Nac/Hut Report - Transmisja Z Przesilenia (Chrunchy Human Children)

Sometimes, massive changes of direction can be a good thing.  However, I'm always glad to hear a new Nac/Hut Report album and find that they've resisted it.  Frankly this duo, based in Poland, create such astonishing things together it's always refreshing to find that a new collection of their stuff consists of hammering out a new set of jarring, challenging noises from pretty much the same template.

As usual, the release comes via the Warsaw cooperative Crunchy Human Children and, as you might have guessed from my preliminary comments, it doesn't disappoint.  I played a track from the album in my Dandelion Radio show last month and this month I'm playing 'Plytki Lek'. 

The album is available to buy on cassette or as NYP download here.

Nac/Hut Report - Schism No Symmetry

I was, I admit, getting a bit fidgety regarding the lack of a follow-up to Nac/Hut Report's last album, the majestic Angel-Like Contraction Reverse, which saw the light of day more than two years ago.

Not that two years between albums is an especially long period of time, but that previous collection had offered so many musical ideas such a rich texture beneath its chaotic surface, that you knew there had to be loads more where it came from.  So, when nothing new arrived, I began to worry they'd called it a day.

I needn't have fretted.  Not only were this Polish/Italian duo still alive and kicking, this second collection, when it arrived recently, proved itself a worthy successor.  Frankly it's been well worth the wait, those unexplored possibilities of its predecessor having been mined so brilliantly the gap in between now seems, in retrospect, almost illusory.

I'm not going to get all Greil Marcus on you and talk about the collection stopping time or anything like that, largely because Marcus was always the only person who could get away with such observations without disappearing up his own arse.  I'll merely comment that there are times when you want a band to go somewhere different and times where you want more of what they've given you before. The latter is what I wanted from Nac/Hut report and they've delivered brilliantly.

You know that the moment opening track 'Ah Ah East' grinds into its stride.  I'm featuring it in my Dandelion Radio show this month, an easy choice because it's such a prime example of what makes Nac/Hut Report so great: Brigitte Roussel's sublime atmospheric vocals underpinned by a churning musical dissonance that so many attempt but fail to produce anything like as well.

If anything, there's an ever greater assurance evident in their work than the last time we heard from them.  Since then Roussel has released an excellent solo collection and sounds even more unfazed by the possibility of lazy Nico comparisons, as indeed she should be, striding confidently out into the open on tracks like 'Jewish Son' to confront whatever the hell anyone else wants to make of what she does, and win.  Musical partner Li/ese/Li effortlessly steps up to the same plate, the creaking, haunted soundscapes on tunes like 'Wolf the Saint' offering a vibrant and evocative accompaniment. 

 It's a musical triumph, again, and you can get it as download or CD from their bandcamp site here. 

Best Albums of 2013: 8. Nac/Hut Report

8.  Angel-Like Contraction Reverse - Nac/Hut Report (Double Hallucinative)

Stunning release from this Polish/Italian duo who take guitars, loops and various other noises and channel them brilliantly into nine raucous yet strangely melodic tracks.  Overlaid with Brigitte Roussel's bewitching vocals, each raw slab of noise mutates into something discernible as a song, the layers of meticulously placed sound ensuring you're not easily able to identify where it ends and a dark sonic wilderness begins.  

As I suggested when I reviewed it earlier this year, this isn't something you can put on and do the ironing too - unless you want to run the risk of self-mutilation.  It demands your attention: give it.

Get it here.  

Nac/Hut Report - Angel-like Contraction Reverse

I hope the day never comes when I get tired of the feeling I get when an unsolicited release pops up in my inbox and I realise, within seconds, that it contains music that will keep me company for the rest of my life.

The feeling occurred recently when the Polish underground label Double Hallucinative sent me a copy of the new album by Polish-Italian duo Nac/Hut Report.  Entitled Angel-like Contraction Reverse, even on first listen it quickly joined the pack of albums vying for the title of my favourite release of the moment.

There's a lot to be said for noise and the mere act of simply hearing an unholy racket is often enough to send me running to the toilet in excitement, but what we have here far exceeds mere bladder-loosening.  Beneath the caustic cacophony that provides the album's surface noise bleeds an emotional heart where one half of the duo - Brigitte Roussel, a visual artist by trade - fights back with gorgeous, intensely evocative vocals that bounce off the brick wall of sound laid over them.

The duo's other half is outsider musician Li/ese/Li and, between them, they take inspiration from early eighties industrial bands - the influence of SPK is particularly noticeable here - along with avant-garde artists and the more left-field elements of post-punk experimentation.

A song like 'Violent Lips' - and there is a song clearly detectable within all nine pieces that make up the album - sees Brigitte's vocals bleeding through a distorted electronic pulse, while 'One Last Time' finds her melodies leaking through a fascinatingly raucous din.  It's a formula - if such meticulously brilliant sound layers can be reduced to such a simple term - that serves the album well throughout, as some fantastic sonic duel is played out before your ears.

The best thing on here?  I find myself alternating between the multi-tracked sound paranoia of '...Hears Nothing Untill He Returns' and album opener 'Junkstarrr', which has also been released as a free download single, available here.  Incidentally, the single also includes a track called 'Bright Future' - not on the album - which is easily as majestic as anything here and certainly equally worthy of your attention.  Something here will be making an appearance in my April Dandelion Radio show, but you don't have to wait that long.  Go to the Double Hallucinative site and get it for yourself.

Apparently the album took almost three years to pull together.  Its loops and dense layers of sound are certainly the result of painstaking work but no less enjoyable for all that.  As you can probably guess, this is not easy listening. Nor is it something you can stick on in the background while you do whatever you do. It demands your total attention, and if you give it that it will pay you back repeatedly.