The Industrial Noise of 1.5.6

Noise with rhythm. That is pretty much what music is (along with melody, timbre, blah blah blah). Noise with rhythm is what the band 1.5.6 is.

A one man act, consisting of Adel Souto of Feast of Hate and Fear, 1.5.6 falls in an interesting place musically. It’s dark, somber percussion noise music, kin to early Test Dept., Crash Worship and the like. They’ve even been referred to as “an evil drum circle in a junkyard.” That’s an adequate description. What Adel has created with 1.5.6 is too noisy to be background music but melodic, balanced and rhythmic enough to never annoy (if you like this kind of music). The music he creates is all organic sounds captured using a field recorder. He mixes audio of subways, frogs, screams, whispers, glass and who knows what else into a dark rhythmic beat.

The song “Refute the Refrain” is a 3 minute loop of steady, rhythmic bass beat (made by I dunno what) with some high pitched crashed and clanks. Sure, it sounds like non-musical noise when described right? The song is rather hypnotic though. It’s rhythmic trance pulls you in. The track “past / present / future” is similar and combines frogs sounds (or maybe crickets), rhythmic drumming (sounds like someone hitting a large pipe) and clanking.

The track “Appearance of Pan” has ghostly whispers, bass sound clanking and high pitch jingling all wrapped up in a creepy, dark sound. It could easily work as a background audio track to the horror video game Silent Hill. As the song progresses, it speeds up in tempo which adding tension and more creepiness.

Going the opposite direction, the track “An Unbelievable Delete” has no “noise” to it. Meaning it’s all just a deep, slightly eery and very tribal sounding bass like beat. Rather ambient and soothing as a background track to listen to while working.

All of Adel’s work on 1.5.6 reminds me very much of the older work done by C17H19NO3 or perhaps Caspar Brötzmann (minus guitars). 1.5.6 is dark and moody noise music. It’s so rhythmic though that it draws you in and creeps you out. Best of all, 1.5.6 is available for free download. So if you dig dark ambient percussion noise music, go download it.