For years Cincinnati avant-violinst and drone sculptor C. Spencer Yeh has been releasing records, tapes, and CDs under his Burning Star Core

moniker all by his lonesome, but for this new album, Yeh has enlisted a couple of Hair Police dudes and Mike Shiflet from Noumena to swell

BSC's ranks, and the results are massive; Yeh performs with voice, violin, electronics, "junkbox", and trumpet, Trevor Tremaine is on drums,

percussion, and "objects", Mike Shiflet contriobutes computer, electronics and voice, and Robert Beatty wields "acoustic appraiser" and

electronics. I've been into Burning Star Core's heavy free-noise jams for years, and even had Yeh and BSC contribute to the Shadows

Infinitum compilation that we released a couple of years back; Operator Dead...Post Abandoned is some of BSC's heavier jams

though, and I'm hoping that we get to hear more from this pretty potent lineup. The album starts with "When The Tripods Came", a sprawling 20

minute free-drone-noise-rock jam that reaches some pretty spiritual highs of ecstacy, if you're down to let it wrap itself around your mind. On

this track, Yeh stands at the center of an amorphous swirl of heavy, hypnotic drumming that sounds like Tremaine is hitting everything within

reach simultaneously, lunging through tamboura-like drones and swirling feedback and sets off streaks of delay-laced horns and strings

streaking through the dense fug, chased after by all kinds of digital fragments and blurts of crushing sludge distortion. Sixteen minutes in,

the drums become even heavier and more frenzied, the swirling clouds of noise and space effects and distortion suddenly seems to become heavier

and more malevolent, and everything becomes a titanic wall of crushing druggy drone dirge.

The title track starts off like it's going to be an epic comedown after the thunderous fury of the preceding jam; scattered percussion

rattles away in a haze of groaning strings and thick feedback, filling the room with smoke and ear-clogging hum and sounding like a heavier

version of White House era Dead C underpinned by grinding amplifier waves. But then towards the end, the drums start to spike into a

noisy tribal freakout swept over by flurries of cymbals, and the feedback and electronic drones build into another wall of brain melting space

drone sludge. The last two tracks are shorter and more ethereal: "Me And My Arrow" stokes a furnace blast of narcotic drone shimmer, and "The

Emergency Networks Are Taking Over" wraps up the album nicely with fierce free-jazz drumming rippling through warbling electronic melodies

moving backwards through a thick aural syrup, Goblin-esque keyboard strokes melting across ghostly violin strings scraping by in slow motion,

blasts of brutal feedback and thick swirls of liquid amp drone congealing into a crushing, crumbling finale. This is the most ferocious and

heavy Burning Star Core release so far, a distorted and sludgy sea of six-armed free jazz percussion and propulsive krautrock rhythms pushing

the dense murk forward, a flattening mix of Total's guitar feedback skree, Cluster's synth damage, jazz improv, Hototogisu, midwestern noise

rock, and planet-melting drone. Highly recommended. Comes in a beautiful 6-panel digipack featuring artwork by Paul Romano (Mastodon, Cir