Great split on the Anarchy Moon label, featuring Belgian duo Hector Cuvelier & Emile De Potter and Brooklyn musician Bob Bellerue, both of whom play harsh noise. What makes this release more interesting than the average split is that the artists on this recording complement each other nicely. There's a fair bit of continuity between the two CDRs, as both groups share quite a bit in common sonically, but this release also allows both groups to display their own take on noise.

The first CDR contains two pieces by Hector Cuvelier & Emile De Potter. “Rance,” the stronger of the two tracks, starts off with shouted vocals and white noise, but gets gradually more quiet as the track progresses. By the end of the track, the noise has almost completely abated, leaving the listener with a few seconds of relative silence before the next track starts.

On a related note, the term “Rance” may refer either to a river on which the first tidal power plant was built or the perverted titular character of a long-running Japanese RPG series in which the goal is to have sex with as many women as possible (pretty raunchy stuff; one review for a recent entry in the series advises one to stay away from this title if one is bothered by the idea of rape). No idea as to whether this piece is meant to soundtrack mankind's attempt to domesticate nature or the exploration of his perversion, but honestly, are the two really that different?

Bob Bellerue's contribution to this collection is a single track, “at Freak's End”. Bellerue's composition includes samples from more “organic” sources set against a backdrop of noise. This juxtaposition of noise with more “normal” sounds challenges the conventional understanding of noise as something unusual. Instead, noise is something conventional, sound one is as likely to hear as piano music.

In any case, this release contains some of the better noise music that I've heard this year. Packaged simply, yet elegantly, and limited to 50 copies, this is a recording that I would recommend picking up, and quickly. 8/10 -- Jonathan Rahardjo (28 July, 2010)