Canadian duo EXIST compare their sound to "Merzbow [running] down contestant's row on the Price is Right" or to Madonna dropping LSD and turning to "glitchcore." Both are worthy role models, but, alas, EXIST's sophomore effort for D-Trash lacks both the discipline of Merzbow's controlled chaos and the infernal stick-in-your-brain-like-a-tapeworm catchiness of Madonna's songcraft.  Using snippets from game shows, cartoons, radio, etc. ala Gysin's cut and paste or Throbbing Gristle's noise collages, The Tension and the Darkness is intermittently interesting but frequently fails to rise above the banality of its source material.   

There are moments of real beauty on this CD. "Straight Between the Eyes (Can't Stop Me Now)" begins as the soundtrack to a robot love scene, then turns into music for a robot breakup and a fast, angry stomp before returning to its melancholy beginning.  The emotions here are made more poignant by the chilly, distant affect.  In a similar vein, "Lose my Mind (Keep on Pushing)" gives us doorbells reverberating through a sonic void, their tinkling echoing and reechoing upon itself like church bells, only to vanish before a harsh, deep voice.  

More frequently, though, the music consists of endless repetitions of dissonant, mechanical sounds.  At times the proceedings are livened by some catchy, danceable rhythms On "When you Least Expect It (Hit You Like a Truck) the beat blows through everything -- melody, counterpoint, dissonance -- like a brakeless semi rolling down a mountain.  Almost as powerful is "Custom Made (All Over)", where harsh, mechanical sheets of noise keep threatening to form a melody and finally settle into a catchy rhythm.

Even here, though, J. Schizoid and .miQ often shoot themselves in the foot.  Just when you start sliding into the hard EBM/gabber beats of "Writing on the Wall (Too Blind)", things slow to an ethereal crawl.  Maybe they are trying to challenge the listener; maybe they are trying to mimic John Zorn's "channel surfing" changes in key and tempo.  In either case, the experiment frequently falls flat.  Their best efforts are their most structured ones.  The twisted remains of a lounge track are given cybernetic life in "What they Want to See (to Get Attention)," which bops and beeps through its changes like the bastard child of Astrud Gilberto and Kraftwerk, while an eerily distorted atonal lullaby on acoustic piano provides a backbone for "When I Look Back (Seems Like Yesterday)." 

Far from being undisciplined or random, Noise demands the sternest discipline and the most intricate structures.  EXIST has learned the discipline of turning samples and found sounds into sonic sculptures; they haven't yet mastered the art of turning banality into transcendent beauty.  Still, this is a promising sophomore effort.  With a little more work, and a little more practice in Industrial Alchemy, they may well move on to bigger and better things.

1: When I Look Back (Seems Like Yesterday) 
2: Writing on the Wall (Too Blind)
3: Custom Made (All Over)
4: Straight Between the Eyes (Can't Stop Me Now)
5: When you Least Expect It (Hit You Like a Truck)
6: What They Want to See (to Get Attention)
7:  Have to Pretend (Instead of Remembering)
8:  All of Nature Wild and Free (No Cares in this
World)
9: Lose my Mind (Keep on Pushing)

http://warp9.to/exist
Official Exist Website

http://www.dtrashrecords.com/
D-Trash Records Website