Jazkamer, Smegma

Nordic microsound operatives-turned-noise metallers Jazkamer (or Jazzkammer as they are also known) team up with legendary American underground pioneers Smegma and No Fun head boy Carlos Giffoni (who for this disc is listed as a member of Jazkamer) and make one unholy racket. Far from the overblown formless din this could have been, all parties do a magnificent job of keeping their more explicitly destructive tendencies to a minimum for much of the record, instead resting much of their attention on subtler forms of noise deconstruction. 'White Witch' is a brooding fug of clanking objects and oppressive motorised sounds, whilst 'Portland Swamps' is every bit the impenetrable soup the title suggests, with a few stray harmonics escaping the sonic quicksand, squeaking and whimpering away on the surface. 'Stone Eater' is a more sophisticated electronic beast, sounding a tad more in line with the noise sculpting Giffoni and the Jazzkamer boys built their reps on, but the album opens and closes on its two most incendiary jams: 'Heavy Fog' and 'Carnivorous Bog' respectively, both of which admirably ascend into swinging improv hysterics.