Feral

Sound artist Daniel Menche is labeled a noise musician, but there's a lot more subtlety to his work than that of, say, Masonna. Feral is more like sound art, albeit sound art that doesn't explicitly identify its sources the way Francisco Lopez, to pick one example, does. The first of this disc's four untitled tracks is composed primarily of whooshing and roaring noises that sound like a raging fire or a strong wind blowing a huge sheet of paper against a contact microphone, or maybe some combination of the two. The second track begins with feedback-laced ringing/clanging sounds that could have been made with an electric guitar, or could be a doorbell amplified to absurd levels and warped beyond recognition. It's hard to say. The third track combines the rattling of small rocks with some of the same whooshing/roaring sounds heard at the beginning of the disc, layer upon layer of sound accreting until the piece is an overwhelming, room-filling wave of noise, buzzing and scraping like a construction site. The fourth and final track is the most subtle and beautiful of all: it begins with the sound of wind and eventually makes its way toward a huge drone. Feral, despite its title and the picture of a snarling dog that adorns its cover, is not an all-out assault. It's loud, and definitely not traditionally structured, but it has moments of great beauty.