A Handful Of Dust - Now Gods, Stand Up For Bastards/The Philosophik Mercury

Misfiring double salvo from atonal Antipodeans

“I will show you fear in a handful of dust,” wrote TS Eliot in The Waste Land, the poem which gave this group its name. Well, there’s a hell of a lot to fear within the sprawling cacophonies generated here by the band’s core duo of Bruce Russell and Alastair Galbraith, both stalwarts of New Zealand’s free noise community.

This double-disc reissue of two limited and long out-of-print works is compiled from a series of live performances between 1993 and 1995 and ably showcases A Handful Of Dust’s vociferous feedback squalls. Sounding like the most out-there improvisations of Russell’s other concern, The Dead C, if hijacked by the sturm und drang kinetics of Fushitsusha’s ferocious feedback fissures, these wild excursions are not for the weak of spirit or nerve. Unfortunately, however, the music never attains the sun-kissed bliss of the former unit, nor reaches the otherworldly summits inhabited by Keiji Haino’s mob. Rather, behind the cold, unrelenting barrage is a paucity of depth and texture which, given the personnel involved, is more than a little depressing.

No Fun Productions | NFP 34 (2-CD)

Reviewed by Spencer Grady
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