On
On

The notorious CD-Rs.
Sometimes a record label expects to sell only a few copies of an album, let's say fewer than 500. There can be various reasons for this: the band hasn't yet made a name for themselves, there isn't enough money for a promotional campaign, and so on. In these cases, it's more convenient to print on CD-Rs instead of regular audio discs that we find in all stores. The appearance is the same, the quality too, and the cost (for small quantities) is lower.
There is a downside, though: CD-Rs are snubbed by music magazines and international critics: "it's of poor quality", "it's too niche a product", phrases repeated without real knowledge of the facts. The reality is that the so-called "official critics" review what is proposed to them by a select few record labels. And so, it can happen that one of the most interesting albums of this millennium goes unnoticed.

New Zealand, a generous land of visionary artists. A music scene that has its roots in the minimalist psychedelic frescoes of Dadamah and the avant-garde hallucinatory noise of Dead C, passing through the hypnotic atmospheres of Roy Montgomery and the ambient dissonances of Flies Inside The Sun. Nowadays, the only label that confidently and courageously offers these sounds is the New Zealand-based Celebrate Psi Phenomenon (and even the name is a programmatic manifesto). Their flagship album for 2006, destined not to exceed 500 copies, is the very noisy debut of On.

All the aforementioned names are well represented in the grooves of the album, and that alone would be enough to make your mouth water. But what really makes On's sound new is that unlike those austere masterpieces, this is a true rock'n'roll stomping album.
Beautifully raw garage rock with a raucousness level that not even Pussy Galore could match, grabs you by the hair and slams you against a wall. This isn't revivalism; we're in full noise avant-garde, and the good kind: not pretentious and self-indulgent but raw and genuine. I don't know how to emphasize it enough, this is a special event, imagine the Stooges after smashing all the amps and being catapulted into full no-wave-no-new-york, the Sonic Youth of Confusion is Sex taking lessons from Earth and Sunn O))), Einstürzende Neubauten playing post-rock guitar, Pere Ubu jamming with Bardo Pond. And when I hear those feedback whistles from the now worn-out speakers, I thank heaven that rock isn't dead yet.

Ah, but maybe you don't care. After all, it's just a lousy CD-R, right?