Incapacitants
Quietus

THE REVIEW

The Incapacitants are one of the most important groups in the global noise scene, active since the early '80s as Mikawa's project, which Kosakai later joined, forming a stable duo responsible for numerous releases (although not at Merzbow's level, numerically speaking). I love this group, which I believe is the true spokesman of what noise is (alongside Hijokaidan), more than Merzbow.

The Incapacitants are not tied to any ideology, they do not convey any message, they completely transcend these concepts, they are simply sound that flows, always the same yet in constant mutation. Listening to them is a physical experience, as a wall of sound, and also a mental one, as you let yourself be carried away by the sound and get lost in it. This is, in my opinion, the strong point compared to Merzbow (whom I still consider an Artist of the highest level): in fact, most of his works are centered on a particular theme (vegetarianism, vivisection, and kinbaku, to name a few) which is often hard to associate with certain sounds.

The sound offered by the Incapacitants is achieved with guitars, looped effects, homemade circuits, feedback, and voice, which together create a saturation that almost reaches white noise. I do not find that this sound is conceived with the intention of creating something "cruel" or meant to astonish, it is simply sound that goes beyond beauty or ugliness. The work proposed here is no exception: the cover and titles might as well not be there, they reveal and indicate nothing, three tracks of different lengths but indistinguishable, in which all frequencies are present, such as to give the impression of facing a block of stone from which any shape can be carved.

Incapable of constructing but not of generating.