The New Blockaders

Edition of 300 copies in digipack. Re-issue of noise classic Simphonie in X Major (1989) plus Simphonie in O Minor (1991).Quoting audion magazine'  The New Blockaders certainly make one hell of a racket. Simphonie In X Major makes Whitehouse sound like minimal art! 'TNB are in a world of their own and always have been. Ripped out of the grooves and positively bleeding out of the speakers Simphonie In X Major takes Stockhausen's baby and abuses it cruelly. Once the bloody and battered carcass has been discarded the entrails are assembled into something that takes on a life of its own. Sound that has pain scratched into its flesh with nails. Music From The Empty Quarter  Simphonie In X Major’s two movements push the boundaries of TNB’s debut, Changez Les Blockeurs to its logical limit. It’s Changez… with it’s testicles twisted into an uncomfortable position. The two movements contain all that is good in the world of TNB and by extension the Noise world at large, an aural delight that takes in massive amounts of junk-scrape, buckets of nails, cutlery wars, medieval catapults being drawn taught, all of it harnessed into a framework of surroundsound tumult. Idwal Fisher  Simphonie In X Major begins with huge industrial blasts and moves through phases of machinery destroying itself. TNB take the symphony into the woods and pound it until it stops speaking its language of reconciliation and resolution. This rejection of narrative is crucial in returning us to the question of influence - which can no longer be heard in terms of inheritance but must be seen as agonistic and retrospective. Not only this, but it is undone - not refused, the spurious belief in individual genius unconnected to history stripped back. Organized Sound  Simphonie In X Major uses a sarcastic Dadaist title to conceal an LP of sheer genius filth-noise concoction. A full panoply of sounds: junkyard percussion, revving-engines and industrial power-tools, all providing a sense of unstoppable forward motion. This simphonie is a continual charge forward into the very maw of death. The Sound Projector 

Imagine if Sisyphus was pushing, instead of a boulder, a giant mining-cart filled with rusted sheet-metal, nuts, bolts, and screws up a hill endlessly for eternity. That would paint an appropriate profile of the sounds heard during Simphonie In X Major. The two tracks convey a kinetic energy of human labour and struggle and create a convincing portrait of the human spirit in the industrial age. Whether they intend to or not, TNB create the perfect soundtrack to the human endeavour to conquer nature and the machine. Itzmehall  

Simphonie In O Minor is, depending on your point of view, the sound of tape-hiss, an unheard scream in the dark, or the entire history of Noise put through a shredder and reversed back into oblivion. Idwal Fisher  Made up from evacuated tape and punctuated by a single sound event, Simphonie In O Minor feels like the sonic equivalent of a deep field shot straight into the abyss. The Wire 

The resolutely nihilist TNB sign a resolutely blank cassette, Simphonie In O Minor, the pendant to Simphonie In X Major, a composition of tempestuous 'musique concrete.' TNB advocates maximum volume and an inflated equalization of the low and high frequencies for optimum listening. The most knowledgeable ears would appreciate the subtle pitch variation induced by the title: void alteration in minor mode. Grooving In Silence