Pitchfork

One of the appealing things about noise music at its extreme fringe is its unpredictability. One you've untethered yourself from the conventions of tonality and stopped worried about making nice sounds, everything else one associates with order in music-- rhythm, structure, melody, etc,-- can fly out the window pretty easily. But there's also something appealing about folding the textures of noise music into a pop context, channeling that power into something composed that comforts with its tunefulness while it overwhelms with its force. So goes the opening track from Ghost Town, the forthcoming album by Parts & Labor member Dan Friel. Beginning with some grating dentist-drill tones that remind me immediately of Florian Hecker (and which reflexively causes in me a touch of nausea), it blows up into a stomping instrumental ditty, a music-box melody shoved through the speaker cone of a subwoofer salvaged from the trunk of a totaled Jeep. It's too short at just three minutes, but hey, they always say to leave 'em wanting more. So yeah: more, please.

MP3:> Dan Friel: "Ghost Town Pt. 1"
[from Ghost Town; due 05/13/08 on Important]