vok second phase, part one (cdrx2 and c-20 from hospital recordings)
being released from hospital, the packaging is pretty elaborate, although i have to mention that the packaging rendered the cds nearly unlistenable. the two cdrs and cassette come in a three-fold homemade plastic envelope, across which is written "vok" in huge grey stenciled letters and the whole thing is secured with a thick rubber strap (way too thick to be called a rubber band). the track listing is contained on four pieces of grey paper which fold out to make an x shape and the two discs are in the first and third sleeves (the cassette in the middle) against grey painted slips of cardboard. that bit is what scuffed up the cds so that my stereo couldn't play them, luckily the error correction on my playstation could keep up with them. which means i can tell you how it sounds- in three words: harsh, with surprises. there's lots of nasty cold digital noise, lots of static, and then there's a bit of music. this disc in parts takes 1-99 as it's source, with various "pulp" reworkings, as well as "moment" tracks and sample manipulation. repetition is used to good effect (mostly), with subtle changes over time; the end of the first track 'vok 23-28 (pulp)' makes me think of a wheel grinding over rough terrain and rather than being worn smooth becomes more jagged and abrasive. the music bit comes in track two, 'moment1', with a reverbed synth line chirping along for a while before it's consumed by it's own static and echoes, resurfacing and again descending into chaos. the synth stuff is pretty random so it never really strays too far into actual music. if 'moment2' has anything to do with it's predecessor, i can't hear it. it stutters and twitches through a chunky bit reduction-type distortion sounding like the apocalypse as interpreted by atari, a bit too mid-range in the frequencies for the most part to ever sound really menacing. 'moment3' seems to pick up exactly where 2 left off, so much so that i wonder if perhaps someone forgot to set the cd burner so there wasn't a gap.  anyway, just when  2 ended the sound started to get a bit more high end, some flanger sweeps float through and the whole mess is pulsing and throbbing like a sore tooth. it's like a sick cloud, a big moldy pink tumor hanging out of your brain pan over your eyes; not pretty but it makes you want to sleep at the same time. with 'vok23-43' things get more evil, more high frequency and without the constant fuzz obscuring everything, more variance in volume. recognizable bits of 1-99 pop in as everything swirls around your head and distorts into crunching buzz, mutates into something else. good thing it does some mutating too, since this track is almost thirty minutes long! while it does change every once in a while it also has repeating elements to tie it together, both of which keep it interesting through it's length for the most part. '3rd phase (source material voice)', if the parenthesis are to be believed, shows the extent of the processing that goes into these tracks, as it doesn't sound anything like it was originally a voice. the sound is heavily reverbed, deep deep crashes and washes of sound and brief high tones. it's also rather short, and closes the first disc nicely. disc two begins with 'moment1.5', continuous feedback tones and static with  an unintelligible vocal loop dancing off in space. ends with thirty seconds of silence. 'of cd packaging and destructive fingers' starts of with a sound that, given the title, i'll have to say is someone scraping their fingernails across the ridged bit of a jewel case. it gives the track a very different sound than has been heard on this release up to now; beforehand everything was completely removed from reality. the sound is buried in reverb and crashes, at points sounding like a machine chugging and clicking away inside a large metal room before the whole thing is eaten by delay feedback. the title of the third track ('of rkanling') has me pretty well baffled; is it after a person named r kanling? a musician maybe? i can't really comment on this track as the sound kept cutting out because the cd was too scuffed here, although the jagged starts and stops of the fuzzy static and deep background crashes ended up sort of interesting. still, it wasn't intentional (unless the packaging was specifically designed to scuff the cd as some sort of conceptual statement, as suggested by a friend of mine*) so i have to give a sour face to that track, especially since it took about twenty-three minutes to listen to it where it should have take sixteen. maybe i should mail vok a recording of the cd packaging remixed version? thankfully things cleared for the last couple of minutes so 'vok10-14 (pulp)' was skip-free. this track features low end fuzz and some high frequency sounds arrowing through, a dense shifting bed of noise. 'vok3+4 (pulp)' starts out much more dynamic, with chunky abrupt noises which then shift to walls of slowly shifting layered feedback, fuzzing out as the sound saturates. it ends with a midrange digital storm sounding a lot like 'moment2'. the final track is 'oh oh when the saints (source:fats)' (i'm guessing the first "oh" is supposed to be an "of"). this track actually sounds like a crazy noise hoedown or a polka or something, which really sets it off from the darker feel of the other tracks. so what's the final word on the cds? a bit overlong and a bit slow but not necessarily bad; if you like then get it, but it isn't a good place to start out. and ask for the cds to be packaged separately for the trip; once they make it though the mail it'll be safe to stash them in the cool packaging. anyway, on to the c-20, entitled pet milk company. given the fact that this is titled at all, as well as the fact that the accompanying sleeve is completely different from the cd packaging i'd guess that this was intended to be released separately (i kind of remember reading something to that effect somewhere also). the sleeve has a yellow design on it that looks like it was made from a stamp coated with thin caramel, along with blue-grey stamped text. it has two ten minute remixes, both done by projects of dominick fernow (window cleaning by ian and prurient). both tracks fall under the harsh noise genre umbrella, although they take rather different approaches. 'windowvok' starts of with deep distorted rumbling which seperates like a curtain being pulled back to reveal the chirping synth of 'moment1', which it then procedes to slowly destroy with more distortion and wobbly speed shifts. this actually seems to be louder than the cd, probably due to much more low end. it also feature some twisted, distorted drum machine, a piercing sped up metal percussion recording (provided by nuclear pig shit, according to the sleeve notes) and cd manipulation, making for a really busy, interesting track. the 'prurvok' side is even more chaotic due to abrupt starts and stops and shifts in volume, seeming to emulate a the skipping of 'of rkanling'. although i liked the previous side better because of the variety of sounds this one certainly kept me on edge while i was listening to it. makes for an interesting companion piece to second phase.





*that would be the esteemed evc,
        just in case he's reading this