41.

Aufgehoben
Messidor
(Holy Mountain, 2006)

Aufgehoben - the name alone insights thoughts of discordance. And oh, discordant this is. Along with John Wiese’s Soft Punk, Messidor is one of the most incredible patches of dissonance to grace this green earth. I mean these guys are berserk. Messidor is a mechanical beast of, often times, unreasonably punishing proportions. With its grinding, percussive purr, its concrete destroying snarl and all the moments of all-out ballistic assault, Aufgehoben's is the most terrorizing album on this list. However, this isn’t horror music. New jazz for the post post rock era.

-Thistle

Aufgehoben - Khora

Aufgehoben
Khora
(06.2008, Holy Mountain)
Verdict = Pure sonic violence

There is pretty much no end to the wildly invented expletives that played through my head as astounded exclamations while listening to Aufgehoben’s latest piece of complete aural destruction, Khora. I mean, there are some pretty messed up, ridiculously extreme noise records being churned out nowadays, but let me assure you that no one holds a candle to the calculated, grizzled, muscular audio behemoth that lies in the wake of the UK’s Aufgehoben. I am not a regular listener to recordings with the potential of permanent physical damage, both hearing and otherwise, but I have definitely tested the waters with more than a few in the realms of doom, blackness, hardcore, and analog feedback alike and despite the cacophonous depths to which many have mined, Aufgehoben are most certainly the undisputed champions of brutality in sound. 2006’s Messidor was proof enough of that. Khora, Messidor’s “sister” album, is something of a an uncompromised completion of the perfections rendered by its predecessor. Where Messidor spent contained its beats within caged time frames for concentrated carnage, Khora proceeds to let its beast loose, but a little bit more on that in a moment. Khora is separated into four tracks. The opener, “Innocence Oblivion Contempt,” is probably the most concise piece of ferociousness that most people will likely hear in their whole lives. Just over four minutes in length, the track hurdles forth with hellacious guitar squalor and electronic deconstruction pampered with deafening dual drumming. It is a masterpiece in noise and an uncertain mission statement in its potentials. The track flows into “Annex Organon” and “A Bastard Reasoning,” three and ten minutes in length respectively. The first delineates into a swirl of mic’d oddities (shopping cart, bricks) while the second, though still as gruesome as you might expect, shows the largest amount of restraint and minimalism amongst they tracks. The final track, “Jederfursich,” is when the beasts are let loose. Nearing 27 minutes, the track is a single, unedited take of pure, destruction and utter chaos. It is a fairly jaw dropping experience. Taking every ounce of energy imaginable, the band members dive into the piece with unrelenting energy. To try and dissect it would be like attempting to disassemble the metal and limbs tangled together in a 1,000 car pileup. I won’t attempt it here; just recognize that it needs to be heard to be believed. The reason that I find Aufgehoben so attractive, despite its obvious alienating, repellent qualities, has something to do with their method and the heightened air of their recordings. On Khora, you won’t find the more common, uninspiring touchstones of unrelenting, pedal bent feedback or caustic, wretched screaming (no vocals here whatsoever). Aufgehoben are able to create an apocalypse without cheap tricks. Khora presents dignified noise splattered with the purity of jazz and punk and rock. No one ever asked for such a thing, but thank goodness to Aufgehoben for providing – the gold standard of anything that can be considered loud.

-Mr. Thistle

Listen to clips of Khora on Boomkat

Aufgehoben - Messidor

Aufgehoben
Messidor
(2006, Holy Mountain)
9.0/10.0

Let me (hopefully) be the first to introduce you to the most violently abrasive noise album of 2006. Yeah, I’m aware that 2006 saw the release of Wolf Eye’s Human Animal, Yellow Swans’ Psychic Secession and even Prurient’s soul destroying Pleasure Ground. Nevertheless, Aufgehoben’s Messidor is the rightful king of them all. Clearly, “noise” can be a divisive topic; well, lets face it, noise can be a repellent topic at best. It is not even a point of possible conversation for most. I don’t tote these statements as a pretension because I share some of the sentiments held by its detractors. However, I also find that some of this so called noise is, in fact, genius. A portion of this movement is the embodiment and natural progression of the true punk/hardcore spirit of old that has all but fizzled into commercial stagnancy. Another part is all geek, harboring the crème de la crème of musical scientists. If you will allow me to be overly and unnecessarily analytical: Noise, as a genre label (and I am aware of the stigma of labeling genres of music, so bear with me), or avant-garde music as a whole, walks a thin line between intellectuality and the most intense ignorance; between the positively inspiring and the absolutely degrading. It’s a razors edge and you are either on it or you aren’t. The trouble is, as a rule, the genre is so heavily washed in reverb and distortion that it can be quite a task to sort through the legitimate artistry and the illegitimate, obnoxious crap. By now it has to be unavoidably clear that I, Mr. Thistle (my obvious birth name, first and last), has a bit of a sweet tooth for the unconventional. It is with this sweet tooth that I would like to humbly assert that Aufgehoben’s Messidor is in fact a work of genius proportions. Coupling both the spirit of a punk/hardcore revolution and the intellect of the most precisely built, artistic audio composition, Messidor drives its ethic, like screws, into your very bones. Aufgehoben’s noise devastation also manages to be incredibly respectable and refreshing by avoiding the now cheap hallmark of screaming through distorted mics that each of the aforementioned bands seems to fall back on. My personal problem with noise music can often be traced back to this method of distorted screaming. While I don’t perceive myself as particularly offendable, this process often leaves me with a more demonic tone than I casually prefer. It turns the composition into shock art which has little relevance in my arena of appreciation. On the other hand, Aufgehoben’s jazzy Sightings via Merzbow attack comes as a robust explosion, making its contemporaries look exceptionally weak in comparison without using any vocals. In fact, Aufgehoben has actual live drumming with the group priding itself on not using electronic processes to make the serious bleating on their records. Initially they went by the name Aufgehoben No Process just for clarification. Messidor is war music surging and softening in the progress of its battles. An absolute statement for the consumers of noise as a genre. If you are reading this line you have completed the longest review that will ever grace these pages and importantly so.

-Mr. Thistle

Aufgehoben – Coanima