Available for the first time on vinyl, Dominik Fernow presents his f*cked-up masterpiece 'The History Of Aids' on his own Hospital Productions label. Noise fiends should need no introduction to this guy, this album, or this label, but those of you in the dark you should be aware that this New York-based label has released some of the very best albums of recent years, counting Kevin Drumm's 'Imperial Distortion' and Cold Cave's 'Cremations' among them. Fernow also plays in the live line-up of Cold Cave, which may give you some scope of the breadth of his sonic imagination. His 2002 album 'The History Of Aids' is considered to be his finest moment by many, an ultimately nihilistic expression of extreme sonic brutalism laced with romantic lyrics taken from the 13th century Persian/Sufi poet Rumi . To be honest, you'd never be able to tell this anyway as every word is shrouded in heavy black cloaks of primal discord, but you get the gist. It's moments like the visceral 'Hallucination' or the modulated scream scale of 'Vertigo' that simply blow us away, achieving a rare masochistic intensity that forces you to challenge your own pain threshold by regularly reaching for the volume control to pile on the pain. Fernow has an elemental control over his sound, shaping sonic texture and structure with a patience and skill barely matched among his peers. In a similar style to Whitehouse, Prurient is all about resetting boundaries, which can result in one of the most cathartic listening experiences imaginable.