BlRR Recommended! LP ed. of 350 numbered copies. CD ed. coming 2007 on BlRR. Dusted Magazine "Two new recordings have surfaced this year from Anakrid, the experimental outlet of Chris Bickel (the raconteur behind In/Humanity, one of the greatest groups of hardcore agitators of the ‘90s, and its follow-up, Guyana Punch Line). Here he applies the smashist manifesto against atavistic darkness of the pre-laptop variety, evoking an affected take on Nurse w/ Wound and their contemporaries in the mailorder aether in more than a few ways. This comparison is particularly apt on Father, recorded with what sounds like a home full of disused instruments, second-hand sound sculpture, and the ideas found on countless cassette-only xpr releases of the ‘80s, returning to roost on the mostly empty temple of No Fun style extremity. It’s balanced, rhythmically primal, fairly engaging head music that leverages the occasional reheating of landmark ideas with a refreshing purity of craft wholly missing from the current noise landscape. Fans of This Heat, Test Dept., and early Controlled Bleeding will know what I’m talking about here. Rapture of the Deep subtracts the percussive elements, leaving the listener floating in a sea of blue-black death ambience, without any pre-determined boundaries. Song titles and the cover painting of a woman drowning all but spell it out for you, so I’ll spare any further nautical/asphyxiatory metaphors and just inform you that this work leans toward the sedimentary, eternal evil type of drone once practiced by Coil than that airy, Stars of the Lid style; it’s more granular and by side two becomes quite terrifying. Anakrid has two more records in the can, one coming out on Beta-Lactam Ring in ’07, an"

Since the unexpected demise of Newgenics (a heavily-hyped, short-lived amalgamation of notable local musicians that put out one seven-inch on Level Plane Records), Columbia, South Carolina’s Chris Bickel has kept a low profile. Well, low for Chris Bickel. Bickel still has a weekly karaoke stint, Mr. B’s Goodtime Karaoke Explosion, and he has reunited sporadically with his infamous gay metal cohorts in Confederate Fagg, as well as fronting a Motley Crue tribute band. But, as far as the public release of original music is concerned, Bickel has been uncharacteristically unprolific the last few years.

All of that is about to change, as Bickel has just put out the first of an open-ended series of extremely limited edition, vinyl-only releases from his experimental pseudonym, Anakrid (the name of which stems from an ex-girlfriend’s mangled pronunciation of Arachnid, which Bickel found ironically amusing since she prided herself in her pedantic, flowery vocabulary). Bickel fist began experimenting with compositional music in 1989 (with limited cassette-only releases debuting as early as 1990). Those familiar with Bickel’s musical pedigree will note a significant duality in his modes of musical expression. As a dynamic frontman, he’s always been heavily steeped in punk rock, but his solo records consistently veer more towards the esoteric.

Bickel says, “I got into stuff like that through punk rock, which led me to stuff like Throbbing Gristle, and that actually led me to a lot of 20th century classical.” Bickel points to ‘50’s composers like Stockhausen as references to what inspired this form of experimentation. I asked whether fans of his more traditionally “punk” bands like In/Humanity or Guyana Punch Line would be able to make the leap into appreciating Anakrid, which Bickel says is “hard to say”, even though he views this music as a logical extension of punk’s ethos: “I sort of see it as a part of punk rock that has nothing to do with punk rock.”

And listening to it, one certainly would be hard-pressed to make the connection- at least sonically. This first Anakrid LP, Father, is anything but easy to describe. It’s eerie, tribal, almost polyrhythmic yet not improvisational in the least. Bickel doesn’t view his music as an excuse to wank off. It is deliberately composed. He eschews the use of conventional instrumentation, preferring found sounds, home-made instruments and pretty much anything that “makes a sound that can be sculpted and manipulated”. I hear the abstract surrealism of Nurse with Wound or Current 93 in the creepy, industrial soundscapes, but there’s certainly a thread of Stockhausen’s electronic period, though it’s not nearly as mathematical.

Bickel says he has hours and hours of music on tape that he pours over for new ideas: “A lot of the stuff that I work with is stuff that was recorded to four-track six or seven years ago, and I’ll find maybe a one-second snippet that is really awesome and I’ll sequence that in some way or loop it or manipulate it.” If there is ever a normal instrument audible, it’s certainly not played in an orthodox way.

Realizing that the audience for such challenging music is limited to say the least, Bickel has only pressed 350 copies of Father (featuring one of his notoriously “finished” paintings on the cover) on pristine 180 gram vinyl with no plans to repress. He has previously used grant money from USC to fund his Anakrid releases, but he plans to fund this vinyl series himself as long as he can afford to.

For those anxious for Bickel’s less abstruse musical endeavors, he plans to fly out to San Diego in August to reunite with In/Humanity guitarist Paul Swanson “just to see what happens.” Originally, Bickel and Swanson were asked to play as In/Humanity at a music festival in Philadelphia in late summer, but things fell through. Bickel is excited about the prospect of playing with his estranged friend again after so many years of no communication, but like anything in Bickel’s illustrious career predicting a normal outcome is ill-advised.

Outer Space Gamelan With apologies in advance to Anakrid's Chris Bickel, I was only able to review one of the two records he sent because I, uh, fell asleep for a large part of the evening. So you'll have to come back soon/tomorrow for part two. For now I'll talk a bit about "Father", an album put out last year by Bickel's noise project, also featuring Rob Cherry and C. Neil Scott. I actually did a degree of research this time around (you may recall I reviewed a tape by Anakrid on Black Horizons a couple months back) and did you know that the Chris Bickel behind this group is the very same one behind hardcore/power violence (and smashism!) luminaries In/Humanity and the Guyana Punch Line? Huh! So this is where he spends his time now. You learn a new thing every day. Not sure what happened specifically to cause Bickel to eschew the punk scene in lieu of the noise one, but "Father" (just like the aforementioned "Live July 4th" tape)reassures that the switch was not in vain. Bickel also runs the label that put this out, Stereonucleosis Records, and he seems to be in the midst of issuing as many of these stylistically-similar-looking LPs as he can afford to, each boasting a painting of his on the cover and a collage of curious looking art and photos on the back corresponding to each track. They're also limited to 350 copies per, and they're hand numbered too.
I initially played "Father" without really looking at the backside of the sleeve and thought they were just two side-long pieces. But then it hit that there are indeed track divisions on the record, although they're still incredibly subtle and everything flows together pretty well seamlessly. I didn't even associate song titles with specific parts of the record, so I ain't goin' out like that. The record does have some bizarre sounding song titles that only make a touch more sense (if that) when put into context with the sounds they sync up with: "Nympholepsy in Theory Not Practice", "House Band for the Grand Guignol Ritual Floggings Seminar", "Bloody Kneecapse", "Trio for Piano, Saxophone and LP Record", "The Stumphole Nights" and so on. As for the music? Well not at all what you'd expect from a post-hardcore (as in POST-hardcore, not post-hardcore...nevermind) dude. At least I was expecting maybe some kind of ragged, Wolf Eyes basement beer can jam, although I don't know why exactly since "Live July 4th" wasn't anything like that but "Father" is quite the opposite indeed, quite the academic record if I may say so! As soon as the needle hits you're dropped down into the middle of an installation-in-progress-like post-industrial industrial orchestral construction, veering to and fro from sonics influenced by the likes of Einsturzende Neubauten to Non to Nurse with Wound to Karlheinz Stockhausen to Atrax Morgue and all the way back. Apparently the sounds found here were recorded both at Anakrid Studio and indeed at a Cherrydome Sound Installation, so it sounds like Bickel is rummaging through and putting together choice cuts of the tapes from these outings and putting them together rather well. "Father" is almost obsessively composed and coherant...there are surprisingly rhythmic sessions featuring fully-formed loops of musique concrete brain-scaling or catchy synth gulps of bashed electronica. There's a whole platter of unidentifiable sounds swooping in and out of the mix but two of my favorites occur on the first side, an interjected sample of converted seated gallery types going nutso and ribbons of sax gargling at the heart of a mechanical implosion about halfway in. I liked the first side better than the other which was even more subtle, rhythmic and hynotizing and was definitely part of the reason why I was conked out so early in the evening. There are more than a couple moments that also hint at somebody manning turntables throughout the record but I really couldn't tell you for sure - alls I know is that there's a clutch of wholly organic sounds churned up here by wholly unorganic minds. Definitely an interesting, surprising, baffling, impressive LP and has me looking forward to finally getting to laying down the other wax sent my way. I love a record that leaves me scratching both my chin AND my groi- wait, nevermind.
I understand 2007 will see this album and the other (called "Rapture of the Deep") get CD reissues through the excellent Beta-Lactam Ring label, alongside a whole new Anakrid disc for said label. Very interesting. Bickel and his project are certainly worth keeping an eye on and you may want to hurry up and score one of these limited to 350 jobs before it's too late and you're kicking yourself for not buying the originals when you had a chance. Don't say I didn't warn you!