Le Jazz Non (A Compilation of Nineties NZ Noise)

Compiled by Bruce Russell (The Dead C, A Handful Of Dust) and released on his Corpus Hermeticum label, Le Jazz Non is the ideal introduction to the first wave of New Zealand free noise. The selection of material is of uniformly high quality, though there are particular standouts – A Handful Of Dust’s “The Kabbalah Of The Horse Pegasus” is one of their most furious live trio outings, mutant streams of feedback piercing the listener’s third eye; Rain’s “Invisible” is one of their most haunted, inscrutable offerings, pensive and hushed; and the contribution by Empirical, “Howsomever”, is a relatively rare, and welcome, slab of low-end voltage from Marcel Bear and his self-invented instrument, the shimsaw, ‘a stretched band of steel with pick-ups’.