Both Noises End Burning

This live collaboration with Japanese noise-rock group Hijokaidan is one of the most assaultive discs in the Borbetomagus catalog, and that's really saying something. Recorded live in 2007 at the Festival de Musique Actuelle in Victoriaville, Canada, it offers a single 71-minute piece during which all seven members of the ensemble were blowing saxophones, fighting with guitars, manipulating electronics, beating drums, or just screaming at full strength from beginning to end. There's nothing subtle about this music; there are no delicate spiderwebs of interplay emerging from the overall cacophony; there just is the shrieking cacophony, which apparently was offered at Motörhead-esque levels of ear-bleeding volume on the night in question. Naturally, a CD can't capture the true punishment of enduring such an event, but listeners are welcome to crank their stereos up and give it a shot, until the neighbors batter down the doors or the cops come.