This album is sick and that’s it. The disc that surpasses many noise and japanoise works in terms of intensity and weirdness and it’s no surprise that this release was one of the most listened discs for quite some time. Both musicians, despite the fact that they are rather active in performing live and plays noise for not so few years (especially this fits when talking about Kazumoto Endo), their discography is not that rich. Two long tracks with the total playing time of almost 45 minutes are in this disc, release by Phage Tapes. Album starts from studio recording of Switches and Knobs. That’s more than 25 minutes of absolutely cut and torn apart noise attack. It’s chaos that distorts your brains and ears. Collage of sounds where every tiniest picture of noise is separated from others by a pause of silence, lasting for several milliseconds. This is the record that you cannot simply enjoy for the brains cannot perceive a single short insane moment of sounds when they are attacked by yet another wave of noises. These waves lead you astray and disturbs through the whole disc, but at the same time it transmits huge amount of information and disc not only does not become boring, but every listening session becomes new test for your mind and imagination. The second part of the disc consists of slightly shorter live record of Switches and Knobs. The sound is dirtier and it’s for good. Seconds of silence are disturbed by screaming of the crowd and seconds of noise are at the first glance identical to the studio recording. Contact microphones, feedbacks, manipulations of noise generators and effects that lead you to more and more severe migraine. Anyways, all these short bursts of madness are joined with not audible, but clearly felt joint of control – noise does not become thin and every sound strikes where it supposed to. This is perhaps one of the main reasons why this disc is one of the heaviest and most interesting works that I’ve got to know recently in noise. Violent, brutal, hardly foreseen and powerful Japanese harsh noise. I’m glad that Phage Tapes released in conditionally big edition so that everyone who wishes to live through this album would have a chance. Truly recommended gem.

Format: CD
Released: 2011
Label: Phage Tapes
Edition: 500