Genre: Noise / Industrial / Experimental

First of all there's the packaging. It's a CDR mounted on a bolt sandwiched between two colour-printed fold-outs, two rotary sander discs, two heavy duty washers and weighty nut to secure it in place. All round and very nice. While it's no Zoviet France LP, it's still quite an attractive way to present difficult music. Intonarumori ? The art of noise indeed, but probably pretty expensive to ship. Hell, you could use this thing as a weapon.

ODRZ are a very active Italian experimental art project that I wasn't familiar with until now. For 'Odrz07' all the music is produced using only guitars and microphones. This fact is rarely obvious throughout the eight untitled tracks as they have successfully transformed these two simple devices into a rich palette of sounds. Loops are their strong suit, whether noisy feedback sourced ones or those of the percussive variety. It's a pretty fascinating, yet noisy as hell endeavour limited to 100 copies.

The disc kicks off with what could be considered an emergency response to a particularly heinous auto accident. It sounds as if pickups and cardioid devices are being pummelled into another existence like the unmistakable sound of metal upon metal upon flesh. The rhythms recall vintage industrial music with an aura of feedback surrounding the beats as the focus shifts between pulse and noise, until they unite synchronously for a bout of amplitude modulation. And then all hell breaks loose in a storm of squealing and throbbing as if both guitar and microphone were shoved securely in the ass of some dubiously obscure foreign dignitary; a pretty harsh little number. Then a little bass, a little sandpaper and a fuck-load of distortion carry the beloved listener through the fourth track that concludes with some hot white light, like canned heat mainlined while lounging in your favourite alley. So maybe you prefer to drink your Sterno? The fifth number rocks like an instrumental Wolf Eyes track and submerges you, dear listener, into a veritable hot lava of noise while circling some tintinnabulation and otherwise metallic sounds. These ain't church bells my friend. On the sixth track we're finally treated to some discernible guitar timbre in the form of gentle string rubbings, be they by a bottleneck or the erstwhile cigarette lighter. Such aggressive caresses don't last long, however, as the proceedings get enveloped in a haze of waveform-clipping and some high-frequency dissonant loopage. It's a little inconsistent, but works in an annoying sort of way. Track seven would make a nice opener to another release or perhaps stand alone on the side of a seven-inch. Nothing new is explored but it epitomizes the general aesthetic of 'Odrz07'. It's brutal and relentless but has an impeccable attention to detail in all of it's five minutes. That is until the concluding piece shatters the glass in a brilliant and even somewhat melodic fashion. The high-end gets its overdue respect and shreds fabrics of the real and the synthetic until some phony-ass system of order caves in. Isn't this what we wanted all along? Ever been suffocated by the surf of the sea during a hurricane? Neither have I, but I imagine it might feel something like this. Forty-nine minutes of this shit and I realize I should be doing something else, so I put it on again.

This is not your everyday noise album. Each of ODRZ's projects are concept-based and seem worthy of your attention. The recording medium may not be their best outlet, but it works just fine for this disc. Do they really want to hurt you? I doubt it, but they can smoke your ass like a leftover blunt nonetheless. In a synaesthetic way, the sounds compliment the packaging quite nicely at any rate. If you're entering the noise scene as a novice, this is as good a place to start as any (you can do your homework later). If you're already comfortable with your tinnitus or are some form of noise collector scum, then pick this puppy up and make your geeky friends jealous. They'll drool. And if that's not enough you can use it to knock them unconscious.