Fresh from partnering with noisy transatlantic neighbours, Full Of Hell and The Body (as part of Intensive Care), Andrew Nolan has corralled together a second round-up of his belligerent sonic output barely a month since the first volume. Leaning heavily into the compilation work that he has produced for that stalwart of the Northeast DIY noise scene, Industrial Coast, Monochrome Vol. 2: Tentacles of Spiritual Contagion, bridges the gaps between Nolan’s hip-hop productions as Wolfagram, the crushing industrial dub excavations he puts out under his own name, and the electronic genres he was DJing in the late 80s.
Vol.2 is a predominantly instrumental affair, almost devoid of the bar-spitting features that populated Vol.1. We still get the lyrical athletics of regular accomplices New Villain and KNG Bondalero on ‘Nothing’, with Nolan blending jungle breaks and Def Jux boom-bap with their steely poetics. And the inclusion of Xicada and Kenny Sanders (Like Weeds/Facial Mess) on ‘This Splendid Hell’ brings out Nolan’s noisier, weirder, and more confrontational sides. Gremlins whirr and curl around the destructive central bass fists with each sound source wound and ground up until it trembles with anticipation’s panicked energy.
The collaborative sense manifests, instead, in the guise of influence. ‘Rise of the Consultants’, with its strangled fidgeting bleeps engulfed by sustained, walloping sub-bass buzz that could bruise concrete, is a re-do of a track from Stalingrad’s 2024 LP She Called Herself Tania. Taken from Industrial Coast’s A Sickening Outrage tribute compilation, the Throbbing Gristle-inspired ‘Onkalo’ has a more explicitly sci-fi feel. Rather than a straight up cover of a TG track, this imagines the industrial outfit riding a TR-909 into a gain-cranked alternate universe, having hung in a few years longer until the drum machine’s invention.
Amidst warfare drums, twisting folklore, and stretching time, ‘Fire Seed’ emerges brandishing a sample of the haunting folk song from The Wicker Man’s finale and, with probably his most energetic effort (not to mention infectious masterstroke), Nolan drops Cutty Ranks’ classic dancehall cut ‘Limb by Limb’ over the top of outrageous jungle rhythms on the appropriately titled ‘Hijack the Airwaves’. The caustic, burning edges properly matching the murderous vocals, jab for jab.
It’s inspirational in both word and deed. Like pulverising carbon until it transforms into a sparkly diamond, he takes these broad influences, lashes them to the tracks, and runs a distorted train laden with heavy-hitting industrial beats over them until they’ve morphed into something glittering and new.
