Posts Tagged ‘Harold Nono’

Harold Nono – Faro

Posted: 30 April 2025 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Bearsuit Records – 30th April 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

It’s been a couple years since we last heard new material from Harold Nono, enigmatic purveyor of weirdy electronica, and platformed by the go-to label for weirdy folky worldy electronica, Bearsuit Records. And Faro is suitably strange, and, well, Bearsuity.

It doesn’t start out so: ‘Raukar’ is primarily sedate, piano-led, sedate, strolling, and overall, feels quite calming, despite jangles and scrapes of dissonance whispering away in the background. As the ambience trickles its way into balmy abstraction, we feel a sense of discomfort, and while the expansive ‘Sketch for Faro’ is soothing, expansive, cinematic, and feels like it could easily be an excerpt from Jurassic Park or another sweeping passage from a big-budget family-friendly movie, there are undercurrents which are subtle but nevertheless discernible which add an element of ‘otherness’ to it, particularly the abstract, almost choral vocal which rises near the end.

An EP consisting of only four tracks, Faro is a brief document, but Nono brings together many elements within this succinct work. Besides, it’s not all about length, right? Faro is sonically rich, imaginative, and ambitious in scope and scale. It feels expansive, transporting the listener over huge landscapes of trees and hills and field and planes, and you kinda feel carried away on it all in a largely pleasant way, despite the niggles of tension which creep in. And during ‘The Hour of The Wolf’ everything begins to explode and expand like some kind of galactic simulation, and suddenly, from nowhere, there are beats are blasts of distortion and everything somehow crumbles, and as silence falls, you find yourself standing, dazed, amidst rubble and ruins wondering what just happened.

While many of the elements common to Nono’s work are present here, Faro does seem like something of a development, expending in the direction of 2023’s ‘Sketch for Strings’ and moving further from the more disjointed, collagey compositional forms of earlier works. It’s less overtly jarring, less conspicuously weird, but don’t for a second think that Nono has gone normal on us – because Faro is subtle in the way it unsettles, and the last couple of minutes completely rupture the atmosphere forged gently and carefully over the rest of the EP. And this is why it’s both classic Nono and quintessential Bearsuit – because whatever your expectations, it is certain to confound them.

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The Stordiau Revolution – Skin Of Salt

Posted: 10 April 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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5th April 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

It’s been almost four years since I encountered Alaxander Stordiau, when I covered the single release by The Original Magnetic Light Parade, a collaboration between Stordiau and Edinburgh man, Harold Nono, on perennially oddball label Bearsuit Records.

With minimal info about that release – and not much more about this one, I’m mostly left to grapple with the music as it presents itself, with minimal content. This is good: and so is this EP.

A brief Internet delve uncovers that the material on this this EP was initially released a year ago, as part of an album-length work bearing the same title, slipped out on Soundcloud. Now, there are plenty of albums I think would have made decent EPs – or 7” singles – but there’s no reason to believe Stordiau has whittled this set down due to any issues with quality, and it does seem that it’s often easier to pitch an EP than an LP in our attention-deprived times. If I were to go all-out on a personal obsession, I’d make a greater deal of the fact that this four-track cut has aa running time of twenty-three minutes. There’s nothing to suggest Stordiau is a fan of William S. Burroughs or otherwise beholden to the ‘23 Mythos’, but the fact it does have a playing time of twenty-three minutes was of note to me, simply because. The twenty-threes just keep on coming.

And so to the music itself. ‘Fear Merges Easily’ is something of a teaser, an introduction, an atmosphere-builder, with wavering synth undulations creating a nice, even flow over a shuffling beat that sits off in the background. It’s got groove, but it’s subtle, and overall, it’s pretty mellow. It doesn’t ‘do’ much: one gets the impression it’s not supposed to, and nor is it necessary for it to do more. It’s vaguely background, it has some classic eighties electro and krautrock elements to it, and enough texture to keep it engaging.

‘Hearing the House Breathing’, stretching out to almost eleven minutes is the centrepiece and defining track here, and what’s interesting is how it’s centred around a core motif and built upon a solid spine of subdued beats, pulsating bass, and nagging synth shapes, but shifts and moves through a succession of segments. It’s dancey, but at the same time, it isn’t. and there are gasping, whispering vocals wheezing beneath the waves of undulating analogue ripples. Around the mid-point, it breaks into a more energetic mood, the bubbling synths bouncing over a lively robotic electro beat dominated by the whip-cracking snap of a vintage drum machine snare sound. Everything gets quite busy, and a shade hazy around this point, there’s a lot going on, and not all of it synchronous. I can’t be alone in finding this kind of busyness induces not a trance-like state, but one of feeling dizzy and vaguely overwhelmed, an experience not dissimilar to sitting in a busy pub or coffee shop and being unable to focus on reading or the conversation in front of my face for the distraction of all the babbling noise filling the air all around.

Things take a turn for the eerie, the proggy, the spacey, on the trilling title track, where a creeping dark chord sequence sits beneath altogether more vibrant tones, before giving way to a sloshing ebb and flow overlayed with some barbed organ, and there are moments here that remind me of Gift by The Sisterhood, Andrew Eldritch’s project between phases of The Sisters of Mercy: specifically, the notation the chilly closer ‘Rain From Heaven’. Closing off, ‘The Sting of the Lie’ is a relentless, cyclical composition over which blasts of wavering, quavering keyboards wander and spin.

Skin Of Salt brings together a range of elements, and not always comfortably. But why should music be comfortable, why should it always be easy, accessible? What’s wrong with discord and dissonance, lumpiness, discomfort? Why, nothing, is the answer. Life is brimming with discord and dissonance, lumpiness, discomfort. And without these elements, this would just be a bland hybrid of dance and ambient. Thankfully, it is so much more. Skin Of Salt isn’t mere mental chewing gum, but something which requires some proper chewing and a slow digestion.

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The Original Magnetic Light Parade – Confusion Reigns / Smoke & Mirrors

Posted: 7 June 2020 in Singles and EPs
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Bearsuit Records – 26th June 2020

Christopher Nosnibor

The latest Bearsuit offering is a single by The Original Magnetic Light Parade, which is a collaboration between Belgian musician, Alexander Stordiau and Edinburgh man, and Bearsuit favourite, Harold Nono.

‘Confusion Reigns’ is surprisingly unweird, at least to begin with, exploring a sort of cinematic synthwave trajectory, a sparse machine drum low in the mix. Then it breaks into something massively bombastic, and it’s faux-epic in tone, sounding as much like someone fiddling with the voice settings on a keyboard, before finally settling on a piano sound and rolling into a space-rock explosion. With about half a dozen passages in all packed into its five-and-a-half minutes, it feels more like a collection of ideas for longer pieces than a single composition. Confusion does indeed reign.

It’s a fitting summary of the now: everything is confused and confusing, especially in the UK, especially in England. I still don’t know under what circumstances I’m supposed to stay at home or meet people, what’s essential or non-essential, and the logic behind any explanations of the changes that seem to be announced by the day seems deeply flawed and downright contradictory, even for the things I think I do know.

Nothing is as it seems and you can’t trust even trusted sources, and counterpart ‘Smoke and Mirrors’ very much hints at this global obfuscation in its title. Who can you trust? What can you trust? Certainly not statistics.

Instrumentally, it brings together acoustic guitar and smoky synths. The transitions are less frequent, resulting in a piece that twists and turns, but flows rather more smoothly. It’s still odd, and angular, just not as brain-bendingly difficult to follow.

And as a set, it’s all good. Just don’t come here looking to make sense of insane times.

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Harold Nono – We’re Almost Home

Posted: 12 March 2020 in Albums
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Bearsuit Records – 20th March 2020

Because I like my shit weird, I’m always thrilled to receive new releases from Bearsuit Records, and Harold Nono’s latest is one of a brace of fresh releases – brimming with weird shit, of course.

The title We’re Almost Home suggests a relaxation, an easing into the home straight. Instead, what Nono delivers is a brain-bending sonic tempest, with ideas lifted from all corners of the planet.

Nono’s straight in with insistent stuttering rhythms that pound systematically over the point as the title intimates, against a jolting japandroid clash of fragmented robotix. Like all of Nono’s previous releases, it’s a whimsical culture clash, stop-start chillout dance grooves are juxtaposed with trilling synths, samples, scratchiness and warping

‘Shaking on an Iron Bed’ is a calamitous crash of wild jazz horns and cymbal bursts that give way to pulping disco with orchestral strikes, while the jazz tones keep on coming. All the ‘what the fuck?’, all the ‘why?’ and all the ‘no need!’ and yet, despite everything, it’s all the reasons Nono is worthy of you ear. It shouldn’t work, and on paper doesn’t work, and even at times in actuality is kind of off the mark, but the transitions are so rapid that it’s doing something else completely different before it’s even registered.

There are moments of Stereolab-like mellow doodling to be found in places, as on ‘Let the Light In (Prince of Darkness)’, heavy dark ambience, as on ‘Ron’s Mental Leap Coach’ and tripped out semi-ambient space electronica, as on ‘The Fall Reprise’. There is oddness and drama, and a whole bunch of abstract glitchiness, and it’s all characteristic of both Nono and Bearsuit. If you’re curious to take a walk on the weird side, then this comes recommended. If you’re not, then you need to expand your horizons, and this is still recommended.

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Harold Nono – We’re Almost Home

Haq – Evaporator

Posted: 7 October 2019 in Albums
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Bearsuit Records – 27th September 2019

Christopher Nosnibor

Edinburgh-based Bearsuit Records has established itself as a reliable source of weird stuff, a large proportion of which comes from Japan, a country renowned for producing some of the most brilliantly bizarre music. Needless to say, I’m a fan, and admire label owner Dave Hillary’s unswerving commitment to giving niche artists a home.

A trilling fairground waltz with stuttering microbeats provides the backdrop to the ethereal vocal on the title track, leading the listener into the weird and wonderful world of Haq, which is a collaborative musical vehicle for Japanese duo N-qia (Nozomi and Takma, the latter of whom is renowned in certain cult circles for his eight albums released under the Serph moniker) and the ultra-prolific Ediburgh based enigma that is Harold Nono.

Evaporator is a quintessential Bearsuit release – meaning, it’s way, way out there, strange and bewildering, in the most otherworldly sense. Evaporator is an album that more or less defines cognitive dissonance. It’s a headfuck, but that’s not a criticism. We need to be challenged: all too often, we’re presented with sonic chewing gum and shrug and think ‘yeah, that’s ok’. Ok is not ok, of course: we’re swimming in a sea of mediocrity and we need to break free of is tireless tide.

It’s all going on – at once – on ‘Dustboy Horrorshow’, which collides dreamy post-rock with pounding double-speed beats before taking a brief turn for the heavy in the midsection, before the industrial grind is dispersed in a ripple of fairy-lit world music to fade. And it only gets weirder and more incongruously juxtaposed from hereon in.

Ballistic beats and floaty mellowness collide, and often, as they explore the space between The Cocteau Twins and the Prodigy and somehow, in their state of dementure, attempt to bridge it by fusion. This shouldn’t work, and in places, it doesn’t, but that’s all the more reason to celebrate their efforts: experimentation and collaboration shouldn’t be about perfection, and even necessarily about the end product. The creative process is what matters.

That said, the end product, weird and baffling as it is, has more than its share of moments, and this five-tacker comes with a bunch of remixes of the EP tracks as well as an alternative mix of ‘Bees in My Feet’ from 2013’s Nocturnals. The approaches to remixing are ide-ranging and varied, and serve to highlight just how eclectic the composite elements of Haq’s original compositions are.

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Haq – Evaporator

Haq – Antics In A Maze EP

Posted: 8 August 2018 in Singles and EPs
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Bearsuit Records – 14th July 2018

Christopher Nosnibor

The Bearsuit philosophy is, to the best of my understanding, essentially built round a l’aissez-faire approach to experimentalism and collaboration. Stuff happens, when it happens, as it happens. Sometimes it happens without input or collaboration. And it’s all fine as long as it’s not mainstream. Truth is, nothing any of the Bearsuit acts could produce in a million lifetimes would ever even hint at mainstream aspirations. The reason I’ve been a personal advocate of the label and its output for a while now is simply because they do what they so, and don’t give a crap about trends, commercialism, or anything else. As I wrote the other day, albeit in a slightly different context: it’s for the love, not the money.

The label’s latest release sees Haq (the alter-ego of another Bearsuit would-be legend, Harold Nono) return. Five years on from the ‘Nocturnals’ album, this EP offers three remixes frm the album, plus two new cuts.

Lead track ‘Antics in a Maze’ moves far beyond the avant-trip-hop leanings of its predecessor and froths with fanciful flights of incongruity, and brims with an air of otherness. Breathy vocals waft over drifting, trilling swathes of gauze-like synth, crossed with bursts of odd electronica, deep dub and driving drum ‘n’ bass. Warped snippets of thee tunes for fictional TV shows and films from the 70s and 80s emerge fleetingly for the ever-shifting compositional aneurysm.

‘Norvell’ is the second new cut: with sonorous, brooding synths and rich, layered strings that sweep and tug at the tear ducts, as well as percussion that simultaneously clatters and thunders, it’s a dissonant and haunting work that straddles industrial, goth and shoegaze, with hints of Cranes and a messed-up air of dark beauty about its detached, haunting evocativeness.

The remixes are varied, in terms of style, interest and significance – but at least they are varied. Senji Niban’s remix of ‘Are You the Elephant’ thumps along insistently, a far cry from the slightly eerie, chilled original, while The Autumna remix of ‘Bees in My Feet’ is but a humming drone that’s elevated above ambience by virtue of maintaining a pitch that’s impossible to ignore, however hard you may try.

There’s nothing ordinary about the music on this EP, and while it’s bewildering at times – as you’d reasonably expect from Bearsuit – it also contains moments of extreme elegance and grace which are spellbinding.

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Harold Nono – Ideeit

Posted: 3 June 2016 in Albums
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Bearsuit Records – BS032 – 9th July 2016

Christopher Nosnibor

Bearsuit mainstay Harold Nono returns – not that he’s ever really been away – and once again, he’s come up trumps – and thankfully, not Donald Trumps. Swinging wildly from rumbling, dark ambience to mellowed-out doodlesome synthesised post-rock, Nono’s latest effort is as inventive as ever. But on this outing, he’s definitely set his sights on sparse scenes: a gentle piano tinkles in the subtle mists which hover and hum through ‘Otosan’,

There’s a sinister undercurrent that intimates ‘sci-fi horror film’ about the atmospheric ‘Atam No Nai Uma Ga Hashiru’: in contrast, ‘I’m Disguised as an Idiot’ sees Japanese traditionalism collide with western glitchtronica, while ‘Unbeaten Brothers and Sisters’ created a darkly atmospheric tension with its fractured samples and beneath-the-radar fear chords.

‘The Saline Revival Show’ is an achingly mournful piece, a sparse violin / cello arrangement that’s brooding, moving, and evocative. The post-rock echoes carry through into the sparse closer, ‘Watashi Wa Ie Ni Kaeritai’, rounding off an intriguing album that is – as you’d reasonably expect from Harold Nono, and as you’d reasonably expect from Bearsuit – difficult to place, but a lot easier to dig.

 

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