Thurston Moore

Anyone who actively seeks out this record should have a pretty good sense of the type of noisy shenanigans Thurston Moore might get up to in the comfort of his home studio with a little wine and marijuana for company. Mention of those vices in a come-on poem, an obscure split cassette by the Haters/Merzbow and a photograph of a young Johnny Winter are oddly distinct references as points of inspiration for this series of soundscapes. Sensitive/Lethal contains two 20-minute-plus epic noise bookends, "Sensitive” and "Lethal,” sandwiching the much briefer "Lonesome,” which sounds like a bunch of planes slowly crashing into a squeaky wheel. "Sensitive” is surprisingly affable experimentation, perhaps thanks to a steady acoustic drone anchoring the cacophonous symphony of muted guitar noises Moore drags out of his instruments. "Lethal” might be exactly what its title claims. The track’s extreme feedback jitters spike into potentially damaging frequency ranges but how much caution would you expect from Moore’s mini-Metal Machine Music?