Emeralds, Pain Jerk

Special limited edition CD to celebrate the 2009 Tour of Ohio-giants of drone Emeralds and savage noise-makers Pain Jerk. "Ohio's Emeralds cross swords with the fearsome Pain Jerk on the consistently strong No-Fi imprint, contributing one recording each. The two pieces compliment one another beautifully, though you'd imagine the two acts to make uneasy bedfellows: Emeralds' half-hour of blissful analogue motion ('Landlocked') faces off against the grotesquely noisy 'Beserker' (a "noise/voice/aktion showdown" according to its author, Pain Jerk), but it all fits together brilliantly, with the former's stately washes of vintage synthesizer and delay-saturated guitar lowering your heart rate to the point where the latter's skull-shattering din seems all the more powerful. They're both incredibly successful compositions/improvisations in their own right (and the Emeralds piece alone would be worth the price of admission) but together they constitute an album that far transcends the 'merch stand filler' factor that tends to characterise tour CDs. Excellent." Boomkat