The name Arvo Zylo should be pretty familiar to noise enthusiasts. He runs the No Part Of It label and his physical releases often sell out. Perhaps that's due in part to his extraordinary artwork, especially on his latest release, '333' which comes in a 6-panel digipak that you can only see the front cover of. Not only that, his prices are really good, and the music...some of the best I've heard in the experimental noise genre. '333' was originally released in 2010 on cassette and pro-CDR, then reissued as part of a "remix DVD" called '333REDUX', now finally available as a glass-mastered CD. If you read my review of his 'Daydream Bereaver' album a while back, you may have some idea of what to expect, but still the surprises come fast and furious.

'333' is only 3 tracks - "Quickdsand Eggs of a Beaten Pathos" (31:35); "Deadbeat Deluxe" (16:18) and "Plasthma" (11:08) for a total of 59 minutes, but for brevity's sake, I will refer to them as tracks 1, 2 and 3. Time-wise, Track 1 is more than half the album, but it seems like several tracks combined into one. The first part is bouncy, whimsical rhythmic electronics which soon morphs into the kind of noise I associate with old school analog tape backup sounds with a periodic thudding in the background. This goes on for a while, then changes into what I'd call Godzilla's Blastoma Band, where the gigantic creature stomps all over the stage, and attempts to play some stringed and keyboard instruments. (Imagine that!) There's a trudging, crunchy rhythm track as well, and there is waaaaay more stuff going on than I'm trying to describe here. Suffice to say there are weird loops, wicked electronics, sample & hold sequences, staggering beats, and more. The sonic variety is absolutely incredible and you will just go nuts listening it. (Zylo's technical notes on the one-sheet shed some light on the sequencer issue, which I can appreciate, being an electronic musician myself.)

It's hard not to think of Track 2 as a continuation of track 1. A minimal crunched and mangled beat fights with circuit bent electronics, then rhythmic loops, straight sequencer (giving it more musicality than you'd expect to find on an experimental noise album) with oodles of repetition and layers upon layers of sequenced sound. The intensity and sonic variety just doesn't let up. This is absolutely fucking crazy! Just when you thought you might have had enough, it changes! Loop upon loop, then, torn apart and put back together again. While some might find this extremely annoying, I find it brilliant! It calms down for a while, goes minimal (just the beat), then adds some mechanical ticking, steam, enriched rhythmic loops, crazy loops and more. There comes a point where it enters experimental breakbeat territory, but manages to rise above much of the artists in this category.

Track 3 begins a bit more subtly (if anything on '333' could actually be called subtle) with some repeating noise loops that turn rhythmic soon enough. For a while the base loop is what I call "broken windscreen wipers" due to the sound and cadence, but no sooner do I come up with a description than it changes completely into a different electronic loop. More crazy, noisy industrial follow, but so do some demonic musical loops, yet it ends with a less noisy, more subtle rhythm loop. Just fantastic! Arvo's sequences and loops are just so far beyond anything I've heard associated with the noise genre that they're almost in a category by itself. The bang for the buck here in terms of content is overwhelming, and if you're a connoisseur of noise, you'd be a fool to ignore '333'.