[mn018]
Aluminum Noise
Outnumbered And Fatigued: Romantic Music
- She Had Hair Like Wires, Nerves Like Wires (theme from fatigue)
- The Great Divide
- People of the Volcano [ mp3 excerpt ]
- Secret Temple [ full-length mp3 ]
- My One Unchanged Belief [ mp3 excerpt ]
- Theirs Were Dreams Like Any Other Dreams (insane factory; theme from outnumbered)
- Swamp Ambient [ mp3 excerpt ]
- Sleep: The Small Death
Total time: 68:56 min
Format: CD-R, jewel case, full-color artwork by James Keeler (Wilt), 100 copies
Release date: 2003
Price: 9 €
Founder of the Sacred Noise label that first exposed us to Magwheels and Cold Electric Fire, Jason Crumer has a number of projects of his own that are not to be ignored. Despite no longer being active, Aluminum Noise remains one of the key ones in terms of evocative and multi-faceted noise, and this collection of tracks from 2001-2002 is most likely the last we'll hear from this sonic incarnation.
More than anything, Outnumbered and Fatigued is a personal journey through sound, whetever lush, lo-fi or openly noisy. Meet the People of the Volcano, contemplate their Secret Temple, face your wandering dreams and nightmares in aural swamps, and then finally stumble down for the Small Death. As the last murmurs gradually fade like the colors on a old photograph, time has only left two things for us : memories and emotions.
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Reviews
Industrial.org (by moron, January 06, 2004)
Aluminum Noise is a name I have seen bandied about but paradoxically the fellow behind it Jason Crumer is more familiar to me. Perhaps that is partially due to the fact that this is a post humous release of a dead project or just my apparent case Alzheimer's. Either way, this gentle downward sloped breeze of darkish ambient and noise is as good a Dear John letter as any.
The liner notes state that the instrumentation consists solely of cassette based portable and multi-tracker with late stage augmentation via Protools and Sound Edit. Sonically that's not surprising since the sandy edges left in the frequency spectrum from tape artefacts are still evident but the majority of the time enough air holes are punched through the murk by the digital post production to allow some light to escape.
Found sounds are stated as the main ingredient which could mean one of two things: Jason recorded all his fave noise records using his walkman or (much more likely) a lot of time was spent abusing plugins, pitch effects and looping during the software stage. Regardless of the true origins, the result is a mix of proto-MagWheels thronging, harsh noise a la some Legion Sudan fisticuffs and dreamy dark ambient somewhere between Wilt and Aidan Baker in a bitter mood. Mastering is a tiny bit uneven so when the hard clipping crashes the party those wearing headphones might find their head severed at the cochlea. In general though the recording would make it unmolested through most stereo check points.
Of the tracks here, I definitely think that the brasher and calmest extremes work best. "My One Unchanged Belief" leaves dew on your eyelids it is so sweet and lush, satisfyingly emotive without leaving you feeling like a little girl reading a horsey book. On the knock 'em down front "Volcano People" gets the wire brush out and rams it repeatedly into the available orifices of an unnamed choir, the mix of streaming distortion and angelic chants laying conflicted thoughts on top of each other to see what results (noise ALWAYS wins).
I enjoyed this Mechanoise Labs release and while I won't be losing sleep over it, I do have to wonder whether another iteration from Aluminum Noise would have found the true sweet spot between abrasion and salve. This recording seems be one of lurking promise and warming engines but regardless, this is a decent swan song for the DIY effort and a worthwhile time investment hearing it through to completion.
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Crucial Blast Webstore (April 05, 2006)
ALUMINUM NOISE is Jason Crumer, also of Southern crust-grinders FACEDOWNINSHIT and cult label Sacred Noise, here embarking on an isolationist drone/noise/dark ambient wave that moves between superb, Aural Hypnox-style ritual drones, and BROOTAL tempests of distortion swarm, haunted with angelic choir voices or roof-caving power noise loops. This is apparently the last recorded work from ALUMINUM NOISE, created between 2001-2002, but is by far the best stuff we've ever heard from Crumer. Layers of menacing whirr and distant industrial clatter blend together, creating extremely evocative and unsettling (actually, downright frightening) sound fields that violently erupt into crushing rhythmic harsh noise jams. Excellent. [...]
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