Total Life is the solo project of Kevin Doria from esteemed experimental Olympia expats Growing. Like most drone music, Total Life can be as punishing as it is proficiently-crafted, and so subtle that the many shifts and eddies which unfold amidst Doria's white noise squall sometimes barely register, sticking to the margins of the listener's perception. On the extremely-rare 2005 Total Life debut, Doria's feedback-overloaded guitar occasionally contorts into something resembling a typical solo or melody, bubbling up through layers of phlegmy whorls to reach the sonic foreground. It's a little like Growing's earlier material, only morphed by mountainous heaps of distortion. Fans of both Kevin Shields (the seminal shoegaze musician who found nirvana in eardrum-immolating guitar) and Kevin Shields (the intense noise band), take note.

[Northern, with Marty Barrett, Heaths, 8 p.m., all ages, 321 Fourth Ave., Olympia, northernolympia.org]