Nolan Hildebrand - Noise Trip Explosion [Redshift Records]

Another fresh album release on the ever active Canadian Redshift Records label is Nolan Hildebrand's "Noise Trip Explosion", a five compositions and roughly 55 minutes spanning exploration of what the accompanying press info describes as '...electroacoustic chamber pieces that harness the physicality of live instruments while revelling in the brazen coarseness afforded by various digital and analogue electronics.'. This being said for an overall abstraction of the five pieces cooked up by the Toronto-based producer between 2k22 and 2k25 we see the opening tune "Generative Graphic Score #1" combining saxophones and mixer feedback to create a screaming, yet highly detailed and surprisingly rhythmic, yet violent and eardrum piercing stream of abrasive digital sounds in which the instrument invlvd only remains an echo of a memory with the subsequently following piece "Knurl Cracked Green" introducing violin, electric guitar and piano to Nolan's live electronics - an amalgamation which brings forth distorted, yet vaguely recognizable riffing, disfigured solos and brutalist feedbacks alongside metallic eruptions and astoundingly playful and alien sounding retrofuturist plinkerings in the tunes rather minimalist sequences. Furthermore "Raw Data Speed Demons" fuses violin and live electronics to an intense, yet always tentative and playful, almost tongue-in-cheek effect, "Portals II (Everywhere And Everything Right Now)" combines mixer feedback, sax, electric guitar and drums which results in a dense conglomerate of high frequency sweeps, a maelstrom of digital Noize, dark atmospheric minimalisms and unintelligible voices buried deep within the, admittedly, oftentimes quite nerve wrecking mix whereas the final "Dada Bender" focuses on a set of percussion instruments which, digitally processed, fall together in an intense and highly dramatic fashion, providing not only the most complex composition on "Noise Trip Explosion" but also one that would make a well interesting and probably excellent addition to the score of a totally independent experimental underground movie project of sorts and therefore might be our personal favorite on this one. The world needs more albums like this. Highly recommended.

Album artwork on Instagram!