Hand-numbered LP. Edition of 400 copies. Re-dition of this John Duncan 1984 le Riot album: re-recorded, re-mixed at EMS and expanded with material that didn’t make the initial pressings, all taken from original 8-track master tape - which required them to revive obsolete machinery - and all re-mastered by Rashad Becker for this release; which, according to the legendary avant-garde agitator himself, is finally packaged in artwork befitting of his vision. Or take it straight from the horse’s gob: “If there is any one must-have releases that defines my work in sound, this is it.”"This release of Riot is the one that I have always wanted to hear. This is so much more than a re-release: the original 8-track master has been re-recorded and re-mixed, with other tracks recorded at the time and excluded from the first LP that are now added here, thanks to Daniel Araya at EMS in Stockholm who managed to get a working model of the long-obsolete machine that the master was recorded on, turning the impossible to a done deal. All of them have now been mastered as I originally intended, in this LP sounding exactly as they always should have.
The cover art is also vastly superior: a photo from the first version of Rage Room, far more effective than the hand silkscreened cover that I was forced to accept in a version that was already seriously compromised. This time it's perfect. AND it gets even better. Mastered and cut expertly by Rashad Becker and pressed in black vinyl. If there is any one must-have release that defines my work in sound, this is it."
- John Duncan, March 2018
Employing the chaos generated by his favoured shortwave radio, coupled with “computer program transmissions, military morse code, atmospheric interferences, random sounds”, Duncan makes a genuine, head-flossing racket on the A-side’s Riot. Scrambled not stirred, the results still stand gnarled in the historical stream of noise records, strongly representative of a pursuit for total atonality and arrhythmia - pure randomness in a state of flux always anticipating, never resolving.
Contrarily the B-side throws words, both legibly spoken in english and chopped-up in Japanese, into stark negative relief. Firstly a droll description of viciousness at an event by Paul McCarthy at a Los Angeles gallery, then a passage of fulminating noise chaos, followed by an extraction from a performance at the outdoor amphitheater in Hibiya Koen, Tokyo, 1983, and unpredictably shattered into an extreme inky blacknuss.
No messing, this is extreme music of the highest order. (Bomkat)
