattle and some slightly structured improv and the rare (almost-soothing) bursts of sine-wave feedback. Overall, i find myself less inclined to listen to "skinner's black laboratories" than "bass terror"; but i like both of them quite a bit.

grievous (courtesy of the Noise From the Spleen of Space website)