VAINIO, MIKA & JOACHIM NORDWALL - Monstrance

"Monstrance documents Mika Vainio and Joachim Nordwall reshaping guitars, drums, and incendiary electronics at Einstürzende Neubauten's Berlin studio back in 2010. The results were originally issued by Touch in 2013 with this new double-LP edition arriving on Nordwall's iDEAL Recordings label five years later as a posthumous tribute and reminder of his erstwhile collaborator. It's one of Vainio's most crucial and absorbing collaborations; moving away from ice-cold electronic precision and into a more visceral re-rendering of metal. In a sort of fantasy regression imbued with the spirit of their shared heroes -- Einstürzende Neubauten -- Mika returns to the instruments he cut his teeth on way back in the '80s, manning electric guitar, drums, and effects, while Nordwall takes control of electronics, electric bass, Hammond organ, and vibraphone, with both arriving at a mutually primal conclusion of distortion and fiercely charged electro-acoustic air. The first side's "Alloy Ceremony" c