Arvo on Feedback Themed Net Compilation

A track by Arvo called "Chiral Component" is on a new feedback themed net compilation also featuring Government Alpha, Thirdorgan, RedSK, Guilty C., and Elizabeth Veldon. This track incorporates layers of radio feedback direct from his radio show.

"333" Reviewed at Rottenmeats

http://rottenmeats.blogspot.com/2012/03/arvo-zylo-333.html

The first track Quicksand Eggs of a beaten Pathos clocks in at around 30mins, starts off like the Residents at their most jovial… a comedy of bendy melodica that falls over into full on brutalism bullied in percussive kicks and hints of piano storms… It’s a baptism of fire, a swarm of digital insects gnawing at your grey matter, but your skull isn’t pummelled for too long before your endurance is rewarded with a drone bed of sinister Neubauten-esque DIY ‘s and hammered piano amputations… Some great sequenced candy follows, eking out ill-omens, organ lines thrown over grumbling discomfort… mad trebly can openers hooking at the debris like those red roosters dancing over a post nuclear diorama on the back cover… that reverbed intensity and smashing percussion is something else… quasi glints of a goose stepping clout, like some digitally distressed hybrid of Test Dept and Laibach… breaking away in an unpredictable feast of drum patterns and textural quarrel, chugging out those asymmetrical highs and BPM runaways … It's as if the band Ruins has been replaced by a dominion of broken robotics and sputtering dot matrixes and cattle prodded into spastic action…

Ideas flash by at a bewildering speed, everything evolves with amazing fluidity, spurs off in freshly inspired directions... never for one minute remotely boring... at one point Arvo even seems to be redefining drum and bass in fist fighting billiards and Wurlitzer panel punch… This is a bit like those Venetian Snares but way more berserk with the tempo, and homicidal in the collisions.

The second track Deadbeat deluxe is as possessed as the first, a mad assemblage of avant mangled hilarity and butt slapped S&M with some tasty Nintendoed Kraftwerk, propping up what sounds like a shoulder smashed garage door before it slips into all out industrialised glee … An intensity that’s later cut back in sparse percussion, only to launch into a junkyard techno of mortar beat and cracking schism … further machine gunned into a grainy post existence of unrelenting ear knives … cut-up in a mud slapped finale of punched hydraulics some 16(ish)mins later.

The last track Plasthma, continues the sequenced mania… strange wreckage indeed that rips through your ear in shrill-like varieties, only to fall back into that Residents avant classical vibe that started the album off.

This will either leave you with a splitting headache or a humongous grin... but I swear somewhere in this albums 59 mins I heard multiple futures...

New Review of "333" on Heathen Harvest

http://heathenharvest.org/2012/03/04/arvo-zylo-333/

Written by: Sage
Artist: Arvo Zylo
Title: 333
Label: No Part of it
Cat. #: None
Format: Pro CD-R

Genre: Industrial / Noise / Experimental

01) Quicksand Eggs of a Beaten Pathos
02) Deadbeat Deluxe
03) Plasthma

Arvo Zylo is one of those few humble souls who manages to go all out with his artistic integrity, pushing what he does into every realm of his life. When he’s not creating his unique brand of rhythmic/experimental noise, he’s putting together live performances or interviews with unheard of names and prominent figures. When he’s not doing that, he’s writing about other people’s music. When he’s not writing about music, he’s writing about SOMETHING. This guy is always creating and, much like his music, it has order and purpose even through it’s chaotic structure and surreal disposition. Zylo hails from Chicago where even his work at WLUW-FM 88.7 allows for him to reach out his creative fingers and deal with music (and non-music) on a daily basis. This doesn’t even begin to address his other project, Mister Fuckhead, or his live appearances such as the Dead Audio Festival 2010. There’s something to be said about the underappreciation that people like this receive — they kill themselves, not just for their art, but for other’s art as well, but it’s all that experience that makes what they creat that much stronger.

The breed of industrial noise that Zylo creates is unique in both its rhythmic allure and also it’s ability to be both incredibly intense but not overly harsh. 333 opens up with “Quicksand Eggs of a Beaten Pathos” which opens up with a carnival-esque melodic line that ends up evolving slowly and steadily over a minimal beat before eventually collapsing into a chaotic stream of disruptive and brutal noise. This onslaught of distorted electronics is only tamed by eventual percussive accents and a minimal melodic line created out of various singular piano fragments that are eventually nearly swallowed by an ominous, gradually building drone at the bottom end of the track. The consumption never quite occurs though and instead the bottom drops back out and we’re led back full-circle to the carnival style of the opening with some powerful industrial influences acting as percussive elements. The carnival sound eventually drops out too and all we’re left with is this disturbing, eventually bombastic death industrial sound that eventually flat-lines as the track quickly fades out only to come back to life as an entirely new entity that has enough character and duration to stand as its own track, but has probably been included as a second chapter of the same track to keep with the theme of “3″. It’s this formula that Zylo follows through the three tracks found on “333″ that make up the bulk of his style. Strong old-school industrial influences and minimal percussive textures, various rhythmic and experimental sound segments, some slight melodic synth-play and some oddly psychedelic moments that are hinted at by the album artwork.

The five-minute mark of “Deadbeat Deluxe” is a great example of the psyched-out aspect of this release with another playful rhythmic melody that progressively abstracts and builds intensity just to overwhelmingly collapse as in the track previous in an onslaught of industrial noise and disruptive experimental moments between beats. Even a danceable interlude moment approaches at the 11-minute mark of this track which came absolutely out of left field, but somehow also wasn’t entirely unexpected. The fact is that the bulk of “333″ sounds remarkably authentic and natural — or as natural as an electronic release can be. Where much music today can be forced and seem to be created out of the artist’s need to create something within the borders and regulations of something they love, Zylo’s work flows so well, not just between sections and tracks, but between entirely different genres of electronic music, that it comes across as a literal part of who he is. Of course, there is only a certain percentage of truth to this realization as electronic music with structure in any form takes time and focus to create, it can’t just jump forth from your fingertips like a guitar melody or poetry from your lungs, but that doesn’t change anything. Though the 59 minutes that make up this release may have only slightly overstayed their welcome, being the only source of negative reactions, “333″ never leaves your bored or looking at the clock. Segments are always evolving and moving towards their next progression, but any work of personal art has the ability to wear on you leading up to an hour’s duration.

The CD-R is pro-printed and comes in a jewel case with a two-sided insert. The art itself is as chaotic and strange as the music itself and blends yellows, reds and oranges with purple hues, but may lead you to believe that the psychedelic textures found in “333″ are stronger than they actually are.

You can catch Zylo on Chicago-area radio, as mentioned, on WLUW-FM 88.7 hosting “The Delirious Insomniac Freeform Radio Show” as “Arvo Fingers” every Monday night / Tuesday morning from midnight until 3:59 AM.

Rating: 4.5/5

"Saint Street" reviewed at Vital Weekly

I want to be clear that not all of this material was written prior to knowing about noise, but I think it's a good review anyway.

ARVO ZYLO - SAINT STREET (CDR by No Part of It)
I have had long discussions with Arvo about Australian Sheep rolling over cattle grids. That is the 'new' way of wearing scarves which seems to have taken the UK (and probably the world) by storm - folded in half and then ends put through the loop - and they mentioned 'morphic resonance' to explain the fact that the behavior had spread so rapidly – here perhaps in relation to noise? Or the Jackson Pollock Formica tables of the 1950s. Just in case anyone thinks this is a performative review, the calculus was either invented or discovered allegedly simultaneously by Leibniz and Newton. Zylo claims no prior knowledge of noise before creating these works, “but from a reckless abandon that resulted from an absolute failure at making electronic music”, which is one of the most precise definitions of noise I’ve read recently. Though the signification of the calculus was
fairly definitive, noise is not, so arriving at it, like the blank canvas can be via a dead logic, or sublime mysticism. Good noise – which escapes “goodness” can be so regarded, as a mystical sublimity or a dead logic, as both philosophic and non-philosophics, as a chain of difference, and repetition of not the same in the same as a signifier without a signified. Some might find these works (Saint Street) as sublime metaphysics or music physics, as a logic of abandonment of music into a Kierkegaardean sickness unto death or a Nietzschean overcoming (of music), or failure of communication, or a nihil, similar to but not IMO noise, in these protoforms which collide and collapse. The ten tracks are of shear non-musical invention, no matter their origin they claim and demand to be listened to, as a destruction of music, more an imaginative and authentic act of existenz than the cooler essence less existence of existential noise. Remarkable works. (jliat)

http://www.vitalweekly.net/819.html