STEPHEN O'MALLEY and ATSUO "UROBORUS CIRCUIT" (Inoxia)

A huge, spiraling, queasy load of drone from O'Malley and Atsuo (the drummer from Boris, if the name isn't familiar) employing no instruments. I have little idea what that really means-whether it was unplugged guitars, contact mics, amp feedback sans instrumentation or something else entirely is beyond me. However it was created, though, it's fucking awesome, and listening to this beast will more than likely stir up some nausea and relative inner ear imbalance. This is string upon string of whining, straining feedback, each rope played against another in dizzying overlaps to create a mesh of hypnotic, stomach-turning webbery that obfuscates and disorients as much as it lulls. Sounding something like the creaking of stairs or merry-go-rounds amplified about 100 times and looped over each other. As far as drone goes, this is pretty epic shit, and more or less what i'm looking for in the way of listening challenges. It's everything i've heard before but totally new at the same time, and i truly appreciate the weirdness that the duo have put forth. It's pure isolation music, sure to leave the listener feeling more alienated than when they started, drawing circles around your perceived individuality and rendering your inner self void. This is the sound of emptiness dying and wheezing away, stumbling towards death washed away in a haze of shrouded forgetting.

Sometimes O'Malley leaves me a little perturbed and bothered. I have long since tired of Sunn 0))) ("The Grimmrobe Demos" is pretty much all i'll ever listen to by them anymore) and i find his solo material to be curiously hollow, perhaps drowned under the windblown weight of critical bolstering and self-perceived importance, but his duo engagements more often than not have much to offer. Maybe having someone else to toss ideas around with and work brainstorms into shapes is something O'Malley thrives on; however it works, this is the best thing i've heard from him since KTL' s "II" album. Atsuo too displays the relentless creativity that identifies him as being from the Boris camp-this album lacks any sort of percussion or even the idea of percussion, so it's nice to see that he can completely cut away from his role in Boris and here delve into something much more carved out and stinging. Like the wind cutting into your eyes icily or the endless exponential growth of painful volume, "Uroborus Circuit" is a masterful exploration of leering tone and audial distress, illustrating "music as physical presence" better than anything by either contributor's main projects. Absolutely recommended.