This is a particularly powerful release for
Burning Star Core, whose effects-laden drones can occasionally get tedious.
Blood Lightning 2007 delivers five pieces within 50 minutes, and each piece has a different sonic color, mood, and texture to offer, making for an unusually dynamic listening experience -- unusual in the noise/drone field, that is. "The Universe Is Designed to Break Your Heart" starts with a fragile vocal loop cutting off abruptly when reaching its end, leaving a half-second gap of silence before starting over. The piece quickly builds up to an embracing drone of slightly sad, mostly disquieted textures. Its sister track, "The Universe is Designed to Break Your Mind," irradiates joy and peacefulness with its organ feedback, despite some deranged mumbling vocals toward the end. These two tracks bookend the "studio" section of the album. "Deaf-Mute Spinning Resonator" is one of two tracks fitted between them. More musique concrète than noise drone, it features an oddly bouncing sound that would make you go crazy if it weren't so entertaining and cleverly treated. The album concludes with a 14-minute track taken from a live performance featuring
C. Spencer Yeh (the man behind
Burning Star Core, if you didn't know, working alone on the studio tracks), Robert Beatty,
Mike Shiflet, and Trevor Tremaine. The sound quality takes a slight dive, but the quartet improvises some passionate and harsh music, and listeners get to hear
Yeh on violin, his main instrument, conspicuously absent from the studio tracks (or too heavily treated to be noticeable).
Blood Lightning 2007 was released by the noise label No Fun Productions in a mini-LP sleeve. ~ François Couture