Before listening to Bottom Down by Guilty C, I had no idea who Guilty C was. After doing some research I know now that he’s a Japanese man, and that’s about as far as I got. He has no interviews as far as I can tell (in English or Japanese) and no real online presence. One of the few things I found about him was a blog post in which the author visited his live show in 2005. This very roughly (second line is nearly unintelligible) translates to:

Truly amazing. It makes me sad.

Why does this man such embody the cosmos? It’s Buddhist noise.

Well, something like that.

Pictured: our mystery man of the hour, Guilty C.

Now I personally would have never described anything as cosmical Buddhist noise, but maybe this album comes close to that. Bottom Down by Guilty C opens with a wall of feedback and bass, no real rhythm, drone style. While in theory this should be a noisy experience, he keeps things reeled in so that things are more serene than they appear on paper. This is the formula for most tracks on the album, but he does keep things interesting by varying the instrumentation, levels of noise, and the feeling of the tracks. “Transfer” is a pretty bare song consisting of a panning electronic noise. “Rain” is a screaming man stuck behind a wall of static (if this is Buddhist noise then this song would be the Raurava). “Tal Coat Raw- (Brian Eno)” is transcendental feedback, although I don’t know what the song title means or how it relates to Brian Eno.

The worst moment on the album is when he breaks from this formula the most. “Morbid Cipher9” is easily my least favorite track on here, and sadly it’s also the longest at 15 minutes. Most of the song is in-your-face pig/orc grunting over a quiet backing track. Towards the end he gets a nice stream of feedback going but it’s too late—I can’t get the orc noises out of my head.

Besides the long blunder in the middle of the album, I enjoyed this a lot. If you skip “Morbid Cypher9” (or even better, if you enjoy pig grunting) then you’re left with a pretty great drone-noise album that may or may not help you to reach Nirvana.

[Editor’s Note: Thanks for reading, join Jimmy on Tuesdays for “Brushing My Teeth To Merzbow, airing from 8 to 10 PM (ish.)]

Bottom Down Summary Thing

Artist: Guilty C

Title: Bottom Down

Recommended: All

Restricted: clean

Genre: Noise, Ambient, Drone, Instrumental

Comments: Celestial Buddhist noise.

Album Review: Bottom Down