Skullflower

Meanwhile, Anthony DiFranco (also in Ax and Novatron) had his own project, Ethnic Acid, that released eight cassettes from 1986 to 1988, later summarized on the double-disc Power-Works 1986-88 (Industrial Recollections, 2009).

Anthony DiFranco joined Skullflower for IIIrd Gatekeeper (Headdirt, 1992), contributing to a quantum leap in quality. Several pieces achieve a superb balance of rhythm and sound effects. The macabre android dance Can You Feel It? for panzer bass and chirping guitars is an apt manifesto. Black Rabbit is a pow-wow war dance pierced by sideral guitar distortions. Center Puss is an even more gargantuan hellfeast, with the guitar roaring and regurgitating. Half of the album is one continuous bacchanal timed by tribal drums.
Most pieces sound like invitations to join the party. In a few cases, though, the dance moves to the background and the lead instrument delves into a psychological if brutal art of mood shaping. The guitar's delirious distortion pens the horror show of Larks Tongues. The sustained creepy guitar drones of Saturnalia eventually achieve an almost spiritual intensity. Rotten Sun mixes voices with the funereal bass lines, the carpet bombing of the guitar and the steady martial drumbeats, painting a fresco of life in hell. If Vanadis might be too chaos for the sake of chaos, and therefore loses quite a bit of the other instrumentals' demonic focus, the eleven-minute Godzilla erupts lava and unleashes enough acid to evoke the most painful techniques of torture. The trip closes with the the stoned blues jam Spoiler, that slowly decays into wailing drones.

Obsidian Shaking Codex (RRR, 1993) contains five lengthy pieces. The format itself signaled a change in the making. There is little of the previous album's tribal drumming and little of the wild guitar distortions in Sir Bendalot: just nine minutes of droning chaotic dissonance with horror-industrial overtones. Likewise, Circular Temple is twelve minutes of agonizing guitar distortions with no drums. Crashing Silver Ghost Phallus continues the progression towards a more abstract sound with a concerto for apocalyptic noises, halfway between the soundtrack of an intergalactic journey and a documentary of factory work. The martial drumbeat of the previous album resurfaces in the 15-minute Diamond Bullet, a failed attempt to stage a spoken-word kammerspiel. The 25-minute Smoke Jaguar towers over the rest. It opens with a menacing bass drone that turns into a strong wind of distortions and then grows to become a tornado. It then takes minutes for the tornado to disappear beyond the horizon.

Skullflower also released Xaman (Shock, 1990), the more accessible Last Shot at Heaven (Noiseville, 1993), and Carved Into Roses (VHF, 1994), containing six lengthy jams.

Argon (Freek, 1995), a symphony in four movements featuring Stuart Dennison on percussion, John Godbert on reeds and Russel Smith on guitar, marked another phase transition. Argon I is sheer free-form cacophony like a bunch of drunk wolves howling at the moon and strumming random strings. The guitars duel to the end, each one trying to outdo the other in terms of un-listenable sounds. Argon II (The Golden Saw) is just 17 minutes of sharp drilling noise. Argon III (Each Builds His Own Wall) (Cruising At 31,000 Ft.) is a 30-minute concerto for mind-expanding distortions heaped one on top of the other: screeching brakes on rails, chainsaws cutting lead pipes, trumpeting elephants in the jungle, gurgling sewers, a mob of madmen demolishing their asylum, chimps playing bagpipes, epileptics banging random objects on the floor and scratching glass windows. Skullflower was beginning to compete with noisemeisters such as Birchville Cat Motel and Dead C. The horn fanfare of Argon IV has the irreverent festive quality of an Albert Ayler-esque free-jazz jam except that the blaring and farting horns are attacked by a swarm of chirping and buzzing guitars. Few bands sounded gloriously demented like this.

Skullflower then released the live Adieu All You Judges (Broken Flag, 1995), Infinityland (Headdirt, 1995), one of their heaviest works, Transformer (Sympathy, 1996), one of the calmest, and This is Skullflower (VHF, 1996), possibly a self-parody. Their sound was increasingly stuck in heavy droning space-rock.

Total (which was also the original name of Skullflower) was the "ambient" project of guitarist Matthew Bower, documented on many releases: Beyond The Rim (Majora, 1993), Here, Time Is Space (Majora, 1994), Sky Blue Void (Freek, 1995), Glassy Warhead (Pure, 1995), Exploded Star Sad Servant (Self Abuse, 1995), Tansmusik Der Renaissance (Freek, 1995), Clear Factory (Majora, 1996), Buffin' The Celestial Muffin (Rural Electrification Program, 1997), To Fall Like Cherry Blossoms (American Tapes, 1997), Kaspar Hauser (Metonymic, 1997), Eternity's Beautiful Frontspiece (VHF, 1998), Solid Objects Cast As Goblins (VHF, 2000).

Matthew Bower's side project Hototogisu, mostly a duo with Marcia Bassett of the Double Leopards, released several limited-edition products such as White Wind of Autumn (REP, 2000), Cuckoo Cloudland (Destijl, 2002), Floating Japanese Oof! Gardens Of The 21st Century (Destijl, 2004), Swoon Scream (Heavy Blossom, 2004), Ghosts from the Sun (Heavy Blossom, 2004 - Important, 2005), Brooming Mephific Blast (Esquilo, 2005), Awful Symmetry (Heavy Blossom, 2005), Prayer Rug Exorcism (Heavy Blossom, 2005), Sardonic Wooden Moonlight (Heavy Blossom, 2005), and then Green (Eclipse, 2005), that refined their fusion of heavy metal and white noise, Sculpture Built Upon the Graves (Heavy Blossom, 2006), Some Blood Will Stick (Important, 2006), Chimarendammerung (Destijl, 2006), Robed In Verdigris (Nashazphone, 2007), Spooked Summer (Heavy Blossom, 2007), Under The Rose (Heavy Blossom, 2008), containing just two lengthy noise jams.

Another Matthew Bower project was Sunroof, devoted to a psychotic version of cosmic music on: the double-disc Delicate Autobahns Under Construction (VHF, 2000), featuring John Godbert and Neil Campbell, Found Star Sound (2000), Sad Frog Wind (Giardia, 2001), containing two lengthy jams of ambient music for droning psychedelic guitar, the double-disc Bliss (VHF, 2001), a masterful blend of guitar, electronics and percussion containing Embroidered Birdsong Nearly Meadows, and Cloudz (VHF, 2003), a more rhythmic work closer in spirit to Neu. Rainbow Electric Sabbath (Nature Tape Limb, 2005) contained five untitled pieces recorded in a more primitive manner.

After a hiatus of seven years, Matthew Bower resurrected Skullflower for the impressive Exquisite Fucking Boredom (Tumult, 2003). Its highlight is the four-part super-doom suite Celestial Highway, which is a sort of sequel to Argon. Its overture, Celestial Highway I, simply repeats a hard-rock riff and a pow-wow drumbeat for almost 13 minutes. Celestial Highway II takes 14 minutes to morph the guitar riff, still propelled by the same beat. Celestial Highway III increases the noise, but it's basically more of the same until it dissolves like galactic dust. However, Celestial Highway IV harkens back to the dense dissonant drones of Obsidian Shaking Codex, with additionally a bouncing quality reminiscent of videogames and slot-machines that becomes progressively more and more cohesive. It's the fourth movement that redeems the first three from their utterly monotonous dynamics.
The other two pieces on the album are mediocre, but Saturn is notable as an electronic version of Skullflower's classic droning sound.

Orange Canyon Mind (tUMULT, 2004 - Crucial Blast, 2005) was another hyper-noisy psychedelic freak-out. The cosmic distortions of Starry Wisdom, the harsh hiss of Annihilating Angel and the dense magma of Forked Lightning sound more indulgent than ever, and now even a bit amateurish. They sounded more accomplished when Skullflower was in fact the project of an amateur.
The best, or at least most dynamic, part of the album is represented by the epileptic voodoobilly Orange Canyon Mind and the gritty drones of Vampires Breath (over pow-wow drum beat). Meanwhile, Ghosts Ice Aliens is another attempt a` la Saturn to "electronify" Skullflower's sound, and Goat Of A Thousand Young is his first successful return to Argon's free-form noise, now bordering on musique concrete.

The noise further increased on Tribulation (Crucial Blast, 2006) reaching a point of sheer feral brutality. Bower found his inspiration again in Lost In The Blackened Gardens Of Some Vast Star, which is but one long modulated massive distortion. Dying Venice is less visceral but boasts a whirlwind of chirping and drilling dissonances. Tribulation unleashes an even thicker avalanche of noise but it also lets a distant melody filter through it. The voice is mixed with the screaming instruments in Silver Stars Rot Mindlessly, but drowns into a vortex of industrial clangor. Increasing the intensity of the dissonances, Void Of Roses flirts with the apocalypse at extremely high beats-per-minute. In The Depths Of The Stagnant Pond, instead, slowly but methodically buries the music into an abyss of senseless distortions. This Skullflower album sets in motion one atonal hell, the second best one after Argon. In the following years and decade many would attempt to match the same manic droning euphoria, but few would even come close to it.

Sunroof's double-disc Silver Bear Mist (VHF, 2005) is an ambitious summa of noise music, from driving space-rock to ebullient psychedelic pop to indulgent white noise to acid-rock jams that sometimes sound like cacophonous parodies of Pachelbel's canon.

Sunroof's progression towards a wall of noise continued on Panzer Division Lou Reed (VHF, 2007), that is basically Matthew Bower's equivalent of Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music, the heaviest and most cacophonous of Sunroof's albums, particularly the colossal two-movement Slew Plateaus, but also the shorter and intense Etoile Sauvage and Stairways And Terraces Descending One Beyond Another In A Stupefying State Of Exhaustion.

Abyssic Lowland Hiss (Heavy Blossom, 2007) documents a live Skullflower performance.

Matthew Bower opted for chaos and violence again on Skullflower's Desire For A Holy War (Utech, 2008), a vortex of dense galaxies of organized noise.

The triple-disc Circulus Vitiosus Deus/ Circle Of Serpents/ Valley Of Scorpions (Turgid Animal, 2008) offered three hours of hypnotic loops, black metal, dark ambience, industrial music, and so forth, almost a summary of everything that Skullflower had tried over the years. Because of its hodgepodge of styles, Taste The Blood Of Deceiver (Not Not Fun, 2008) sounded like a fourth part of the triple-CD.

La Noche De Walpurgis (2008) and the live Pure Imperial Reform (Turgid Animal, 2008) continued to indulge in free-form guitar noise.

Malediction (Second Layer, 2009), another of Bower's most extreme works, contains only three pieces. The 24-minute A'arab Zaraq - Ravens Of The Burning Of God is the usual tornado of guitar distortions, except that this time it is coupled with storming drums. To Bower's credit it is not easy to maintain that level of madness for 24 minutes. It's a tidal wave of potentially deadly riff that never coalesce. Somebody is screaming in the background but it's hard to hear him, this too an existential metaphor.
The drums are even more hysterical on Ghost Bitch Of Black Flame, that begins mimicking a swarm of bees and that also include acid vocals buried in the ebullient mix.
The 17-minute Drenched In Moonsblood (Waxing Gibbous) relents a bit, and at this slower speed the suspenseful, melodramatic dimension comes out.
Extreme uninterrupted radiating noise had become routine for Bower, beating Japanese noisecore at their own game.

The EP Vile Veil (Noiseville, 2009) contains yet another lengthy noise-jam, Vinum Sabbati. The way it is mixed makes it sound like a colossal scream before the "swarm of bees" effect becomes colossal.

Bower and cellist Samantha Davies also formed Voltigeurs that debuted with Voltigeurs (Turgid Animal, 2009) and Tentacle Rape (2009).

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