Former C.C.C.C. mainman Hasegawa's particular brand of rugged analog aural cavity excavations follows fast on the heels of his previous Astral Orange Sunshine, this time citing the toxically beautiful mushroom cloud colors arising seconds after a nuclear explosion as inspiration. However, unlike the 50s sci-fi monster motifs gurgling inside that recording, The Echo from the Purple Dawn is (noisy) business as usual. Hasegawa's lineage can be drawn directly from fellow squirmeisters Merzbow, Incapacitants, Keiji Haino, and any of a dozen contemporary noise specialists, particularly those desiring to erect their tons of sonic steel on the backs of primitive soundmakers such as old-world oscillators and damaged moogs. What links all three corrosive tracks here is a love of noise for noise's sake, ignoring whatever may be fashionable or trendy to simply revel in cascading levels of cathartic volume.

The opening "Live at Art's Birthday 2008" doesn't break new ground, Hasegawa content with letting his billowing waves of distortion pummel both atmosphere and audience alike; his power-drive pulsations attain, then maintain, a bludgeoning equilibrium and never let up, all dressed up and exploding outward in the finest Merzbow tradition. Trouble with it is that Hasegawa appears utterly fascinated by the sheer monolithic weight of his tensile constructs to the detriment of anything episodic: he shifts the gross tonnage but does little in the way of altering its mass. At least on "Cobalt Insect/Artificial Lake," there's a sense that the artist is looking to achieve some kind of synchronicity within his blistering acidic arts. The first six minutes find him bending pitch and warbling modulations to dizzying effect, while the final six has him tapping into the subatomic frisson present deep within an antimatter universe, balancing hyperkinetic waveforms amid a gathering of strangely delicate blips and tings.

However, it is out amongst the darkest far reaches of the universe where Hasegawa plies his trade, mostly throughout the final 32-minute punishment perambulations of "Violet Pulse." Here the sounds of live electricity are shackled to multi-phasic curtains of blinding light, distorting, firing, and moving in great explosive arcs as they pan from speaker to speaker. Played at any kind of significant volume level, this stuff can peel the paint from the walls, which is undoubtedly what Hasegawa's after � testing your tolerance level for sonic self-immolation as he expurgates his own inner demons.