MO*TE / WORTH CS

New split cassette from two harsh noise artists who should need no introduction. Mo*Te has been spawning unsettled harsh noise from Saitama, Japan, since the mid-1990s, a unique voice even among the abundance of artists of the time. Since resurrecting Mo*Te in 2012 Fumiyuki Nagura has continued in that same turgid style with intermittent cassette releases and also had his early work compiled by Industrial Recollections and Audio Dissection for a 2019 boxset. His two tracks here are especially mean, a malignancy coursing through the material for a focus and frustration unlike any previous work.

Worth adds another collection of splayed and restless noise to Will VanGorder’s impressive discography, after recent releases on Total Black and Nefarious Activities. There’s an immediate connection to Fumiyuki’s own motivations and tendencies, the tracks never shaking their debt to the mid-1990s noise underground, lingering melancholia, and the tension between creator and equipment.

Edition of 75 copies, packaged in mesh, wire and printed parts as my tribute to the Mo*Te/Cracksteel ‘Brain Storm’ cassette released by Fumiyuki Nagura’s Uncut label in 1996, one of many amazing packaging works the label crafted.