Nash Kontroll: Your Left Hand Just Exploded
CD - Ideal Recordings, 2005 - Ideal027

Reviews:

NASH KONTROLL - YOUR LEFT HAND JUST EXPLODED (CD by Ideal Recordings)
Never heard of Nash Kontroll? Neither did I, but flipping the CD box will learn you that this a trio of Dror Feiler, Mats Gustafsson and noise loverboy Lasse Marhaug. He's the most well-known bloke, but the other two have a history of their own. Dror Feiler is a well-known and controversial artist and a saxophone player with a love of volume. Mats Gustafsson (also from Sweden, and not Norway as the presence of Marhaug may suggest) plays also flute and saxophones. The recordings here were
made by Swedish radio and by god, do they really broadcast that? Because the three tracks carved into this CD is one hell of a noise party, certainly the first half of the CD, with at the central control, Marhaug operating his laptop, electronics and broken guitar and as his sparring partners two guys blowing their lungs out. It is easy to see a direct link between Nash Kontroll and Borbetomagus, but the latter is
even a few steps away from Nash Kontroll, as the Scandinavian counter part also knows how to play a soft piece, such as the ending of the title track. Here things go down, way down and in the third track, the three play even melancholiac tunes. Quite a CD that would blow you away - literally. A fine range from noise to more obscured moments - all created in the world of improvisation. And if I understood correctly Nash Kontroll will be a band, not an one-off project. (Frans de Waard)

NASH KONTROLL - YOUR LEFT HAND JUST EXPLODED (CD by Ideal Recordings)

Nash Kontroll is a fearsome new project involving Norwegian master noisenik Lasse Marhaug and Swedish reedsmen Mats Gustafsson and Dror Feiler. Though mainly produced by cracked electronics and computers, the power of their sound recalls that of Borbetomagus at their most uncompromising and rivals it for sheer brute force.Feiler is a commited proselyte for the new noise avant garde, relishing the political potential of sonic chaos to drive the listener beyond mere contemplation and onwards towards action. Yet he also has an interest in how chaos can be (at least partly) mapped by a matrix of causes and effects, and thus always contains a kernel of order. This is apparent on his and his collegues' work throughout the album, which was improvised for a radio session in 2004. The three tracks are certainly noisy, but exist on a knife-edge between pure logic and total confusion. Moments of apparent randomness gradually shape themselves into passages of steely purpose, such as the title track's calmly measured sax coda, which emerges like a shaft of light from the preceding section's vortex of deep, grinding distortion.They adopt a different, less episodic approach for the closing "Passport To Pork". A masterly study in sustained tension, it pits a low-end electronic growl against the chattering click-clack of Gustafsson's sax valves, plucked guitar and occasional gobbets of distortion, before building to a terrifying climax of hyperventilated breath and tinnitus-inducing feedback squeals. Nash Kontroll know how to maintain order, but they also understand just when the time has come to let go. (-Keith Moliné, The Wire, Issue 264, february 2006.)

NASH KONTROLL - YOUR LEFT HAND JUST EXPLODED (CD by Ideal Recordings)

The title suggests the imaginary requiem a drill sergeant gives for a hopeless recruit’s lost appendage after the latter has once again mishandled grenade-throwing practice. The recruit, stupefied and humbled, can only try to wrap his feeble imagination onto the messy mass of tendons evoked by his superior. This collaboration between Swedish reedsmen Mats Gustafsson and Dror Feiler and Norwegian noise maestro Lasse Marhaug will certainly leave you stupefied and dumbfounded, but the threat in this music is definitely not a priori. On Your Left Hand Just Exploded, the trio stalks you with a predatory patience, licking its lips with a king-of –the-beasts confidence. The ferocious, flesh-rending pounce you anticipate never comes. Instead the three just stroke your head with their massive paws, step on your tail and occasionally let you run free. You will not, however, escape.

The three tracks stretch for over fifty minutes, they get progressively longer and more focused, more minimal. Album opener “In the presence of fuckin God…We are all the same” is the shortest here, but also the most schizophrenic. The piece moves in jagged, staccato hunks. The stereo space gets cluttered with sprays of static, stuttering digital disturbance, prowling shreds of low end, strangulated sine waves, the density compressing the raw sonic resources into an unstable, underground mixture. The three are like newly mutated super-heroes (or villains if you wish), fresh from the accidental nuclear explosion, testing out their new powers.

They find their groove on the twenty-minute title bomb, as they now capture, hold and work their shapes over until they become diamond-hard structures. Feiler and Gustafsson’s horns eventually enter, and they attack Marhaug’s convulsions and distortions with thick, shear smears. The friction produces so much heat that soon the three voices are smelted into brief peaks of shrill harmony. A two-pronged clatter of mechanical chugging emerges halfway, and it shapes their extemporizations until they near the close, when Feiler and Gustafsson almost give way to actual melodies. But they don’t, and a hypnotic drone materializes then dissipates.

”Passport to Pork” begins with a before-the-storm rumble of thunder rolling across the mountains, and is soon joined by a near absurd sweep of woodwinds. The rumble morphs into a sleeping lion’s purring breath, a tactile growl, alive and electrical. The giant’s sleep is threatened by sudden jolts of radio static and a diabolical laughing scribble that teases one like the tick of a time bomb. It’s here that the three most clearly excel, as they play not with each other, but off each other and against each other – anything but polite dialogue. This is provocation. This is exhortation. This is the apocalyptic tension of the nuclear endgame played out in audio form.

This is not only one of the best noise records I’ve yet heard, it’s among the best improv and free jazz recordings, because it sits at the swirling vortex into which all three approaches implode, and Marhaug, Gustafsson and Feiler harness the fallout with absolute mastery - and because they probably don’t give a shit about such pea-brained pigeonholes in the first place. (Matthew Wuethrich, www.dustedmagazine.com)