Cut Hands - Volumes 1 and 2

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  • Since post-punk's emergence in the late '70s, the seepage of African music into industrial, noise and experimental rock has traveled a few key routes. For Einstürzende Neubauten, Test Dept, Savage Republic, 23 Skidoo and their myriad followers, a fascination with polyrhythm and tribal percussion went a long way in shaping their techno-primitive groove exploration. Equally innovative yet less propulsive, Zoviet France helped to innovate the sampling and looping of ethnomusicological field recordings as compositional elements in their eerie drones and electro-acoustic murk. Then there are those musicians whose immersion in African music is so resolute they transcend any one route. These include first-generation pioneers The Pop Group and This Heat, as well as the always evolving Ex, who appear to spend as much time actually on the continent (Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo most notably) as they do their native Netherlands. Cut Hands, the latest project from Whitehouse founder and power electronics innovator William Bennett, falls squarely into this last group. Documenting what he calls Afro-noise, Volume 1 and 2 contain the most consistently rhythmic music of his long career. The percussion found on "Shut Up And Bleed," "Ezili Freda" and the rapid-fire "Stabbers Conspiracy" is dry and clean like scrubbed bone, ultimately falling on the far side of Kollaps-era Neubauten in regards to intellectual intensity and sheer sonic force. Even the pieces built upon heavy drone—"Nzambi Ia Lufua" and "Rain Washes Away Every Thing" to name just a couple—possess an aggressive forward thrust. What's important to point out is that despite Bennett's growing interest in beat-based repetition, nothing here is terribly hypnotic, not even the marvelously atmospheric "Impassion." It's all too immediate, too awake, for such a state. As for process, it revolves around the recording, sampling and looping of Bennett's collection of African instrumentation, much of it from Ghana (Haiti, too). Like most other aspects of his artistry, this method feels born of an uncanny mix of meticulousness, austerity and the strictest of parameters. Though treatment is fundamental to numerous tracks, including several of the drone-based titles mentioned before, Bennett is judicious in his integration of power electronics tactics (feedback, white noise, static, squealing tones). Rarely, if ever, do they interfere with the evident reverence he holds for the timbres and textures unique to his instruments. Because of this, their acoustic properties aren't merely players in the music; they are the playing field itself.
  • Tracklist
      Volume 1 A1 Welcome To The Feast Of Trumpets A2 Stabbers Conspiracy A3 Rain Washes Over Chaff A4 Nzambi Ia Lufua B1 Who No Know Go Knows B2 ++++ (Four Crosses) B3 Brown-Brown B4 Shut Up And Bleed Volume 2 A1 Munkisi Munkondi A2 Impassion A3 Ezili Freda A4 Nzambi Ia Muini B1 Bia Mintatu B2 Krokodilo B3 Backlash B4 Rain Washes Over Every Thing
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