This is the first in a series of one-sided 7"s from the new Ketchup Cavern imprint, who have also released the subsequent installment from Lasse Marhaug that we also have listed this week. Packaged in a white sleeve with high-contast black artwork and text and a consistent design theme, these limited edition little platters are pretty rad doses of extreme abstract noise. Michael Piercey is the Vancouver artist behind Seagull, which has apparently released a bunch of tapes and CDRs but debuts on wax with this 7". The cover art is a weird cycloptic skull seen through a haze of white noise, and the old english fonts and general grim vibe of the sleeve suggests something evil inside. Handmade noise generators and distortion pedals are used to craft the five minute crunch scuplture of "The Conqueror Worm" , a churning noise wall that is so bass-heavy and lava-like that it achieves a trance state of concrete-mixer drone. Thick, crushing low-end grit, this is undeniably similiar to the sound of a phonograph needle that has run off into an empty groove and allowed to grind there endlessly, a huge crackling roar that is immersed in a miasma of grinding concrete slabs and cavernous thrum, chest-rattling bass hum and crumbling distorted roar. It's like hearing The Rita or Cherry Point or Merzbow slowed down to half speed into a syrupy skullcrushing hypnodrone.

...five minutes of scorched-earth / run-out-groove smolder ...

This one-sided single is a harsh noise solo project from Vancouver. Michael Pearcey gangs together a bunch of noise generators and lets one fly. The results are very front loaded. Although you can start to hear fluctuations in approach when you play this pretty loud, the general feel is quite monochromatic. Little parts shake loose now and then, but the effect is really pretty similar to standing right next to one of those big concrete mixers. Hold onto your hat.

IMPRESSIVE debut vinyl from Canadian Harsh Noise duo. Thick BASS THUNDER ...sounds killer on ALL SPEEDS! ltd Edition of only 180 copies so grab it quick!

Band names are tough. Coming up with the right one, one that captures the sound, the idea, the meaning of the music you're making. Some start out stupid, Flaming Lips? But soon becomes so inseparable from the music, that the name virtually becomes the music. Some are so weird, they can't help but be brilliant, Fuck I'm Dead, Bathtub Shitter, and a whole host of others come to mind.

When we first hear Pelican way back when, and were listening to the record, the name just didn't comput, it wasn't heavy or intense, it was just, a bird, but now we're sort of used to it, so Pelican does actually sound sort of intense, like the music. SO maybe the same thing will happen to Seagull, this one man band who's responsible for this here super limited one sided single. Weren't sure what to expect with a name like Seagull, the cover is appropriately black and white and cryptic, the name huge in a killer, almost unreadable olde English font....

Well, no matter what we were expecting from Seagull, it wasn't this, although we were pleasantly surprised. If one can use the word 'pleasant' to describe a disc of grinding growling low end and crumbling hissy noise. But for some of us, yeah, we can use the word pleasant. Although dirge-y and droney and gristly might all work a bit better. A single track, monochromatic and subtly shifting, strangely hypnotic but harsh in a not entirely harsh way. The sound is tough to describe, it sounds a bit like the run off of a record, when the needle slips onto the label and skids to the center of the turntable, a little like that, but mixed with the sounds of a roaring fire, industrial machinery, shifting tectonic plates, grinding glaciers, distant avalanches, or those weirdly fuzzed out spaces between stations on the radio, all sort of woven into one throbbing thick crumble, a garbled muted black noise, but the more you listen, the more melodies and strange textures reveal themselves, hidden rhythms, layers of sound overlapping and shifting slightly. this is definitely 'noise', but some strange almost 'soft' sort of noise...

Seagull's "The Conqueror Worm" (Ketchup Cavern One-Sided 7") came to me from nowhere looking pretty menacing; I was thinking it was either a noise record, a black metal record, or a Stephen O'Malley side project just from looking at the artwork. Turns out to be the first option, and a quick Googling reveals Seagull to be one Michael Piercey outta Vancouver, who's got an array of tapes and CD-Rs to his name, unbeknownst to yours truly. Ketchup Cavern sez "The Conqueror Worm" consists of "poorly-recorded static, roaring distortion (and some mysterious crackle added by the pressing plant)" and that pretty well sums it up. It's a straight-forward snarling drone, cavernous rattling and tectonic plate-shifting sensibilities abounding, which is nice enough but kinda begs the question why, as Piercey seems to be treading on sure ground here...though I could never say I know a man after listening to five minutes of his music. Plus I think I could get into it more stretched out over full-album length. So as long as it's competently performed (it is), who cares if it doesn't change my life. Slick black and white sleeve designs on this baby though.