J.Soliday

Foxy Digitalis review of Nonagon Knives

J. Soliday “Nonagon Knives”

By Steve Dewhurst

The début solo full length from Chicago experimentalist Jason Soliday (I <3 Presets, Illegal Teeth, Winters in Osaka, and founder of the sadly defunct gig space Enemy), Nonagon Knives is an hour long hit of modular synth noise and the best album of its type I’ve heard for a long time, probably since KILT’s excellent Kitchen Sorcery on Prison Tatt.

To say Nonagon Knives is unrelenting is something of an understatement; there is no introduction whatsoever to the opening track ‘Snarled Ellipse|Snared Ellipse’, which bursts in on a thrashing bundle of sparking wires and whose only attempt at stopping for respite comes in a series of high-pitched synth retches halfway through. ‘Peel (Offset)’ purrs like a sleeping tiger, one eye open on the approacher before letting rip again with ‘Each Could Clearly Hear The Other…’, and so on until the exhausted crackle of ‘Consider Yourself Dissolves’ closes the nine track ear-fuck and leaves the listener staring wild-eyed and rooted to the spot.

The real beauty of this music lies in the detail. Far from being a flat-out noise fest, Nonagon Knives brims with texture showcases Soliday’s ability to coax more than just random noise from his chosen instrument. ‘An Obsession With Aerodynamics’, for example, hums with feedback beneath the surface racket, lending it an unsettling feeling of depth. Imagine waving your hand around in a dark hole you know harbours snakes and waiting for the bite – that’s the kind of effect the best of Soliday’s work can have on you, and it’s often as though it’s been wired directly into your spine.  Soliday retains superlative control too; nothing runs him and nothing sounds superfluous. The undoubted highlight here is the quarter-hour ‘The Comfort of Outer Forms’, which uses its extended playing time to run the whole gamut of sonic shades. From burping frog croaks to zipping space cars and some disarmingly cute chirrups, the track eventually blends the lot in a rapidly rotating neutron star of noise that flings out ever fiercer tendrils. They themselves construct miniatures, all of which hiss around the perimeters and some of which even have the faintest hint of melody. This is the kind of minutiae that will reveal itself upon repeated listens (it goes straight back around whenever I play it), and what marks Soliday out as being a truly exceptional noise artist. Nonagon Knives will hopefully be the first of many.

Foxy Digitalis

Nonagon Knives / Vital Weekly Review

JASON SOLIDAY - NONAGON KNIVES (CD by CIP)
One of the routines when mail arrives is to check if something is for me, or my fellow travelers of the Weekly, and here’s one I have been thinking about of sending to Jliat. Especially the first two pieces are heavy blasts of noise/feedback/distortion. Usually I would have stopped playing this and put it in a mailer, but I know Soliday’s music a bit, and I was intrigued with the references made on the press text: Pierry Henry, Voice Crack, Jean Claude Eloy, Jerome Noetinger, John Wiese, Olivia Block and modular synthesizers. Perhaps only the latter in those first two tracks. When it comes to noise, Soliday is indeed very heavy, but luckily its not what he does exclusively. A piece like ‘An Obsession With Aerodynamics’ is more spacious modular synth based than pure noise induced. Soliday uses a variety of techniques when it comes to composing music: noise blasts, spacious modular synthesizers, extended sometimes, going almost beyond the threshold of hearing, but then it can cut straight into something very loud and obnoxious, and then it can cut straight out of that, in order to continue with something very soft, like a disparate piece of drone music. You may have guessed it, but this is indeed the kind of noise I like. It is loud, at times, but never too long and Soliday has put some thought in it as to what would work and what not. What doesn’t work is an endless stream of distorted sounds, me thinks. What works is the combination of cracked electronics, loud and soft put together to make a great composition - or nine. Perhaps an hour is a bit long for a release like this, but its a strong debut album anyway. Excellent. (FdW)
Address: http://www.cipsite.net

(Source: vitalweekly.net)

Boy Dirt Car / Eric Lunde / Jason Soliday / Karl J. Paloucek Live

From the June C.I.P. Update:

classic industrial and new electronics…to say this should be a killer show would be a fairly gross understatement…

Thursday June 7 9:30 PM
Empty Bottle, Chicago (1035 N Western Ave)
http://www.emptybottle.com
$8
 
Boy Dirt Car — seminal American first-wave ”industrial” band celebrating 30 years of audio chaos. Often hailed as the US’s answer to Einstürzende Neubauten, BDC’s vision of industrial decay and the experience of the midwestern United States is as bleak as it is engaging. http://boydirtcar.com/
 
Eric Lunde — seminal cassette / tape / text manipulator. Lunde’s unique vision of the role of the voice, field recordings, decay, reduplication, and lo-fi manipulation of sound cannot be overstated; his work consistently challenges listeners with his drive to push the tape and electronics mediums into uncharted waters. The Wire praised Animal Mineral Self Mirror, released by C.I.P. in November 2011, as, ”on one level, an expression of one man’s dialogue with himself. But it’s also much more. It’s a lo-fi simulation of how we experience our modern environment, where deadening Muzak in public spaces is cut with unpredictable streams of threatening, near incomprehensible noise (literal and metaphorical), and our damaging habits threaten to consume us. And trapped somewhere in that mix is your own voice, trying to make sense of it all.” http://traitcentral.com/

Jason Soliday — Chicago’s finest synth manipulator, bringing crackle and attack to the Bottle in celebration of his forthcoming CD ”Nonagon Knives” on CIP (see below). Soliday has been sharpening even further his composition skills over the past several years, honing his audio into a force to be reckoned with. His precision quick cuts, deft use of the stereo (and frequency) field, and sense of timing and pacing unite to create a rich and staggering audio experience. http://soundcloud.com/crank-satori

Karl J. Paloucek — pursing and presenting sound for nearly 25 years via such diverse projects as Shrilltower, Impact Test, and Fuckface, from Knitting Factory in NYC to Maritime Hall in San Francisco. Recent solo performances have found him working with pianos, metals, sewing machines, water, and other machinery and artifacts. A visual and aural delight: one of my favorite local artists.
http://soundcloud.com/karl-j-paloucek

social media site for this event: 
https://www.facebook.com/events/126937807433839/

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Jason Soliday “Nonagon Knives” CD
    I am very excited to present the debut pro-pressed CD from the aforementioned stalwart of Chicago experimental audio, Jason Soliday. Running from chattering teeth electronics to drones to some low end sway that will test your speakers, this CD captures all the strengths of Soliday’s live work as refined through his studio expertise. As of today (June 2) I’m really hoping to have copies of the disc available for the show despite a template snafu; however, Erik Hoffman at Groundfault says it looks like we might make it by the skin of our teeth, so fingers are crossed…