The Rita - Macha Vs. Knife
Another review for Swedish label Ominous Recordings. Legendary pioneers of harsh-noise-wall-act The Rita is out with a two-track compilation called Macha Vs. Knife. Out on CD (Digipack!) via Ominous Records. Two huge tracks are 30 minutes in total, which leaves the listener with an hour of relentless noise-scapes for the hard of hearing! The limited CD is out on 300 copies, so it should be possible for the curious to get a copy!
The first track called Macha Magall, was a track that was originally released as a split with Goat on Deadline Recordings in 2007. The title of the track itself is also the name of the movie actress which you can see in the cover artwork. A cult actress from Belgian who was in erotic and nazi-related exploitation flicks of the 70s, mostly known for her role in La Bestia In Calore.
The Rita is mostly known for its HNW outputs but this recording is more in the vein of stretched-out harsh noise. Metallic and thundering epic noise from the bowels of a tank. Shrapnel from an exploding hand grenade rotates in the air and cuts into the flesh, kind of the same way how the noise operates from one speaker to the other. Primitive extreme low fi harsh-noise at its best. Incredible how much energy the artist has squeezed into 30+ minutes! Proto HNW in a way, imagine a TV screen showing a static snow screen. And you can almost sense, see and hear various fragments of a transmission hidden in there. Kind of an expression forcing its way out of nothingness.
The next track is called Straight Razor Vs Knife which was a track that was originally released as a split with Maim on Snip-Snap Recordings in 2005. More of an HNW noise track, but with a more aggressive ambient-noise approach. The start of the track gives the listener a sound-wise sensation of a knife getting sharpened on one of those machines. Later on the sound spurts and screams with microphone distortions, and a vinyl player playing a sand-covered record. And then later on it enters an almost digital-created soundscape, and the noisy analog sounds transform into square computerized pixels. I'm not even close to being halfway through this track! I guess at this point, the ambient-noise approach has been vaporized into the thin air.
Probably one of the most brutal 2-track albums I have heard in a long time. At times you do think that you have a pretty good idea of where the album/sound will take you, but then once in a while, it takes a sharp turn into a new direction all. Very monotone kind of sound expression, but also a very adventurous and refreshing sound on this compilation album by The Rita.
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