Astro - Deformation Receiver FLAC album

Hiroshi Hasegawa, who absolutely Kills it on this recording as Astro, is a noise King and we all know it. Deformation Receiver takes us back to 2012, and regardless of how much time has passed since it was issued by Dutch noise imprint Dead Mind Records—who we’ve only just recently been exploring here on Heathen Harvest—it is, and will remain, another brutal fix of what he does best. Massive walls of analog noise, perfectly structured and performed with a sound so detailed that it can actually be listened to and experienced as an orchestral piece.

It’s absolutely a harsh endeavor, and while it doesn’t drain you like some harsh noise may, it will certainly immerse you in a twisted, sonic meat grinder. It moves and evolves with frequencies from all corners of the sound spectrum as they layer up, loop, drone, or simply explode. You’ve probably seen me say this before, but listening to Deformation Receiver is like putting your head inside a beehive. The first look screams ‘Chaos!’ just because so much is going on; your brain can barely process the full scope of each track. The thing is, though, that the more you listen, the more comfortable it feels, and this one doesn’t sting too much, either—it just slightly hurts.

Side A (‘Deformation Receiver’) is a bit cleaner; it feels more ‘modular’ and spacey but still tense and textural in a very aggressive way. Side B (‘Hurricane Crash’), on the other hand, is a pure harsh noise treat that is perfectly produced for the genre and really challenging to listen to and follow.

There’s only one negative that I could find to the work on Deformation Receiver, and it’s a familiar complaint for the 7″ format: The pieces that are featured here sound as if they were once a part of a longer session. They are both seemingly fully developed, and the sound spectrum is already filled to its limits right after they start. I’d have enjoyed this record more if it were written with the time constraints of the 7” as the Leit-Motif and not just as the reasoning behind how long the chosen session excerpts Should be. I’m saying this because the self-titled piece even ends with a fade-out, which is something We Don’t Do In Harsh Noise.

(Heathen Harvest)