by Clifford Allen:
BARR-NEVAI Labyrintha CD (ugEXPLODE)
MICK BARR/NONDOR NEVAI
Labyrintha
(ugExplode)
Labyrintha is the third release of the brutal prog/thrash duo of New York-based drummer/vocalist/composer Nondor Nevai and D.C. guitarist Mick Barr (Orthrelm), and their first for Weasel Walter’s ugExplode label. The Barr-Nevai duo is quite different from the more archly-composed and blistering antics of Orthrelm (also a guitar/drums duo), engendered in a more sprawling approach to improvisation. Nevai’s playing is a dry, rattling and seemingly imprecise antecedent to the double roto-tom markers of death metal, the tropes of which otherwise seem distantly related to some of what Nevai does. In a way, Nondor Nevai might be the Roy Haynes of metal drumming, disappearing and reappearing with a loose, implied movement buoying Barr’s multi-tracked, buzzing minimalism. The recording quality is raw and analog, not as blindingly detailed as what we’ve come to expect from metal, and with that artificial layer stripped away, one can focus more on the immediate interaction between the two. The results are atonal and randomized guitar flights paired with brutal yells and sextuple-time thrash (a la Walter/Hiroshi Yamazaki) that, surprisingly, have enough kinetics to get one’s foot tapping rather than pummel the body into a couch. There are four pieces here, ranging from the 30-second closing salvo to a twenty-one-minute corker. If unintelligibly weird screaming/cursing, scalar pyrotechnics, thrash and a comet-like unwavering motion are your thing, the Barr/Nevai duo are definitely worth a spin. Totally wasted, but excellent.
Clifford's blog
by Leonardo Amico:
BARR-NEVAI Labyrintha CD (ugEXPLODE)
After a publication on MP3 Brutal-Prog and a CD-R edition insignificant, the UgExplode Weasel Walter of the first real press release on behalf of Barr-Neva. One might ask why wait so long, seeing the potential of the guitar-drums duo have nothing to envy to act like ultracelebrati Lightning Bolt and Hella. Powerful as the first but without riffoni Tamarri, chaotic than the latter but without the arty look, in some ways still work best. A free noise by shouting, loud and close to hysteria. Absolutely distant then, the disturbing lack of pathos that is criticized at Shred Earthship, giant wild technique which saw Mick Barr's work with the drummer from Hella, Zach Hill.
Here, the same frantic guitar acrobatics Barr, loose from the constraints imposed by the minimalist self-Orthrelm, instead playing quite well chosen. Obsessive vibrated on six strings build tension alien, only to explode into pieces under the posts destructive Neva. The drummer strikes between wild tempo changes and sudden assaults blast-beat screaming loud for the worst tradition of American noise rock (Colossamite, Harry Pussy) until, occasionally, the sounds are stretched in lurid duets feedback / voice unlikely to chant om a mystical hint from dopobomba treacherous.
Joined by the same snow as a Fuck You study a disaster of compressions, Labyrinth deserves the gap that exists between disks Ruins and Napalm Death.
original review in Italian
from crucialblast.net:
BARR-NEVAI Labyrintha CD (ugEXPLODE)
Orthrelm/Ocrilim/Krallice guitarist Mick Barr and sonic weirdo Nondor Nevai have been collaborating
on a series of full-lengths for awhile now, and Labyrintha is actually the third album that these guys
have recorded and released together; it's the first to actually get an "official" release through ugEXPLODE however, as the previous two discs were released as super-limited CD-rs. It's pretty much what you'd expect from a team-up between guitarist Barr and drummer/vocalist Nevai: endless streams of tremolo shredding that pour forth over a chaotic, thrashing drum assault, all completely improvised, the two musicians raging through fields of densely clustered avant-speed-metal shredding and fucked-up vocal noise/feedback assaults and demented quasi-throat-singing exercises. Mick Barr's endless racing notes swarm over these tracks like hyper-dense flurries of electronic insect chirps, and fans of his work in Orthrelm/Octis/Ocrilim will love this; on the other hand, Nondor's berserk black-vomit vocalizations and stumbling, freeform blast beats and drumming chaos pulls this into a much more freaked-out and frayed-at-the-edges form of improv shredblast. Imagine the soundtrack for the old video game Galaga being performed by a virtuoso thrash metal guitarist while the drummer from Beherit goes into an extended shitfit. Or maybe some manic, PCP-fueled fusion of Torture Garden-era Naked City, Abruptum, and that Bonus Levels disc that featured nothing but Trey Azagthoth shredding that came with the limited edition version of Morbid Angel's Heretic. Totally fucked and maniacal avant/no-wave/thrash weirdness - Flying Luttenbachers fans, this is definitely for you. Comes in full color digipack packaging.
from the proprietor of Downtown Music Gallery:
NEVAI, NONDOR The Wooden Machine Music CD
ugEXPLODE
"When I read Weasel Walter's description of Nondor Nevai's music for player piano, I was definitely intrigued. "Like Conlon Nancarrow on crack" or so the description goes. Hmmm. Turns out that Mr. Nevai is a member of To Live and Shave in LA, the Restaurants, and his own trio _ (pronounced "underscore"). The music itself is quite wonderful and not as difficult as Nancarrow's. It has a sort of breathtaking mechanical beauty. The notes cascade, shimmer and spin in focused waves. Even when things speed up to faster than humans can play levels, there is always a solid clarity of ideas. I like the way Nondor balances different fragments or sections, sometimes one rhythmic phrase will be repeated and slowly altered, sped up, slowed down and turned inside out as another section collides with it. Why a player piano? Most likely, since certain sections would be impossible for any human to play. Also, it gives the composer free reign to explore any different of difficult change of genre or structure. Track 4 is different in that it is slower and more contemplative with moments of haunting solemnity. The final piece is longer and more classical sounding with some stark and somber sections. There is still a mechanical quality to this, since the player piano doesn't change the way it strikes the keys of the piano. This makes the music itself more important to hear than the way it is performed. It does sound as if there is no improvisation involved, yet the music remains both fascinating and somewhat detached from human nature's physical ability." - BLG
from crucialblast.net:
NEVAI, NONDOR The Wooden Machine Music CD $15.98
ugEXPLODE
Prog mutant. Alien mathematician. Founder of avant-deathgrinders Hatewave. Member of Illinois death metal duo Aborted Christchilde, To Live And Shave In L.A. 2, and tandem blastbeat drum duo VVarvolk. Mick Barr collaborator. Yep, Nondor Nevai is one of the more interesting characters that you're going to find in the underground "brutal prog" scene. Just take a look at his Myspace page for some of the most inscrutable artist information you'll ever try to decipher. I was there for hours. Or check out the completely fucked spoken word/a capella album The A Capella Cantata that he released on Flemish Masters a while back. The man is a wellspring of hypercreative weirdness.
Wooden Machine Music/2001 is the weirdest of the recent releases from Weasel Walter's ugEXPLODE label, a collection of five pieces of hypercomplex piano music written by Nondor in MIDI and then played back through a genuine player piano that has been outfitted with a digital interface. These twisted, atonal compositions for player piano sound somewhat like Silentist's most dissonant moments, albeit without the backing blastbeats and powerviolence vocals. Nope, this is all piano. Each piece is a stuttering, angular blast of notes, sometimes played so fast that there's no way that human hands could possibly be behind these dense clusters of notes and cascading runs. Indeed, some of these pieces have titles like "Automatic Sonata No. 5 by 5 Hands", underscoring Nondor's appropriation of the player piano's mechanized playback to create these inhuman avant classical compositions. According to ugEXPLODE, these compositions were influenced by visions of an H.R. Giger-esque biomechanical hell made up of clicking insect parts that he witnessed after using a powerful hallucinogen called DMT, which sounds pretty neat.
The label compares the album to the acrobatic piano player works of the avant garde 20th century composer Conlon Nancarrow "on crack", and this album is certainly recommended to fans of avant-shred overload and eerie, modern "klassikill" piano music...though there are also quite a few moments of stark, shimmering beauty that appear among the blasts of atonality. Very cool.
from ARTHUR magazine:
THE BEST OF NONDOR NEVAI cassette tape Nihilist records
Nondor Nevai, by all accounts, should not still be alive. It's very possible he isn't. We first caught sight of him on the infamous "free-glam" tour of To Live & Shave In L.A. a few years back. He was a ferocious black metal scum bandit raging way past the band's set with unbridled drum pounding and sweaty headbanging insanity. He made fellow bandmates Weasel Walter and Misty Martinez appear absolutely docile. All we know is ex-Chicago resident Jim O'Rourke claimed the best band name ever in Chi-town was Nondor's legendary and infamous Vagiant. So we had hoped to hear Vagiant as a recording session happened but it never was released. As neither was the Aborted Christ Childe
LP that Tom Smith was to release. One other Nondor group called Hatewave, again with Weasel Walter, did release a CD and it's one of the best outsider sick-metal projects out there, though "true" black metal freaks are oblivious to it for reasons of elitism inherent to the genre. But trust us who listen outside the box, It destroys. [The Hatewave cd out on tUMULt records is Weasel's fault. For my predecessor to this band consult APOP records' forthcoming Hatewave Demo cd ~NN]
Anyway, Nondor is a satanic power metal freak of nature and we just found the compilation of his lost and sundry works as produced by Weasel on the Nihilist label. It's titled The Best Of Nondor Nevai and it is crushing, hilarious and delivers the damaged goods. Available only on cassette, keeping it out of sight to aboveground ears, it features tracks from the unreleased Vagiant, VVarvolk and Aborted Christ Childe LPs. A lot of Beefheartian voiced ruminations on straight up boner-boy sex with a shot of art history thrown in. Fucking weird and fucking awesome. From the liner notes: "Nevai has manipulated the very fabric of reality to create his work, and as a result, documentation has been scarce. Much of his legend exists thusfar in the domain of oral history and rumors. Equal parts GG Allin, Otto Meuhl, Andy Kaufman, Kim Fowley, Ted Kaczynski, Charles Ives, Gurdjieff and Dennis Hopper. Nevai has fucked with death and survived so many times that we must regard him as superhuman. What you will hear on this release are the ravings of a madman, drunken with lucidity." ~Weasel Walter
from What Fucked You? blog
"THE A CAPELLA CANTATA" flemishmasters.org
Sort of a Holy Grail of WTF records. The A Capella Cantata by Nondor Nevai bills itself as a piece for voice, reverb pedal, and magnetic tape. Well...to put it in other words, this is a piece for microphone, karaoke machine and hilarious drug buddy. Listening to Nondor Nevai is as bit like being at some sort of wacked-out disco club where records by Stryper and Saturday Night Live are played back to back; and some madman (armed with a cheap echo pedal) has taken over the dj booth and continually rambles non-stop over every song. Saying the most inane...yet brilliantly stupid things from off the top of his head. Whether it be going through a play-by-play of a random sexual encounter, reading the thanks list from a hip hop album, or spouting off some lesbian poetry, the results never fail to make me laugh and at the same time, make my jaw hit the floor in the fact that someone actually released this as a real Cd!
Needless to say, if you are a fan of all things stupid/amazing/psychotic/wtf?...then you know what to do.
Anonymous d said...
JAY, youve done it again, this album fucking rocks
Blogger Bruno said...
Nondor's a bloody genius... and he's still at it! He's got a comp tape out on Nihilist, a couple digital releases on brutalprog.com, an upcoming Undrskor CD on Savage Land, and his "Wooden Machine Music" LP is finally coming out (early next year I think) on Weasel Walter's uGEXPLODE label. All outstanding.
Anyhow, thanks -- great post.
Blogger jAy @ jApAn said...
Bruno, not to mention the fact that he also auditioned for The Great Kat !!!!!!!!!!! (true story)
Blogger Bruno said...
Now that's priceless. I have one Nondor "rarity" I should try to rip and share sometime (if I had the means) : the Diabolical Interventions 7", the last release on the Flemish Masters label. It's nowhere near as good as this though.
Anonymous shadow said...
Nevai is finally having his moment, one that's long overdue. He's also on one of the new To Live and Shave in LA albums. I agree with one of the previous posters - the "Diabolical" single isn't very good, but freaks should be allowed to fail.
Blogger Bruno said...
True - Nondor is doing some vocals on "The Cortege" by TLASILA, coming out around March 2008 on Blossoming Noise.
I got the Undrskor record on Savage Land from him and it's killer.
Wooden Machine Music may now be preordered from Weasel Walter (it's coming out on the 15th.)
About time!
Anonymous milton. said...
Nondor Nevai rules. saw TLASILA 2 and it blew my mind