Aufgehoben 'Axiologue / Thermidor One Five' 7"
Aufgehoben are known for utilizing the full-length format to scratch and scrape at the inside of our brains, but on
this tight little record the approach is equally moving and relentless. "Axiologue" fires off some rotten synapses before
tossing a few tons of coal into a flaming swimming pool. "Thermidor One Five" splatters percussion like a burping baby
and crumbles into the same cavern "Axiologue" initially buried us. Aufgehoben create music for the modern world, as volatile
and astringent as the environment we're all soaking in. There are no leaves on these trees.
There are 524 copies pressed, each copy is a picture disc inside a black jacket with an Aufgehoben sticker on the front. There
are 5 test pressings on black vinyl in white dust sleeves.
01 - Axiologue
02 - Thermidor One Five
Dusted Magazine:
Only discovered Aufgehoben recently but they have become one of the only bands in my personal universe that truly intrigues. I went through my noise phase and my free jazz phase and I carried away remnants of them all – still enjoy both to some degree – but always wondered how a band could ably take elements of both and play them against somewhat of a free rock background; an outfit that was very sonically conscious in that they knew how to achieve the sounds they heard in their own heads, with the technology and the means to employ it that would allow the artists to process these elements into distinct, organic pieces. One listen to Aufgehoben’s album Messidor confirmed what I had long hoped for, and this new single elaborates on those ideas. Electric guitar, electronics and two drum kits are assembled, ripped apart, layered, timecoded, and reconstituted so that instrumental passages surge into noise breaks and run out on a cymbal crash, that guitar strings are amplified until they play like wet towels being wrung out, where volume is just as hey to the whole package as performance (and don’t be fooled, Aufgehoben can be mannered but are also LOUD). Pierces the mind and twists. Don’t miss it. Edition of 524 copies, on an abstract-looking picture disk, housed in an all-black jacket with vinyl sticker. Best thing I’ve heard this year.
Crucial Blast:
Chasing down Aufgehoben's Messidor album on Holy Mountain, this 7" picture disc features two tracks of brutal deconstructed noise rock recorded during the same session that produced that album. This is the UK band's first outing on 7", but they are a perfect fit for the format, each of these tracks a sudden sharp explosion of the band's furious improvised assault. Aufgehoben's MO is the editing and manipulation of live recordings, formed from extremely noisy, abstracted guitar and pummeling drumming, twisted a la This Heat into cyclones of heavy, ferocious noise and clatter cut with brillant flashes of restraint. 'Axiologue' begins with a burly drum solo workout, then builds into a mass of skittering guitar strings, chunks of feedback, and decomposed jazz lines; at the halfway mark, the whole jam goes into the red, exploding into a cacophony of blasting drums, thrashing un-riffs, mangled amplifier squeal and loud electronic noise, a crushing shock wave on par with the loudest Japanese noise attack. 'Thermidor One Five' is just as violent, alternating backwards moving blasteats and splattered free jazz percussion with gasping fretboard screams and a tangled mess of dissolving amplifier speaker. A brutal free-noise blast whiteout; White Denim mentioned the bands High Rise, Seven Minutes of Nausea, Air Conditioning, and Hijokaidan as trajectory points for Aufgehoben's sound, and I can't think of a better way to put it.
Aquarius Records:
Is it us, or is UK noise rock outfit Aufgehoben continually getting noisier and noisier? Is that even possible? We're beginning to think it is, even after the recent Messidor full length seemed to have reached a noise ceiling.
But here we are, two splattery, speaker frying blasts of no wave, free jazz noise rock. Or something. Not sure what to call it, but we like it. A lot. It does require a strong stomach and some iron clad earholes, but if you think you've got the stuff, that hop right in.
Two drummers, electronics, and very little else, are all these guys need to DESTROY. Side A begins with some rhythmic free jazz splatter before being swallowed alive by white hot bursts of crumbling distortion and swells of Merzbowian fury. The sheets of noise stuttering and almost 'skipping' into strange speaker shredding almost-rhythms, some otherworldly white noise pulse that bathes the rest of the song in a blinding and painfully loud glow.
Side B is cut from the same cloth, beginning with some Derek Bailey-ish guitar scrabble before the band launch into a full-on free jazz noise rock assault, loads of buzzing feedback, charged sheets of skree, all blown out and super distorted and in the red, interrupted by brief bits of tranquility, peppered with moments of grinding guitar scrape and spastic drum sputter, always quickly obliterated by a massive super nova of pure noise. Fucking brutal and massively intense!
Packaged in a plain black sleeve with some simple paste on art. Pressed on super thick vinyl, a gorgeous picture disc adorned with strange branch like patterns, like a fossil or some blurred winterscape. Nice!!
Released February 2007
