Monday, February 24, 2020

HAROLD NONO'S WE'RE ALMOST HOME: IRONIC NOISE FOR INFINITE TRAVEL


Electronic-music artist Harold Nono has constructed a new album for Bear Suit Records. It’s entitled We’re Almost Home and depicts reckless trips and lost chords, hopes dashed and relocated, all within thirteen, impressive tracks.


Some of the selections are dangerous yet exotic, such as “Menton Train Jump”, which is Oriental in flavor and perhaps rather bullying after one cracks the crust. The same can be said of “The Gurney Trips”, which invokes a shaky bridges in a chapter-plays, just itchin' to snap. "Shaking on an Iron Bed" and "The Fall Reprise" relate similar, stimulating bumps, while “The Shout” springs as the most startling among the cluster, spewing a metal rift that pushes one over the edge, reminding the traveler that peace never comes, even in light of a screeching halt. 


As with any trip, there are stops along the way. For example, "Gold Lane Neckhold" covers graveyard turf: cold and coarse in its tipped, stoned queues. On the neighboring side, "Ron's Mental Leap Coach" is a rubber-room drop: needle-pinched and full of spittle. "Annie and Bunny Got Fast-tracked" is the craziest of 'em all: a three-ring circus off the beaten path, with unchained beasts nibblin' one's heels and intoxicated acrobats smackin' one's back. 


"The Red Dream Submarine" represents a underwater breather, with misguided, socialist scams crashing beneath amber waves. "The Art of Rosa" bolsters the ruse further, presenting a gallery packed of modern art that may be praised, but remains empty at heart. "I Thought I was Driving" kicks the latter two farther down the road, with a prelude of lost-and-found rambunctiousness, cloaked by map-less confusion. 


"Let the Light In (Prince of Darkness)", however, returns one to a burp of sprawling distaste, with flames crackling beneath a hellish can of bubbling beans: dynamic for its pedestrian pulse and damn scary because of it. (BTW: This might be my favorite of the line-up, if only for its vast, chaotic expression.)

The album's juicy, last-but-not-least track, "Annie's Phantom Life Raft Choir" rolls a sea of static, upon which one rides with vague signs and torturous outtakes, not to mention passages that zig and zag into dark, water-clogged ditches: a sensible finale to Nono's epic, nihilistic sojourn. 


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