Best of noise recorded in Kwun Tung Noise Works during 2017. It also ends 3 years of Unit 7 residing in Hong Kong... next stop Separation Creek, Australia.
Many thanks to Eric, Hopeful, Alex, Wilmer, Christiaan, James and Emilio for playing with me during my time in Hong Kong.
Lisa from
notallrocknroll.com wrote this after hearing the album...
Okay here goes. This is from notes that I jotted down while listening, and there is the tendency to want to listen again and write these in a more legible manner, but I’ll leave it, as it’s honest and candid.
Drive 1 My emotions are running from powerful to WHAT IS THIS to sinister to Moon landing or aliens or to some outer-worldly existence—and I’m not even two minutes in. Bending time at 1:29 and an odd unexpected classical intro or something. Sinister sharps/dark notes to shatter you from your happy place. Sounds by 3:30 like outer worlds trying desperately to connect, and this is only the first track. It finishes on 5:55 and I wonder if this is intentional. It feels more like a narrative than music, and I wonder why and when you would listen to this type of ‘music’. I am compelled to listen to the end to find out what happens. My synapses are getting a full-body massage.
Drive 6 While listening to this, I was struck by how the bottom-half of the sound cloud track thread looked like a cityscape - no trees, no life, just buildings and concrete. Industrial, like the sounds I’m hearing.
[Drive 8 takes me back to the 80s man I LOVE this and its energy is boppy and positive. Finding myself moving left to right doing the head bob thing to this one, but I confess, I had to go back to this track today because I had skipped it and jumped from Drive 6 to 1607 in the notes. 3:38 mins in and I check to see how long the song is, wondering if it’s going to change much from this bop, and it begins to. Still the same driving sounds with some additional notes and instruments. It’s cute and quite different to the latter darker stuff in this album, with a bipolar frantic kind of finish.]
1607 prompted me to look up what the heck happened in that year. Google brings up a Windows anniversary edition error message that was occurring when trying to install software on a Windows XP based computer. Pretty sure it’s not this you were after. [The start is beautiful and full of emotion then apprehension. I’m listening again though following on from the second listen of Drive 8 so I DEFINITELY need to listen to this whole thing again.] Eight and a half minutes in and HOLY SHIT 36 mins 41 seconds for the next track and there is this ferocious knocking, like someone trying to get out of wherever they are, then an odd twang again brings you back into an outer worldliness more alien than human communicative sounds, then a fight. This music is taking me non a flight through the cosmos, and quite frankly, I want to come home. There is wonder and beauty but also a darkness that is unfamiliar and one that I fear I shall not return from. Still 1607 track 4, 11 minutes in. I see dark shadows and light, sunlight through those trees in Separation Creek, light that moves and dances, looking upward toward the light and beyond into the great unknown.
Then I am in a factory among the hum of machines, perhaps a visitor to an industrial production line in this alien land. 13:00 in and still on track 4. Start feeling quite agitated 22 mins by the repetition, though I was uploading an Instagram post while listening, one that was bagging Zuckerberg and it wasn’t uploading, so this may have added to my frustration. Back to the music.
27:32 starting to feel ANGRY (and write in CAPS). I’M SEEING BLACK AND WHITE AND GREY NO COLOUR ABSTRACT WITH MOVEMENT SHAPES DANCING AND MORPHING COMING SHARPER BUT NEVER SHARP ENOUGH TO DISTINGUISH WHAT THEY ARE - 33 MINS - EXCEPT TREES, YOU CAN JUST MAKE OUT THE TREES. 35:58 has a piano piece - sampled? I wonder if it is you playing. At end of 1607. Hoovering out my mind.
L’EAN 100 A great start - the announcement sounds wrongly mixed - different levels? Loud, and rough. Possibly intentional. Wherever it’s come from , it needs editing so it fits in better (but what would I know). Really interesting 1 minute in 1:34 love the ‘chorus’. This melody is very pleasing to my ears along with the childlike instrumental chiming in between. I’m wondering at this point if the album is too long with 1607 in it, but I digress. Perhaps it needs a HALF-TIME prompt to get up and stretch your head. 7:30 mins in and I am starting to feel agitated again. Reminds me of a producer named Akufen and his Horror Inc project and a track called Dans La Nuit
www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTgjAsyM4nU with all these twinkle little star tinkerings.
Duplex 3 feels like an assault on my ears. The first minute, I want that bleep to stop. Not keen on Duplex 3 - feels more disjointed than the others and still irritating me at 5:50 though the ‘melody’ got better.
Kabel sechs I’m thinking what the BLEEP and by 1:12 more of the same sound again and feeling more irritated, what is the point to this, I think to myself ha (sorry). 1:41 still going, this is too much for me. Feeling like I want to throttle somebody by 2:21 and by 3:33 it's much the same. Very annoying. Maybe I’m being too honest.
Quite like Krop E - breezed through it to Krop F without realising the first time round. I call it the Fart Song. Not sure why there’s no notes to Drop K but perhaps I breezed through that too! Again, need to listen to the album again perhaps without a break this time, if I can hack it.
LOVE Duplex 21 (drew three love hearts here so clearly a favourite) and I’ve written Feelings of Melancholy on the top of a random page which I think fits in here, then changed paper. I actually went back and listened again.
I’m not keen on the instruments in 9 and 10 [Krop F and Krop K - ahh so I did comment on it] or the ‘melody’ but Duplex 21 is ethereal and easier to listen to, more subliminal and dreamy but still repetitive, although there’s enough going on to pique my interest. Plenty of instrumental tidbits to keep me curious.
Sync is annoying again - could it be my mood, I wonder. The constant buzzing sound wavering up and down I find very agitating and the percussion sounds like a bug. The ‘melody’ (I’m writing these in single quotations because I’m not musical and I’m not sure if this is the right terminology or your intention) seems disjointed and unpleasant, like a plane going down. And I’m glad it does in the end.
lam Lam larm is an interesting start and WOW what a pleasing wind-down finish, but (I apologise) it was a relief once this track was over.
This is definitely an intriguing album and one that needs more than one listen. I didn’t want to listen again though because it would have changed my first opinions, and these are what I am sending you here. I will have a listen though as I am curious as to how my feelings change. I’m nervous though. This album is an undertaking and a half, as is listening to it. Still wondering what place this music has in the realm of music. Do you know why people would listen and what they would get out of it? Or what you would like the answers to these questions to be? Or perhaps (and I think this is part of it) you don’t care and this is about expression and art, and that’s cool too.
Thank you Michael for sharing this with me and for still being here at the end of this waffle.
released December 17, 2017
Recorded at Kwun Tung Noise Works, Hong Kong
Engineered and mixed by calmwhiner
Mastered by Antony Ryan of RedRedPaw
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