Nundata - Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus [Placenta Recordings - 2011]Nundata is a pretty prolific experimental/noise act from Serbia, a land that recently spawned quite a few noise projects like Dead Body Collection or Gigant. "Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus" (phew!) is a full-length CDr released by Jay Watson's Placenta Recordings, based in Michigan U.S.A. First track "Foamy White" starts with a brutal assault of crunchy heavy static, soon destroyed by an extremely annoying chopping effect. Sounds keep on changing, with a focus on high pitch feedback, digital synth manipulation and the layering of various loops. The only constant element is the redundant chopping which might be too much to bear for most ears. Some sounds get drowned in the mix of frequencies and digital distortion/corruption springs out in more than a few points, indicating the over-saturation of a cheap sound-card. This could easily be a stylistic choice, but it's not my cup of tea. Anyway, the track in itself isn't bad. Nundata has quite a knack for layering noises and creating interesting movement, I think this just needed some polish and a more careful recording process. Second track "Frothy Pink" is similar in approach, with a constant wall of hiss and feedback surrounded by a deluge of distorted samples and synth cacophonies. Things get more violent around the middle of the track, with the appearance of a high volume distorted wall of noise and the proliferation of synth tones mayhem. After a while the progression starts to get slower and quieter, providing a soft ending. The mix obtained is more psychedelic than the "Foamy White", but it still suffers from the same sound quality problems.
Same story for the last number on the set, "Rusty Orange". The pattern followed by Nundata is quite predictable at this point: a carpet of distorted and crunchy low frequency digital synth gets slowly buried by swarms of distorted loops and tones at various frequencies. It's a matter of personal taste of course, but the choice of sounds makes "Rusty Orange" the less interesting of the bunch for me. In conclusion I think that while there is definitely some good substance here, Nundata needs to change his recording process and try to avoid all the faults and flaws typical of the digital era. Maybe getting a better sound card would suffice. Digital noise is not exactly my favourite form of noise, so I can't say that I thoroughly enjoyed this CDr. Listening to it I felt like something was missing, maybe some strength or some character, or maybe I just needed a totally different kind of racket. I will not recommend "Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus" to anyone but I'd like to listen to what Nundata comes up with in a year or two. Nicola Vinciguerra
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