Dissecting Table- Power Out of Control

Artist: Dissecting Table
CD Title: Power Out of Control
Label: Triumvirate
Reviewer: Matthew Johnson
Date: 9/18/05

Dissecting Table’s Ichiro Tsuji is perhaps the most beat-oriented member of Japan’s extreme noise movement, and this particular album is reminiscent at times of the more brutal side of such rhythmic noise composers as Converter’s Scott Sturgis. Still, the emphasis is on noise over rhythm, and though “Bottom” has moments that loosely resemble dance music, the bulk of this album consists of screeching feedback and harsh industrialized percussion. Opening track “Uncontrollable” starts out innocuously enough, if still weird, with throbbing analog bass oscillations, then bursts into earsplitting distortion that goes on for a seemingly interminable seven or eight minutes before ending in what sounds like the soundtrack from a movie’s chase scene, as heard through a stereo that’s been set on fire. “Naturalism” is more stomping than screeching, with Tsuji growling incomprehensibly through a wall of tortured electronics, while the aforementioned “Bottom” alternates between punishing drum beats, manic metal-on-metal percussion, and the occasional organic bass guitar lick or playfully chirping analog sequence. The four-track album ends with “Go Beyond the Limit,” a painful power electronics composition loosely reminiscent of early Controlled Bleeding in that real guitars, drums and vocals can occasionally be glimpsed through a blur of mangled overdrive. Niche music for masochists, Dissecting Table is gloriously uncompromising; with compositions that are so challenging, however, this is an album suited only for noise purists.

Visit Ichiro Tsuji at www.dissecting-table.com