Anakrid - UnoDos 2CD

Black Series 31 ? UnoDos (Father/Rapture of the Deep) Ed. Of 400 numbered and signed copies each with an original piece of art by the band.

Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina...with a shimmering heap of home made percussion and a tall cool glass of squelchy tonal blur on the rocks. As promised, the south has risen again and seceded from the corporeal into the astral under the banner of Anakrid. This SC based trio forges with a metaphysical trigonometry, looking deep into the bowels of the ancient, long-form, experimental God-head, and yet turning in a full 30+ compositions, dumping the old skool ?one drone per side? rule. The expansive anatomy of ?Unodos (Father/Rapture of the Deep)? becomes a feverishly writhing, shifting, irresistible and sexy NILF (Noise I?d Like To Fuck). And who doesn?t like get it on when the moon is cascading in and throwing shapes that look like free jazz, while the air is hot with the stench of NWW and the cicadas are buzzing like old SPK?! The neighbours spy the psychedelic outline of the heaving Mauve Sideshow, which causes even the house of love itself to rumble right down to its Konstruktivits. Anakrid makes a passionately focused and dynamic racket. The studio itself is played like a Strad in the hands of a peyote pitched Janos Starker. Crisp layer upon crisp layer of succulent sound goes down sweeter than the sweetest key lime. Anakrid simply reigns, even more than the motorcycle boy?
A 2CD set compiling the self released LPs. "Anakrid is the experimental outlet of Chris Bickel (the raconteur behind In/Humanity, one of the greatest groups of hardcore agitators of the ?90s, and its follow-up, Guyana Punch Line). Here he applies the smashist manifesto against atavistic darkness of the pre-laptop variety, evoking an affected take on Nurse With Wound and their contemporaries aether in more than a few ways. This comparison is particularly apt on ?Father?, recorded with what sounds like a home full of disused instruments, second-hand sound sculpture, and the ideas found on countless cassette-only xpr releases of the ?80s, returning to roost on the mostly empty temple of No Fun style extremity. It?s balanced, rhythmically primal, fairly engaging head music that leverages the occasional reheating of landmark ideas with a refreshing purity of craft wholly missing from the current noise landscape. Rapture of the Deep subtracts the percussive elements, leaving the listener floating in a sea of blue-black death ambience, without any pre-determined boundaries. Song titles and the cover painting of a woman drowning all but spell it out for you, so I?ll spare any further nautical/asphyxiatory metaphors and just inform you that this work leans toward the sedimentary, eternal evil type of drone once practiced by Coil than that airy, Stars of the Lid style, it?s more granular and by side two becomes quite terrifying. It?s eerie, tribal, almost polyrhythmic yet not improvisational in the least. Bickel doesn?t view his music as an excuse to wank off. It is deliberately composed. He eschews the use of conventional instrumentation, preferring found sounds, home-made instruments and pretty much anything that ?makes a sound that can be sculpted and manipulated?. I hear the abstract surrealism of Nurse with Wound or Current 93 in the creepy, industrial soundscapes, but there?s certainly a thread of Stockhausen?s electronic period, though it?s not nearly as mathematical.

Despite being active since 1990, Chris Bickel, who is behind the name Anakrid showed up once in Vital Weekly, with his self-released 'Reality Is Elitist' (see Vital Weekly 391), but he has released a lot more music, on CDRs and LPs. This new double CD compiles two self-released LPs and some bonus tracks from the same sessions. Normally Bickel plays in various punk bands such as In/Humanity, Guyana, Punch Line and Confederate Fagg but for his solo music he does something entirely different. 'Father', the first CD is a nineteen track affair, which brings out the collage man. Bicker has all sorts of sounds (percussion, cheap old tapes, microphones) which he throws together in what seems to be an audio-blender (no, don't look on the internet for this lovely device, I made up the word): sampling his stuff together, adding more electronics in what becomes a wild, hot brew of sound. The influence of Nurse With Wound is never far away in this work. It's wild, even industrial at times, but the musical element is never lost. The second CD in this package is 'Rapture Of The Deep', which takes the material into a different direction. Things happen here in a much more peaceful manner. No wild collages, longer tracks and in general a more electronic approach. It seems as if sound is captured inside an electronic system, locked in rather and from there on things start to live their own life, in that closed system. Here no real Nurse With Wound influence, but rather that of the academics of the fifties and sixties, the era of serious composed electronic music, although Anakrid is not as rigid as the old masters. His form is more free, aiming for dark effects and sounding like a good horror soundtrack. Two different sides of the music of Anakrid, now that's what I call a successful double CD package. Frans de Waard

Bickel fist began experimenting with compositional music in 1989 (with limited cassette-only releases debuting as early as 1990). Those familiar with Bickel?s musical pedigree will note a significant duality in his modes of musical expression. As a dynamic frontman, he?s always been heavily steeped in punk rock, but his solo records consistently veer more towards the esoteric.

Bickel says, ?I got into stuff like that through punk rock, which led me to stuff like Throbbing Gristle, and that actually led me to a lot of 20th century classical.? Bickel points to ?50?s composers like Stockhausen as references to what inspired this form of experimentation. I asked whether fans of his more traditionally ?punk? bands like In/Humanity or Guyana Punch Line would be able to make the leap into appreciating Anakrid, which Bickel says is ?hard to say?, even though he views this music as a logical extension of punk?s ethos: ?I sort of see it as a part of punk rock that has nothing to do with punk rock.?

And listening to it, one certainly would be hard-pressed to make the connection- at least sonically.

Bickel says he has hours and hours of music on tape that he pours over for new ideas: ?A lot of the stuff that I work with is stuff that was recorded to four-track six or seven years ago, and I?ll find maybe a one-second snippet that is really awesome and I?ll sequence that in some way or loop it or manipulate it.? If there is ever a normal instrument audible, it?s certainly not played in an orthodox way.