Arvo Zylo – Falling Tower, Terrible Fountain (C30, Side of the Sun Recordings)

Arvo Zylo brings us another excellent tape filled with noise from Side of the Sun Recordings. Falling Tower, Terrible Fountain is, from the artist himself, a personal recording experience based somewhat on the Falling Tower tarot card, and indeed the cassette brings a smattering of different sounds, sometimes minimal and sometimes noisily full, that draws the listener into this experience.

Side A’s full-sided “Falling Tower” is a mass of pulsating textures and rhythms, with Arvo Zylo crafting a heavy droning harsh noise track out of various pieces. Industrial loops of machinery and feedback sporadically whir in the background, while swirls of feedback repeat in the forefront along with a melancholy riff. “Falling Tower” approaches cacophony at times, but Arvo Zylo refrains from letting it reach an overblown climax – instead, he allows that industrial clamor to become a drifting texture that hypnotizes as it blends into the track. The amount of noise happening in the focal point – a bit of bass here, the softly exaggerated whine of circuitry there – forces the listener to observe each alternation in the sound.

Side B is actually two tracks, the titular “Terrible Fountain” and “House of God.” “Terrible Fountain” starts as slab of static in a continual loop that makes it sound segmented. That’s only for a few moments, though, and then Arvo Zylo allows it to linger a bit more, along with an open, airy drone in the background. It’s wall-like in nature but it never quite gets there; while mesmerizing, it doesn’t have the textural hold.

“House of God” is more minimal, a track that adds various electronic manipulations and synth tones. Arvo Zylo explores oscillating movement, and the end finds a synth sustaining a note overtop of the other repeating notes. It’s a short piece, but it works well as a follow-up to “Terrible Fountain.”

Falling Tower, Terrible Fountain is a solid release, and Arvo Zylo has proven time and again that his noise is something much deeper than the simple twist and turn of knobs. This tape is like a void, easily sucking the listener into the whir of noise aberrations, and one should attempt to find this tape by contacting punkferret138 AT yahoo.com (since Side of the Sun doesn’t really have a web presence).