header_image
BURNING TREE  Stinger  CASSETTE   (The Tapeworm)   8.98
Stinger IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

I've only caught a couple of select offerings from the Tapeworm cassette series, mainly the ones with a more creep-stained, witchy touch from Stephen O'Malley and Meltaot. This newer offering from the British tape label isn't the sort of ghoulish improvisational scrape and drone that those artists delivered, but it is an exceedingly abrasive bout of high-intensity improv violence that demands to be listened to at ear-bleeding volume levels. Limited to an edition of two hundred copies and packaged in the minimalist black and white artwork that is the signature look of the Tapeworm imprint, Stinger delivers five blasts of ferocious free-jazz squonk that bear titles like "Sting", "Shred", "Bite" and "Bends", which all appear to infer the potential effect that this cassette might incur on the listener's nervous system. The Norwegian duo Burning Tree consists of drummer Dag Erik Knedal Andersen and saxophonist Dag Stiberg, and with their limited palette of sax and percussion execute some seriously blazing noise-jazz abuse across the length of this thirty-five minute album, starting with circling runs of sax bleat and crashing cymbals, then cranking up the chaos until they peak out with cyclonic blasts of abrasive skronk as the drums explode with complex fills, speeding up to almost blast beat speeds, and whipping through intricate patterns that are all smashed together as Stiberg races his sax through spastic dissonant runs and aneurysm-inducing blowouts that resemble the death-shrieks of a mortally wounded beast. This tape is a fucking scorcher, and any and all disciples of brute-strength free jazz like Borbetomagus, Weasel Walter's recent ensemble work, and Tiger Hatchery should stick this on their to-do list, pronto.