So
this is my first time hearing of these artists, but Left Hand Cuts off the
Right does have a split out there with Timothy C. Holehouse, who I reviewed a
cassette for recently (Which was yet another split, and by the by the Left
Hand/TCH split CD will be reviewed here eventually as well) and if you take
even just a second to look up Nacht und Nebel you’ll realize just how full this
catalog is as well. These are two
artists I am just so very eager to dive into and this is perhaps the best way
to do just that.
Left
Hand Cuts off the Right (which may or may not be in reference to the movie “Idle
Hands”, as I forget which hand goes rogue in that movie) starts us off with two
songs that make Side A. There are
instruments being used here, but I cannot quite place them and it does kind of
bother me that I can’t pinpoint what this is exactly but it is beautiful. It’s like a xylophone only it is quite
chaotic and then it does turn into that Kung Fu Panda sound before the end of
the first part. There are some moments
as well of spatial psychedelia, so it is strange to think of that as coming out
of a xylophone but it is what it is.
The
second track has more of a flurry of wind chimes sound and I’m sure there is an
instrument being used here that I’m just not familiar with by name, but what I
can imagine is all that matters. Do you
believe in ghosts? Actually, it’s
irrelevant as to whether or not you do because this would be mostly imagining
as this music creates a picture so they don’t have to be real for you to get
this.
I
just picture an old, isolated house- like the one they find in that movie “The
Happening”- that happens to have wind chimes on its porch. And as these ghosts dance around, the wind
chimes move and create a rhythm and thus develop songs so pure that no mere
mortal could touch them. Perhaps then,
that best sums up the efforts of Left Hand as being unworldly.
[Editor’s
Note: I don’t know why exactly, but I prefer to use the abbreviation “Left Hand”
as opposed to “LHCOTR” or some other string of letters. I’m not sure if this is how it is normally
done, but it is what I am going to do]
Nacht
und Nebel is on Side B and there is only track there. It’s a bit strange what you can hear here because
it’s static and whirrs but also there is a slight hum and just overall the
sounds seem to be coming from outerspace.
As the static slips through like some forgotten radio station, I can
only think of this as being a transmission through AM/FM by an alien life
form. I know I rarely listen to the radio, but
imagine if we were about to be invaded and the transmission as such were to interrupt
NPR. Then you’d kind of get a feel as
to what this offering from Nacht und Nebel sounds like.
I’d
really like to put this track from Nacht und Nebel (Which is German for “Night
and Fog”) onto the radio at random, without warning or explanation, and see how
people react. Especially if you threw
it into the mix on a pop station the results could be well worth the hacking of
radio frequencies (ala Christian Slater in “Pump Up the Volume”)
If
you need any other reason to think you might enjoy these two wonderful artists
and the sounds that they create, just listen to it because I said so
dammit.
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