Restocked, This week sees the arrival of Necro Acoustic, a new 5-CD box set from Kevin Drumm.
The gold-embossed box has been compiled by Norway’s Lasse Marhaug for release on his Pica Disk imprint, and is comprised of the albums Lights Out, Malaise, Decrepit, No Edit and Organ, each housed in individual CD wallets, together with a 24-page wallet.
The laptop guitarist and all-round prodigious noise-maker is best known for his game-changing drone and dark ambient albums Sheer Hellish Miasma (Mego, 2002) and Imperial Distortion (Hospital Productions, 2008). Necro Acoustic’s contents are a little more obscure, but no less vital: Lights Out includes recordings from as far back as 1996, Malaise is licensed from a 2009 double-cassette release on Hospital, Decrepit includes previously unreleased ‘98-’99 material together with tracks from his Kitty Play split LP (2005) and a Dilmna release from 2008. ‘No Edit’, recorded in 2009, is exclusive to Necro Acoustic, and parting shot Organ is an unedited version of a work recorded by Jim O’Rourke in ‘96 for the Comedy album.

THE WIRE'S BEST OF 2010:

"A history of violence in sound, Necro Acoustic trawled through Drumm’s seemingly endless tape archive, excavating more than a decade’s mix-and-match experimentation with FX pedals, organs, guitars and whatever else came to hand. Yet the results always carry Drumm’s imprint. These are intense, sometimes brutal interrogations of tone, distortion and drone. We said: “Scrupulously free of posturing, he references desolation while deftly introducing a new world of sound through the back door to your mind.” (July/317)"