HANDLINGNOISE

A thank you goes to the band for kindly sending me a promo copy. Even though I'm not as enthusiastic about this album as Damo, I'm glad of the opportunity to inform you of HANDLINGNOISE. The band members choose to stay anonymous. This debut album, the only release this far, consists of six tracks, most of them around 8-9 minutes in length.

'El Topo' featuring a powerful, heavy percussion sets the mood very effectively and drags the listener into a psychedelic maelstrom, an unnamed no-man's land where the line between being awake and asleep gets blurred. The final percussion-free minute of it can be best described as Dark Ambient.

Noise, metallic and experimental are other tags used, and I add Post-Rock to the list. Not the most familiar subgenre to me, I pick up bands such as MAGYAR POSSE (also from Finland), BATTLESTATIONS, SIGUR RÓS and GY!BE in hope to give some clue of the rather abstract, edgy and alienated wall-of-sound. Sure this music averagely gets much heavier and more psychedelic than the mentioned, but there's something familiar from that subgenre. I think the handling of the human voice is also pointing towards Post-Rock. They are like distant wailings, one can't really hear the words properly, which must be deliberate.

Some of the track titles are a bit amusing ('Son of Ugly Box', 'Funny Paper Faxmachine', 'God Bless the Poor Bankers'), which brings some perplexing contrast to the dark and sinister mood. On the other hand all the titles are close to the abstract meaninglessness, not willing to steer the listener's imagery very much into any specific direction. The band could have chosen not to name the tracks either, but it's always more convenient to have the titles. Recommended to those who fancy Post-Rock, hard-edged experimental instrumental rock and Dark Ambient all packed tightly together.