Amps for Christ levitate their 4-sided triangle with the assistance of some homemade amps, a few jostled oscillators, and of course, Our Lord and Savior. Like many of the other band sites I’ve visited for research purposes, ampsforchrist.com mentions nothing of the California contribution, so I have no helpful notes to guide me along this barefoot journey to hallelula-la land.
The last AFC album I bought was the Electrosphere 2CD, and yeah…this still sounds pretty much the same, albeit more focused and slightly more experimental. Less songs, more “pieces.”
"Black Eyed Susan” is closest this side gets to a noise track – burbling, broken-sounding electronics over shortwave static, oscillators that resemble horns being played ineptly, all laid over a low bed of bass clippings that resembles the extra credit question from the Sahko after-school oscillator lab. Vocals enter, similar to Jessica Rylan’s “Casting a Spell,” voice and oscillator fighting it out for dominance within the same quarter-inch cord. A low bass-pulse follows along with the melody. Later, a violin saws away, oblivious. This track completely schools much of what passes these days for undiluted psilocybin in the Wyrd Forest. Superb.
“March of the Mountain” is guitar, banjo, sitar, and AFC’s patented “oscillators played like bagpipes.” The melody on the bagpipillators is a fairly famous song…I’m hardly an expert on the subject, but through the years, I’ve clocked lots of hours (high double-digits, say) at highland festivals around the Midwest, so trust me, I know I’ve heard this particular tune played by groups at all levels of pipe proficiency. Of course, I’ll be arsed if I know its actual title…I don’t think it’s usually referred to as “March of the Mountain.”
(Incidentally, while going through my bagpipe tapes to try and find this track’s real title, I discovered that there’s a pipe tune called “Hamilton’s Nutsack.” Huh? No, why don’t YOU come up with a punchline, you lazy fucker!)
“Tel Aviv” starts with spoken word over Conet-ish shortwave fear and dried-pod clatterings. “That bird frets on the edge, hungry.” “Dropped orb, flesh of flesh, sine wave.” You get the idea. As the oscillators begin to really wail at the end, the track picks up a bit of interest.
“2 Inches per Hour.” The rain pours down, and a distant, fuzzy violin solo is heard from afar, sounding like a street musician who plays mostly to keep his mind from wandering to his freezing bones. Soon, a second violinist comes by and starts a duet with him; she takes his mind off his troubles for a while. They don’t play naturally or intuitively together, but the dissonance and uncomfortable, fumbling transitions mystify and intrigue them. They later get married in a civil service at the courthouse, move to a dry climate, and live out their golden years in 1/2 of a sparsely-furnished duplex, working a procession of minimum wage temp jobs, trying to figure out why they planned their entire life around one somewhat magical afternoon in the rain.
In short, this is a confusing choice of artist for this comp (kind of like inviting your hippie uncle over for a marathon of the Guinea Pig movies), but as always, AFC provides a satisfying and, dare it be said, consistent listen. If you've heard it all, you've heard this one.
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Monday, December 11, 2006
Solid Eye, “Live at WFMU, September 13, 1998”
In certain non-essential (but appropriate for the purpose of this discussion) ways, performing free improvisational music is like making a mixtape. By that, I mean that once in a while, you have a case where you follow the the tape's directives perfectly, each moment progressing naturally from the prior one. Yet, at the end of the side, the whole thing just feels…flat.
The classic “I painted myself into a corner” trick.
Sticky shoes and unseemly footprints on the floor are the visual cues for this live recording created for WFMU back in ’98. In terms of coherence, each and every moment progresses naturally from the prior one - nobody's reaching blindly. From the winning ‘50s-sounding “mad scientist electronics” that mark the entrance to the gag-reflex-triggering voice loops that sweep up by the exit, it all follows.
It’s just that somewhere in the middle, the fellas follow each other into one too many quiet, contemplative, textural excursion after another. By minute 12, as they wends their way through thick underbrush made of drifting, lightly processed guitar, you begin to wonder if our guide has led us on wild goose chase, bwana.
I compare this not to the noisier sides on this set, but to other Solid Eye that I’ve heard. My favorite is the Fruits of Automation CD on WIN Records. I know that those were “composed” songs (or at least “edited improvisations”) so it’s probably a little unfair to pit these two against each other. Still, it’s instructive to see just how focused and manic Solid Eye can be when they actually wear the lab coats authoritatively, unafraid to tell the Gorts and the Garcos when to talk and when to shut the fuck up.
The classic “I painted myself into a corner” trick.
Sticky shoes and unseemly footprints on the floor are the visual cues for this live recording created for WFMU back in ’98. In terms of coherence, each and every moment progresses naturally from the prior one - nobody's reaching blindly. From the winning ‘50s-sounding “mad scientist electronics” that mark the entrance to the gag-reflex-triggering voice loops that sweep up by the exit, it all follows.
It’s just that somewhere in the middle, the fellas follow each other into one too many quiet, contemplative, textural excursion after another. By minute 12, as they wends their way through thick underbrush made of drifting, lightly processed guitar, you begin to wonder if our guide has led us on wild goose chase, bwana.
I compare this not to the noisier sides on this set, but to other Solid Eye that I’ve heard. My favorite is the Fruits of Automation CD on WIN Records. I know that those were “composed” songs (or at least “edited improvisations”) so it’s probably a little unfair to pit these two against each other. Still, it’s instructive to see just how focused and manic Solid Eye can be when they actually wear the lab coats authoritatively, unafraid to tell the Gorts and the Garcos when to talk and when to shut the fuck up.
Damion Romero. Hollywood.
In the schools, they teach that good composition sets out a recognizable beginning, middle, and end. Conflicts develop into recognizable climaxes, and ultimately find their resolutions.
Damion Romero offers us nothing so prosaic. Instead, the piece simply opens with a barely-audible hum and suddenly closes when everything is unplugged. In the place of a single fist-pumping climax, sounds ripple to the surface seemingly of their own accord, or are yanked upwards and whipped around by a force unknown. As these storms pass, they leave subtle traces on the remaining mix – a slightly remodulated pulse, a subtle change in pitch, a raising of the overall levels – as if dropping a period at the end of one sentence in order to begin a new one. Beneath these surface events, inscrutable currents slowly pull the mix along. This layered tension between the ongoing development of the piece as a whole and its occasional interruption results in a cyclical back-and-forth, as attention gravitates toward the louder events and away from the slow changes underneath. These slow but punctuated changes comprise the center of the piece, though, and the most effective moments are in these less obvious places.
The label on the record informs us that the piece was recorded on Jean DuBuffet’s 104th birthday, suggesting that the “Monde Brutal” refers to those working outside of convention. We like to think of these as two fully distinct worlds – one populated by those bound by their formal training and one populated by people moved solely by their own demons. Like setting up camp in the wilderness, occasional waves of critical attention to work at the margins brings two worlds together and risks fracturing the latter’s pristine marginality.
With no identifiable climax, there is likewise no definite resolution. While at first, these layers remain resolutely distinct, with loud waves violently crashing over the quieter mix, by the end, the mix has swollen to the proportions of a boiler ready to burst from too much built-up steam. By this point, it becomes harder to assign one element to the position of centrality and the other to interruption – the waves no longer stand out so starkly against the sound of the piece itself. Did the waves rolling over the mix irreparably change it, or was the lower-level mix happily incorporated into these waves? Which layer defied convention, and which was purely formal? Romero’s anti-solution to these questions – simply unplugging the whole problem – does not offer any pleasurable resolution, but in laying them out, he has achieved compositional beauty.
Damion Romero offers us nothing so prosaic. Instead, the piece simply opens with a barely-audible hum and suddenly closes when everything is unplugged. In the place of a single fist-pumping climax, sounds ripple to the surface seemingly of their own accord, or are yanked upwards and whipped around by a force unknown. As these storms pass, they leave subtle traces on the remaining mix – a slightly remodulated pulse, a subtle change in pitch, a raising of the overall levels – as if dropping a period at the end of one sentence in order to begin a new one. Beneath these surface events, inscrutable currents slowly pull the mix along. This layered tension between the ongoing development of the piece as a whole and its occasional interruption results in a cyclical back-and-forth, as attention gravitates toward the louder events and away from the slow changes underneath. These slow but punctuated changes comprise the center of the piece, though, and the most effective moments are in these less obvious places.
The label on the record informs us that the piece was recorded on Jean DuBuffet’s 104th birthday, suggesting that the “Monde Brutal” refers to those working outside of convention. We like to think of these as two fully distinct worlds – one populated by those bound by their formal training and one populated by people moved solely by their own demons. Like setting up camp in the wilderness, occasional waves of critical attention to work at the margins brings two worlds together and risks fracturing the latter’s pristine marginality.
With no identifiable climax, there is likewise no definite resolution. While at first, these layers remain resolutely distinct, with loud waves violently crashing over the quieter mix, by the end, the mix has swollen to the proportions of a boiler ready to burst from too much built-up steam. By this point, it becomes harder to assign one element to the position of centrality and the other to interruption – the waves no longer stand out so starkly against the sound of the piece itself. Did the waves rolling over the mix irreparably change it, or was the lower-level mix happily incorporated into these waves? Which layer defied convention, and which was purely formal? Romero’s anti-solution to these questions – simply unplugging the whole problem – does not offer any pleasurable resolution, but in laying them out, he has achieved compositional beauty.
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Open City, “Dusty Sweets, Bit Parts”
“Free-Rock,” man, fuckin’ free-rock. I don’t know…it’s always been a blind spot with me. The last free-rock/noise album that really got up my butt and did the five finger dance was, I think, Wrong’s “Vaginum” 1-sided LP, and that was like eight fucking years ago! From the perspective of two of the talking ass-bags in that movie “Waking Life,” we become totally different people every seven years or so. That means the last free-rock album I liked happened to me in a previous life!
It’s something about the percussion…drums and noise just never really work for me. So many free drummers take that Sunny Murray “play all the drums at once, drum roll-drum roll-drum roll, and SPLASHSPLASHSPLASHSPLASH go the cymbals AGGHHHHH look at me I’m PRIMAL!” approach, flailing about with no internal logic and no real sense of driving the song along. Rashied Ali, WHERE ARE YOU?!?!?!
I can’t say Open City is undoing these prejudices to any great degree. Guitar seems to be the big news on this one…despite some pretty standard “extended techniques,” some of the sonics here are truly fresh – it’s not all Derek Bailey chord knots or high speed upper-fret pick-shredders, but the occasional bout of momentum and excitement, fast flashes of stutter and skitter that get the blood pumping. It’s nothing to get the Henry Kaiser of ’81 any reason to lose sleep, but breaks me out of my scowly, crossed-arm skepticism for maybe a minute or two at a time here and there, and that’s saying quite a bit.
Because this “art form” requires only virtuosity (of a sort) and punishes either prior preparation or posthumous damage control (just live in the moment, maaaan), all the really good bits sound just as accidental as the plodding ones, like a thoughtless sine wave oscillating between good and suck.
To be fair, as “this sort of thing” goes, it’s better than many similar things that I’ve heard, and I’d say that these guys probably do this several times a week and have that old collective telepathy down to a science. Of course, you could say the same thing about firemen…they’re doing what they do all the time and I’m sure they all know how to weave and dodge around each other in tight situations. It’s just that I just go from day to day hoping that I never need a fireman’s services.
It’s something about the percussion…drums and noise just never really work for me. So many free drummers take that Sunny Murray “play all the drums at once, drum roll-drum roll-drum roll, and SPLASHSPLASHSPLASHSPLASH go the cymbals AGGHHHHH look at me I’m PRIMAL!” approach, flailing about with no internal logic and no real sense of driving the song along. Rashied Ali, WHERE ARE YOU?!?!?!
I can’t say Open City is undoing these prejudices to any great degree. Guitar seems to be the big news on this one…despite some pretty standard “extended techniques,” some of the sonics here are truly fresh – it’s not all Derek Bailey chord knots or high speed upper-fret pick-shredders, but the occasional bout of momentum and excitement, fast flashes of stutter and skitter that get the blood pumping. It’s nothing to get the Henry Kaiser of ’81 any reason to lose sleep, but breaks me out of my scowly, crossed-arm skepticism for maybe a minute or two at a time here and there, and that’s saying quite a bit.
Because this “art form” requires only virtuosity (of a sort) and punishes either prior preparation or posthumous damage control (just live in the moment, maaaan), all the really good bits sound just as accidental as the plodding ones, like a thoughtless sine wave oscillating between good and suck.
To be fair, as “this sort of thing” goes, it’s better than many similar things that I’ve heard, and I’d say that these guys probably do this several times a week and have that old collective telepathy down to a science. Of course, you could say the same thing about firemen…they’re doing what they do all the time and I’m sure they all know how to weave and dodge around each other in tight situations. It’s just that I just go from day to day hoping that I never need a fireman’s services.
The Cherry Point – “Live at Camp Blood, 7/11/04”
Phil Blankenship was originally born into this world as Lefthanddecision, a clean, tight, meticulous, downright compositional project that drew accolades. Years later, he shed the high-gloss liquid-crystal skin, donning a rusty suit of armor instead, allowing all its jagged points to cut into his exposed innards. He shambled through the town as The Cherry Point, bringing a lo-fi expulsion of animal ferocity to a populace ill-equipped to defend itself.
I'm intrigued by the fact that many noise initiates seem to change styles sooner after beginning, from high-speed and spastic cut-ups to dense, pressurized, nearly motionless whiteout. Projects like Sewer Election, Oscillating Innards, and Lefthanddecision started out fast and technically “accomplished,” but later expressing a deep and abiding love for the wall of noise, trying it only after they had more experience to really do it right. It must seem absurd to someone first coming to noise to think that something that sounds superficially like a TV tuned to a dead channel (remember those? Hint: they’re pre-cable) would be harder to accomplish than something that requires constant attention to 20 different effects boxes. It’s the first of many zen riddles of noise music: why is it harder to stand still than it is to run at top speed?
This recording from Camp Blood isn’t quite static enough to be called a “militant wall,” seeing as there are a few change ups, one blast of uneasy silence, and a little more modulation than you’d expect. Since it was recorded in 2004, this might reflect an older, less “pure” aesthetic. It’s not less awesome, though! You know good hard noise when you hear it…you don’t need me to tell you why it rules – it just kicks ass. The Cherry Point gives us the first of hopefully several pure, wind-blinding noise tracks that don’t require me to go into deep analytical detail about compositional structure or aesthetic points of departure and instead allow me to bandy around words like “this rules!” or “fuck yeah!”
So, um, fuck yeah!
I'm intrigued by the fact that many noise initiates seem to change styles sooner after beginning, from high-speed and spastic cut-ups to dense, pressurized, nearly motionless whiteout. Projects like Sewer Election, Oscillating Innards, and Lefthanddecision started out fast and technically “accomplished,” but later expressing a deep and abiding love for the wall of noise, trying it only after they had more experience to really do it right. It must seem absurd to someone first coming to noise to think that something that sounds superficially like a TV tuned to a dead channel (remember those? Hint: they’re pre-cable) would be harder to accomplish than something that requires constant attention to 20 different effects boxes. It’s the first of many zen riddles of noise music: why is it harder to stand still than it is to run at top speed?
This recording from Camp Blood isn’t quite static enough to be called a “militant wall,” seeing as there are a few change ups, one blast of uneasy silence, and a little more modulation than you’d expect. Since it was recorded in 2004, this might reflect an older, less “pure” aesthetic. It’s not less awesome, though! You know good hard noise when you hear it…you don’t need me to tell you why it rules – it just kicks ass. The Cherry Point gives us the first of hopefully several pure, wind-blinding noise tracks that don’t require me to go into deep analytical detail about compositional structure or aesthetic points of departure and instead allow me to bandy around words like “this rules!” or “fuck yeah!”
So, um, fuck yeah!
John Wiese - "Diamond Harmony"
Wiese’s discographical output mirrors his compositional style in a lot of ways. On record, he has taken the jump-cut to the nth degree, tamping 5-minute improvisations down to 2.1 seconds of essential gunpowder, and mating it with opposites, matter and anti-matter, texture and crunch, digital squeak and analogue crash, silence and tempest, catch and release, until hundreds of hours of pedal-jockeying has been simmered down into a small rubbery solid, and then minced into a string of high-speed moments, windows from various locations thrashing open from half a minute to 1/8th of a second at a time and then slaming shut in your face, like the TV channel-changing aesthetic of a coffee-holic with strong thumbs.
When it comes to releasing his recordings to the world, Wiese’s aesthetic is similar. Full-length LPs and collaborations punctuate the endless stream of single- and double-sided 7”s like the tics in an irregular heartbeat. Many are birthed through his long-running Helicopter label, while others pop up like whack-a-moles for what seems like an hour or two after their initial announcement on some noise-related bulletin board that you don’t check often enough (does anybody actually HAVE that Troubleman 7” that was in an edition of 500? I mean, FIVE HUNDRED COPIES, and nobody I know that collects Wiese records seemed to get one. Where did they go?).
A Wiese “fan” automatically gets to add the suffix “-atic” to his title, because to keep up with the man’s output (not only solo, but with Sissy Spacek, LHD, collabs with SUNN 0))), Merzbow, and others) is to devote your entire life to one man with wandering on his mind. Kind of like being married to George Jones, but with a few less alcoholic riding-mower rampages through your hometown.
Listening to his records takes focus too. If you decide to be blasé, it’ll all just sound like the Chipmunks in a garbage disposal…look at them go, around and around. Faster! Faster you damn chipmunks! No, you’re more likely to “get there” if you do like I did and sit down in front of the speakers and clear your mind of all distracting hangovers, idle thoughts, or half-finished to-do lists. John’s been stiching 600 edits per second for minutes at a time for so many years now, he had a great handle on the breathing and the pulse of a track of this duration. After 200 hours of editing, you might get tempted to just contrast ones and zeros, noise and silence, like Tony Conrad’s “The Flicker,” but it never gets that simple here. Everything’s at an angle, like Dr. Caligari’s summer-home, and you never quite get to anticipate where anything’s going to start and stop.
So it is with his discography. Sure, you may have all the full-lengths, some of the singles, but if you look away for a few hours and miss that one particular 1-sided 7” that was in print for about the span of an episode of “Robot Chicken,” you might well miss the one that could have killed and rebirthed you, the one that could have zipped up all this noise stuff into a neat series of columns and rows – in short, your own persona Wiese-brand Rosetta Stone! Damn!!
We’ve seen tracks edited slow (Spastic Colon, Moth Drakula) and not at all (GX), and of course, the primary reason for CALIFORNIA is to showcase different extremes, so we have to have at least one good case of whiplash. Keep checking back to see if anyone can break Wiese’s 1.5 minute mile!
When it comes to releasing his recordings to the world, Wiese’s aesthetic is similar. Full-length LPs and collaborations punctuate the endless stream of single- and double-sided 7”s like the tics in an irregular heartbeat. Many are birthed through his long-running Helicopter label, while others pop up like whack-a-moles for what seems like an hour or two after their initial announcement on some noise-related bulletin board that you don’t check often enough (does anybody actually HAVE that Troubleman 7” that was in an edition of 500? I mean, FIVE HUNDRED COPIES, and nobody I know that collects Wiese records seemed to get one. Where did they go?).
A Wiese “fan” automatically gets to add the suffix “-atic” to his title, because to keep up with the man’s output (not only solo, but with Sissy Spacek, LHD, collabs with SUNN 0))), Merzbow, and others) is to devote your entire life to one man with wandering on his mind. Kind of like being married to George Jones, but with a few less alcoholic riding-mower rampages through your hometown.
Listening to his records takes focus too. If you decide to be blasé, it’ll all just sound like the Chipmunks in a garbage disposal…look at them go, around and around. Faster! Faster you damn chipmunks! No, you’re more likely to “get there” if you do like I did and sit down in front of the speakers and clear your mind of all distracting hangovers, idle thoughts, or half-finished to-do lists. John’s been stiching 600 edits per second for minutes at a time for so many years now, he had a great handle on the breathing and the pulse of a track of this duration. After 200 hours of editing, you might get tempted to just contrast ones and zeros, noise and silence, like Tony Conrad’s “The Flicker,” but it never gets that simple here. Everything’s at an angle, like Dr. Caligari’s summer-home, and you never quite get to anticipate where anything’s going to start and stop.
So it is with his discography. Sure, you may have all the full-lengths, some of the singles, but if you look away for a few hours and miss that one particular 1-sided 7” that was in print for about the span of an episode of “Robot Chicken,” you might well miss the one that could have killed and rebirthed you, the one that could have zipped up all this noise stuff into a neat series of columns and rows – in short, your own persona Wiese-brand Rosetta Stone! Damn!!
We’ve seen tracks edited slow (Spastic Colon, Moth Drakula) and not at all (GX), and of course, the primary reason for CALIFORNIA is to showcase different extremes, so we have to have at least one good case of whiplash. Keep checking back to see if anyone can break Wiese’s 1.5 minute mile!
Damion Romero – “Monde Brutal”
I’ve heard a sampling of Romero’s records through the years, both under his own name and as Speculum Fight, and more often than not, they seemed more linear and drifty than this…more in tune with common noise structures and orthodoxy. The process-oriented ones work their equation out for a specific duration while luxuriating in the alien texture of it all.
Here, it’s almost like a reverse Turing Test – you can’t quite tell that it’s a constructed work; it could just as easily be an unprocessed field recording from the basement of a local power plant. In your mind’s eye, you can’t really see Damion in front of his mixer, starting and stopping sounds according to what sounds good or moves the piece along. It feels more inevitable – I keep coming back to the word “inevitable” to describe this record. You can hear machines switching on and off according to their own internal timers. It’s all controlled, but to the outside observer, it seems completely arbitrary.
It’s not until the last few minutes that the cycles of the machines start to move in a manner that suggests a vague industrial rhythm, or like the drums in Hair Police’s “Mortuary Servants.” Or no, more like the rhythm in the Butthole Surfers’ “U.S.S.A.” At this point, you can hear Damion directing the sounds, and the laissez-faire illusion is broken. It sounds like omniscient Romero has thrown a spanner in the works, and for the last third of the side, we can hear everything valiantly trying to hold together as more and more cogs lose their teeth and more belts snap off and land in a dark corner. Then you hear someone come in and shut all the power off…we’ll deal with this in the morning. Click.
As with Spastic Colon, the thick vinyl and the loving mastering really do this track a lot of favors – since the canvas here is primarily silence rather than din, the moments when the machines really LUNGE have the power to make you jump.
The title of his tape on Banned, “Electronic Air Purifiers,” keeps coming back to me. This track sounds like the desire to become (or emulate) machinery, and not even teen-cool machinery like a steel press or a conveyor belt, but rather self-contained and anonymous (in the sense that you can’t see the mechanisms inside) machinery like a power converter. I haven’t heard any of the “ambient” era Monde Bruits (I’m assuming the title is a reference to the recently-departed Shoei Iwasaki), so I can’t tell if this compares in structure or sound, but surely, Iwasaki-san would have to be proud to have these 20 minutes of hard industrial clank laid atop his headstone.
Here, it’s almost like a reverse Turing Test – you can’t quite tell that it’s a constructed work; it could just as easily be an unprocessed field recording from the basement of a local power plant. In your mind’s eye, you can’t really see Damion in front of his mixer, starting and stopping sounds according to what sounds good or moves the piece along. It feels more inevitable – I keep coming back to the word “inevitable” to describe this record. You can hear machines switching on and off according to their own internal timers. It’s all controlled, but to the outside observer, it seems completely arbitrary.
It’s not until the last few minutes that the cycles of the machines start to move in a manner that suggests a vague industrial rhythm, or like the drums in Hair Police’s “Mortuary Servants.” Or no, more like the rhythm in the Butthole Surfers’ “U.S.S.A.” At this point, you can hear Damion directing the sounds, and the laissez-faire illusion is broken. It sounds like omniscient Romero has thrown a spanner in the works, and for the last third of the side, we can hear everything valiantly trying to hold together as more and more cogs lose their teeth and more belts snap off and land in a dark corner. Then you hear someone come in and shut all the power off…we’ll deal with this in the morning. Click.
As with Spastic Colon, the thick vinyl and the loving mastering really do this track a lot of favors – since the canvas here is primarily silence rather than din, the moments when the machines really LUNGE have the power to make you jump.
The title of his tape on Banned, “Electronic Air Purifiers,” keeps coming back to me. This track sounds like the desire to become (or emulate) machinery, and not even teen-cool machinery like a steel press or a conveyor belt, but rather self-contained and anonymous (in the sense that you can’t see the mechanisms inside) machinery like a power converter. I haven’t heard any of the “ambient” era Monde Bruits (I’m assuming the title is a reference to the recently-departed Shoei Iwasaki), so I can’t tell if this compares in structure or sound, but surely, Iwasaki-san would have to be proud to have these 20 minutes of hard industrial clank laid atop his headstone.
Wednesday, December 6, 2006
GX Jupitter-Larsen, “Alluring”
Our first two contestants (Spastic Colon and Moth Drakula) really rang my bell in part because of their editing/shaping/composing acumen. It should come as no surprise, though, that GX Jupitter-Larsen (of The Haters) won't be judged on these criteria. Larsen does here what he does on nearly all Haters records; he amplifies something that destroys, applies it to something that can be destroyed, and lets nature take its course. No shaping, no editing, and no clean-up, save for a broom or a shovel (!) afterwards.
Critiquing individual Jupitter-Larsen/Haters releases is somewhat futile. For one reason why, I’d like to direct your attention to this lengthy tangent.
If you’re ever heard the Robert Ashley piece In Sara, Mencken, Christ and Beethoven There Were Men and Women, or better yet, if you’ve read the story behind the work (go to UbuWeb, now!!), you already know about John Barton Wolgamot. He published two books in his life – one was called “In Sara Haardt Were Men and Women,” and the other was titled, “In Sara, Mencken, Christ and Beethoven There Were Men and Women.” Both books contained identical text, a series of names inserted into a purposefully meaningless sentence. Each page contains the same sentence, with approximately eight names of historical figures inserted throughout (Wolgamot himself makes appearances too). Each page is exactly the same sentence with a different combination of names added.
Wolgamot claimed that the name combinations produced music in his head, and he spent decades deciding upon the specific names used, and the combinations in which they would be deployed, in order to meet his rigorous compositional standards (He expressed regret many years later that two names in the text were “incorrect” – Camille Pissarro and Thespis didn’t quite fit, due to incorrect syllables. He replaced the former with “Peter Cornelius” and the later with “Ruth Page” and was then satisfied). Conversely, he could hear historical names being spoken within performances of classical music he attended; hearing a litany of exotic-sounding names from within a performance of Beethoven’s Eroica symphony was the original impetus for the books.
More importantly, he claimed that, as the text of both books was identical, the actual writing of each was the creation of the books’ titles. A third book was planned before he died, again with the same inner text but with different title, exactingly composed. He believed that the title page was the body of the work, and the text was “the blood that ran through it.”
I love this story, in part because when I get REALLY exhausted, I’ll sometimes find that I get a name stuck in my head, a random name I’ve seen somewhere, and my mind will keep repeating that name, soaking in the musicality of the syllables, for as long as it takes before I finally go to sleep. The name “John Krogman” once haunted my exhausted hours for nearly four months!
Apart from that, though, the story doesn’t seem so far removed from the history of The Haters (and Jupitter-Larsen himself). The framework and its tools change…sandpaper, funnel, bikes, calculators, wrestling belt, ladders, shovels…these are the creative elements that are brought to each Haters performance (or “jam” if you’re a noise dude from the Midwest, or “Aktion” if you’re a PE collector from Europe), but the blood that runs through it is the mindful destruction.
I think that’s why the Haters sometimes get the old John Cage “I admire his ideas, but I don’t like to listen to him” stigma. The shit just isn’t fun if you’re not as excited about the whole process as GX is…it’s like watching someone get all worked up about butterflies, or teacups (or, hrm, noise cassettes) when you don’t share their interest. Without a common thread between you, documentation of the obsession just seems…tedious.
The fame/public interest of people who are truly obsessed AND productive seems to wax and wane randomly against the cycles of popular taste. People flock to the scene, then they wander off, but at the end of the day, one more funnel is destined to meet its maker, same as all the others. You never get the sense that any particular album or piece is “stepping up the plate” or has any specific desire to please anyone but its creator, but neither is any one “phoning it in.” Each and every track has the weight of the entire discography bearing down on it, documenting an undying devotion to gilt-framed entropy.
As for how this specific track sounds….it’s quite agreeable to my ears. It’s physical, undulating, even sexy at times (think of the Dada Drumming label’s motto)! It sounds distant, subterranean, a bit dreary (atmospherically, not aesthetically). There’s a few minor modulations throughout, as if some piece of machinery slipped off its track and had to be re-reattached, concluding with some disturbing speaker clipping; a piece of obsessive, unfettered noise.
This is the point where we find out, if I may wax metaphorically, whether you’re dancing with your date because you wanna see his/her killer dance moves, or you just want to rub up on some body heat. Conventional critical factors like technique, timing, flash moves deflect from this record – entropy makes all the important decisions. After you’ve hoisted a bike with the funnel on it above a piece of spinning sandpaper, decision time is over; it’s time to let nature (and obsession) take its course.
Critiquing individual Jupitter-Larsen/Haters releases is somewhat futile. For one reason why, I’d like to direct your attention to this lengthy tangent.
If you’re ever heard the Robert Ashley piece In Sara, Mencken, Christ and Beethoven There Were Men and Women, or better yet, if you’ve read the story behind the work (go to UbuWeb, now!!), you already know about John Barton Wolgamot. He published two books in his life – one was called “In Sara Haardt Were Men and Women,” and the other was titled, “In Sara, Mencken, Christ and Beethoven There Were Men and Women.” Both books contained identical text, a series of names inserted into a purposefully meaningless sentence. Each page contains the same sentence, with approximately eight names of historical figures inserted throughout (Wolgamot himself makes appearances too). Each page is exactly the same sentence with a different combination of names added.
Wolgamot claimed that the name combinations produced music in his head, and he spent decades deciding upon the specific names used, and the combinations in which they would be deployed, in order to meet his rigorous compositional standards (He expressed regret many years later that two names in the text were “incorrect” – Camille Pissarro and Thespis didn’t quite fit, due to incorrect syllables. He replaced the former with “Peter Cornelius” and the later with “Ruth Page” and was then satisfied). Conversely, he could hear historical names being spoken within performances of classical music he attended; hearing a litany of exotic-sounding names from within a performance of Beethoven’s Eroica symphony was the original impetus for the books.
More importantly, he claimed that, as the text of both books was identical, the actual writing of each was the creation of the books’ titles. A third book was planned before he died, again with the same inner text but with different title, exactingly composed. He believed that the title page was the body of the work, and the text was “the blood that ran through it.”
I love this story, in part because when I get REALLY exhausted, I’ll sometimes find that I get a name stuck in my head, a random name I’ve seen somewhere, and my mind will keep repeating that name, soaking in the musicality of the syllables, for as long as it takes before I finally go to sleep. The name “John Krogman” once haunted my exhausted hours for nearly four months!
Apart from that, though, the story doesn’t seem so far removed from the history of The Haters (and Jupitter-Larsen himself). The framework and its tools change…sandpaper, funnel, bikes, calculators, wrestling belt, ladders, shovels…these are the creative elements that are brought to each Haters performance (or “jam” if you’re a noise dude from the Midwest, or “Aktion” if you’re a PE collector from Europe), but the blood that runs through it is the mindful destruction.
I think that’s why the Haters sometimes get the old John Cage “I admire his ideas, but I don’t like to listen to him” stigma. The shit just isn’t fun if you’re not as excited about the whole process as GX is…it’s like watching someone get all worked up about butterflies, or teacups (or, hrm, noise cassettes) when you don’t share their interest. Without a common thread between you, documentation of the obsession just seems…tedious.
The fame/public interest of people who are truly obsessed AND productive seems to wax and wane randomly against the cycles of popular taste. People flock to the scene, then they wander off, but at the end of the day, one more funnel is destined to meet its maker, same as all the others. You never get the sense that any particular album or piece is “stepping up the plate” or has any specific desire to please anyone but its creator, but neither is any one “phoning it in.” Each and every track has the weight of the entire discography bearing down on it, documenting an undying devotion to gilt-framed entropy.
As for how this specific track sounds….it’s quite agreeable to my ears. It’s physical, undulating, even sexy at times (think of the Dada Drumming label’s motto)! It sounds distant, subterranean, a bit dreary (atmospherically, not aesthetically). There’s a few minor modulations throughout, as if some piece of machinery slipped off its track and had to be re-reattached, concluding with some disturbing speaker clipping; a piece of obsessive, unfettered noise.
This is the point where we find out, if I may wax metaphorically, whether you’re dancing with your date because you wanna see his/her killer dance moves, or you just want to rub up on some body heat. Conventional critical factors like technique, timing, flash moves deflect from this record – entropy makes all the important decisions. After you’ve hoisted a bike with the funnel on it above a piece of spinning sandpaper, decision time is over; it’s time to let nature (and obsession) take its course.
Tuesday, December 5, 2006
GX Jupitter-Larsen. Hollywood.
Like a blast of hot air blowing off an unfiltered smelter, GX Jupitter-Larsen’s filthy noise sets the cause of cleaning the air in the Hollywood Hills back to the days when he first got started. They say that smog sticks around in the lower atmosphere because it carries more weight than its environment; in this case, I think it’s because GX just likes to linger like a stain left on a couch by a party’s last sloppy drunk.
It doesn’t take GX long to pour out a murky stew which is up to his standards, and he definitely takes the time to savor the mix and see what bubbles to the surface. An apparent withholding of method or technique in putting this together – unless throwing a bunch of cats in a bag to sort out their differences counts as technique – creates the genuine possibility of a sign of life actually emerging out of the primordial chaos. But ultimately I’m guessing GX takes as much delight as I do when he starts subtracting pieces from the mix and shows them off one by one, thereby gradually bringing everything to a close.
And who can argue against the pleasure of this stately Hater? If I were cruising LA, I’d stop by his dome and give it a rip, although I’d probably plan to crash at the pad of someone not so enamored of the outward shell of entropy.
It doesn’t take GX long to pour out a murky stew which is up to his standards, and he definitely takes the time to savor the mix and see what bubbles to the surface. An apparent withholding of method or technique in putting this together – unless throwing a bunch of cats in a bag to sort out their differences counts as technique – creates the genuine possibility of a sign of life actually emerging out of the primordial chaos. But ultimately I’m guessing GX takes as much delight as I do when he starts subtracting pieces from the mix and shows them off one by one, thereby gradually bringing everything to a close.
And who can argue against the pleasure of this stately Hater? If I were cruising LA, I’d stop by his dome and give it a rip, although I’d probably plan to crash at the pad of someone not so enamored of the outward shell of entropy.
Moth Drakula. Redondo Beach.
The record claims the Moth Drakula arose from the sands of Redondo Beach. The flyer on my refrigerator says Gardena. Wikipedia tells me that Redondo Beach also spewed the insipid Jack Black out of its cultural graveyard, but also the completely unassailable Black Flag (yes, completely), and that Hollywood invasions have been staged by the upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean film and, holy shit, the first BATMAN movie! If I’m reading this record correctly, the Redondans more importantly know how to mount one hell of a gang fight, and will be waiting with chains and field telephones when Mr. Black brings his Hollywood entourage back home to teach everyone about Led Fucking Zeppelin.
I’m sure this is the part where I’m supposed to talk about how it sounds like their megaton distortion blasts threaten to once again sink that Great Tourist Magnet, The Endless Pier, into the indifferent waves of the mighty Pacific, how its heavy violence will paint your walls with your pia mater and grind all your cerebral bourgeois musical concepts into a fine paste bound for processing into hog feed to plop into some Iowa feeding station. Make no mistake, this is some heavy stuff - from the first strangled death of an innocent little chord to the final heavenly Burzum keyboard outro, they’re letting you know they’re ready to fight! Ready to fight! Ready to fight! fight fight fight fight!
But even if we’re ready to lay down our soul to the gods Rock and Roll, who sees the light and who’s still in darkness and night? When the noisy rapture comes, who’s here and who’s not? This isn’t a piece that’s going to win over a lot of converts, and it certainly doesn’t give a shit whether your name’s written in the Book. Stable sonic platforms stay around only until they get clobbered by a thuggish twist of a knob or get completely yanked away revealing the faint screaming of buried synths, and maybe of actual vocals.
This denial forces a choice on the listener: either surrender to the pleasures of confinement within the walls rising out of their machines or violently reject them. Unlike, say, an older variant of noise whose underlying idiot savant ideology you could imagine being appreciated (if not liked) in a freshman humanities discussion section, you either get this or you don’t. But either way, you will respond according to Moth Drakula’s rules. This is rock and roll, straight from the hip, waiting to fend off any stray consumer accidentally crossing into the wrong turf. That icon of middle class punk rock individualism, Greg Ginn, should be proud of his neighbors.
Incidentally, the title of this piece – In Heaven Everything is … Fine, aka Henry Spencer vs. the Radiator Lady – coyly alludes to Eraserhead. It’s been a while, so I can’t really comment on what they think they mean by that, but it’s certainly symptomatic of the with-us or against-us stance of the piece. Maybe there’s some thin methodological or metaphorical relationship between the noise and the film, but mainly it provides a quick laugh for the cognoscenti.
I’m sure this is the part where I’m supposed to talk about how it sounds like their megaton distortion blasts threaten to once again sink that Great Tourist Magnet, The Endless Pier, into the indifferent waves of the mighty Pacific, how its heavy violence will paint your walls with your pia mater and grind all your cerebral bourgeois musical concepts into a fine paste bound for processing into hog feed to plop into some Iowa feeding station. Make no mistake, this is some heavy stuff - from the first strangled death of an innocent little chord to the final heavenly Burzum keyboard outro, they’re letting you know they’re ready to fight! Ready to fight! Ready to fight! fight fight fight fight!
But even if we’re ready to lay down our soul to the gods Rock and Roll, who sees the light and who’s still in darkness and night? When the noisy rapture comes, who’s here and who’s not? This isn’t a piece that’s going to win over a lot of converts, and it certainly doesn’t give a shit whether your name’s written in the Book. Stable sonic platforms stay around only until they get clobbered by a thuggish twist of a knob or get completely yanked away revealing the faint screaming of buried synths, and maybe of actual vocals.
This denial forces a choice on the listener: either surrender to the pleasures of confinement within the walls rising out of their machines or violently reject them. Unlike, say, an older variant of noise whose underlying idiot savant ideology you could imagine being appreciated (if not liked) in a freshman humanities discussion section, you either get this or you don’t. But either way, you will respond according to Moth Drakula’s rules. This is rock and roll, straight from the hip, waiting to fend off any stray consumer accidentally crossing into the wrong turf. That icon of middle class punk rock individualism, Greg Ginn, should be proud of his neighbors.
Incidentally, the title of this piece – In Heaven Everything is … Fine, aka Henry Spencer vs. the Radiator Lady – coyly alludes to Eraserhead. It’s been a while, so I can’t really comment on what they think they mean by that, but it’s certainly symptomatic of the with-us or against-us stance of the piece. Maybe there’s some thin methodological or metaphorical relationship between the noise and the film, but mainly it provides a quick laugh for the cognoscenti.
Monday, December 4, 2006
Moth Drakula – “In Heaven, Everything is Fine”
There’s so many ways to slice and dice source material, it’s always refreshing to hear people finding a new approach. For the hyperspeed quick-cut school (and those who can simulate it live through their equipment), noise is like an endless succession of subliminal images, where split-second pictures of war, teddy bears, reading glasses, a basket of fruit, the words “Have a beer!,” etc. flash before your eyes, no particular image as important as the overall impression of your brain being pureed. For the militant harshheads on the other hand, noise is more like a Tarkovsky flick, in which the object must me lovingly gazed upon for a considerable duration in order to truly reach its center.
In Moth Drakula’s case, the answer lies in between. I notice about six primary edits which cut the track into discrete episodes, rearranging our environment completely along the way. It’s like opening the front door of your domicile to find a well-manicured lawn outside, then closing the door, opening it again, only to find yourself looking at basement of a decrepit factory, an abandoned gas station, the rim of a churning volcano, a high-voltage electrical tower, or a special room in hell where the damned are fed feet first into a very slow chipper-shredder.
It’s not just the jarring location-changes that work, but their timing…this side-long track is gauged for maximum anthemic fist-pumping, as that whinnying high sound goes higher, higher, higher, then cuts, drifts, drifts, and then...KAPOW!! Right in the mush. It’s maybe not a new idea (“quiet, then loud, then quiet – they’ll never expect that!”), but as any comedian, musician, sprint runner, or escaped convict can tell you, a split-second can change everything, and Moth Drakula work that extra half-beat of tension well enough to make it feel like they invented something new.
Noise in the ‘90s seemed like an all or nothing game – you were either a total spaz or depressed corpse. Fast or slow only. When I heard Pedestrian Deposit’s Volatile for the first time, I remembered thinking that a third path had been discovered, and that it was possible to have it both ways without compromising impact. While much of the Moth Drakula I’ve heard so far has been more unidirectional (and short), this approach of combining discrete elements into one larger piece gives the piece a different kind of momentum – it never get enough steam going to really qualify it as a “rager,” but the diverse approach will probably return this to my turntable many more times, even after the boxset has been shelved until further notice.
In Moth Drakula’s case, the answer lies in between. I notice about six primary edits which cut the track into discrete episodes, rearranging our environment completely along the way. It’s like opening the front door of your domicile to find a well-manicured lawn outside, then closing the door, opening it again, only to find yourself looking at basement of a decrepit factory, an abandoned gas station, the rim of a churning volcano, a high-voltage electrical tower, or a special room in hell where the damned are fed feet first into a very slow chipper-shredder.
It’s not just the jarring location-changes that work, but their timing…this side-long track is gauged for maximum anthemic fist-pumping, as that whinnying high sound goes higher, higher, higher, then cuts, drifts, drifts, and then...KAPOW!! Right in the mush. It’s maybe not a new idea (“quiet, then loud, then quiet – they’ll never expect that!”), but as any comedian, musician, sprint runner, or escaped convict can tell you, a split-second can change everything, and Moth Drakula work that extra half-beat of tension well enough to make it feel like they invented something new.
Noise in the ‘90s seemed like an all or nothing game – you were either a total spaz or depressed corpse. Fast or slow only. When I heard Pedestrian Deposit’s Volatile for the first time, I remembered thinking that a third path had been discovered, and that it was possible to have it both ways without compromising impact. While much of the Moth Drakula I’ve heard so far has been more unidirectional (and short), this approach of combining discrete elements into one larger piece gives the piece a different kind of momentum – it never get enough steam going to really qualify it as a “rager,” but the diverse approach will probably return this to my turntable many more times, even after the boxset has been shelved until further notice.
Spastic Colon – “Post-Expusion Euphoria”
Despite the scat-tastic band name and title, this record is neither spastic nor particularly colonic. It sounds clean and airtight, like the inside of a futuristic car, gliding through a city, any city, at 3 o’clock in the morning. It’s the sensation you get when you’re out late, there’s not a soul for miles around, and you allow yourself the delusion that you kind of own the whole area. Who is there to tell you otherwise? If a city is giving off waves of urban sheen or decay, and nobody else is around to appreciate it, doesn’t it belong to you?
Through a small palette of electronic hums, thumps, and unfamiliar beeping noises that sound like they’re coming from something complicated (and possibly malfunctioning), Spastic Colon show the outside world as held at arm’s distance by a hermetically-sealed door, observed through unblemished glass.
I don’t really care if this was recorded, edited, shaped, and allowed to cool under a blanket, or whether it was just one LUCKY improvisation, it is perfectly formed. Piles and piles of “micro-sound” and “dark ambient” CDrs wilt and grow brittle in this track’s presence, because it achieves the one thing they cannot – it gives off the impression of having a beginning, middle, and end while staying the same throughout. Pretty early on, you stop imagining two guys pushing buttons, and are swept into a detailed landscape with a real sense of time, distance and location. This takes it out of the realm of someone like Joe Colley, who squelches all such narrative fantasies with his self-referential sense of editing, but the two projects aren’t a million miles away otherwise.
Only our first stop on a 20-station tour, and it’s already looking like this one will be tough to beat!
Through a small palette of electronic hums, thumps, and unfamiliar beeping noises that sound like they’re coming from something complicated (and possibly malfunctioning), Spastic Colon show the outside world as held at arm’s distance by a hermetically-sealed door, observed through unblemished glass.
I don’t really care if this was recorded, edited, shaped, and allowed to cool under a blanket, or whether it was just one LUCKY improvisation, it is perfectly formed. Piles and piles of “micro-sound” and “dark ambient” CDrs wilt and grow brittle in this track’s presence, because it achieves the one thing they cannot – it gives off the impression of having a beginning, middle, and end while staying the same throughout. Pretty early on, you stop imagining two guys pushing buttons, and are swept into a detailed landscape with a real sense of time, distance and location. This takes it out of the realm of someone like Joe Colley, who squelches all such narrative fantasies with his self-referential sense of editing, but the two projects aren’t a million miles away otherwise.
Only our first stop on a 20-station tour, and it’s already looking like this one will be tough to beat!
Sunday, December 3, 2006
Spastic Colon. Long Beach.
Long before I reached the legal and metaphorical age of manhood, my much-older stepbrother tried to freak out his fatty little brother with mysterious transmissions intercepted on his presumably short-wave radio. Couple minutes of static, interspersed with single-tone beeps of variable length, then more static. Maybe Conet Project demo recordings, maybe Morse code messages from a young Osama bin Laden during his first party out in the Afghan mountains. Maybe the very first radio frequency transmission put out by Nikola Tesla, still bouncing around in the ionosphere.
Erik Hoffman (member of the Brain Trust behind this massive release) and Jorge Martin, together known as SPASTIC COLON, have contributed a piece equally suggestive of dislocation from particular time and place. While many recordings immediately evoke very specific environments – arm-mangling factories themselves mangled by the unstoppable forces of oxidation and full moon winter graveyards being among my recent faves – this piece generates enough variation around a simple signal to suggest something closer to a Found Magazine family album, a slowly pieced-together series of images the meaning of which depends at least as much on who collects the pages as on who makes the snapshots.
It opens with a slow tone, which provides the axis around which the rest of the scratches and swells are arranged. At first, this tone is accompanied by a hollow thumping and faintly-echoing pulse, sounding not unlike a factory error skip in the record. Toward the end, it resolves into what sounds like the medical machine slowly grinding to a flatline – a placement which it’s hard not to read some kind of meaning into. In between, it sounds at times like that damn clock on my bookshelf waking me up in the morning, or at one point like the teleporter on Star Trek; at times the noise swells to the point of interrupting itself with a sudden blast of density, as if its own weight suddenly threatens the stability of the physical grooves cut into the record, forcing a sudden retreat to a temporary full stop before finally returning to its constant underlying source, which itself remains unmoved and unchanged.
And it’s this stable background which lends coherence to the piece as a whole. Through its various arrangements and transformations, a constant reference point remains available to orient oneself by, itself not bound to the various settings it finds itself in, and presumably capable of reasserting itself regardless of whatever happens around it. When I first forced this record onto my turntable (and I mean forced: the hole was cut a little small, so I had to physically press it into place), I was first struck by the thinness and simplicity of the piece. While sparse and quiet layering has not exactly been absent from much of what I’ve heard in the last year or so, its main use has been as counterpoint to the inevitably dense full-on destructo assault on the senses certain to follow (maybe a byproduct of my own geographical location?) - as moments of creepy anticipation and nervous foreboding. Here, these signs are reversed, as the gradual build-up to dense layers of sound becomes the excuse to return to its native simplicity. Spastic Colon have made sparseness and quiet here achieve a function more meditative and sublime, as the unmoved mover behind the particular waves and swells of occasional frantic interruptions.
Erik Hoffman (member of the Brain Trust behind this massive release) and Jorge Martin, together known as SPASTIC COLON, have contributed a piece equally suggestive of dislocation from particular time and place. While many recordings immediately evoke very specific environments – arm-mangling factories themselves mangled by the unstoppable forces of oxidation and full moon winter graveyards being among my recent faves – this piece generates enough variation around a simple signal to suggest something closer to a Found Magazine family album, a slowly pieced-together series of images the meaning of which depends at least as much on who collects the pages as on who makes the snapshots.
It opens with a slow tone, which provides the axis around which the rest of the scratches and swells are arranged. At first, this tone is accompanied by a hollow thumping and faintly-echoing pulse, sounding not unlike a factory error skip in the record. Toward the end, it resolves into what sounds like the medical machine slowly grinding to a flatline – a placement which it’s hard not to read some kind of meaning into. In between, it sounds at times like that damn clock on my bookshelf waking me up in the morning, or at one point like the teleporter on Star Trek; at times the noise swells to the point of interrupting itself with a sudden blast of density, as if its own weight suddenly threatens the stability of the physical grooves cut into the record, forcing a sudden retreat to a temporary full stop before finally returning to its constant underlying source, which itself remains unmoved and unchanged.
And it’s this stable background which lends coherence to the piece as a whole. Through its various arrangements and transformations, a constant reference point remains available to orient oneself by, itself not bound to the various settings it finds itself in, and presumably capable of reasserting itself regardless of whatever happens around it. When I first forced this record onto my turntable (and I mean forced: the hole was cut a little small, so I had to physically press it into place), I was first struck by the thinness and simplicity of the piece. While sparse and quiet layering has not exactly been absent from much of what I’ve heard in the last year or so, its main use has been as counterpoint to the inevitably dense full-on destructo assault on the senses certain to follow (maybe a byproduct of my own geographical location?) - as moments of creepy anticipation and nervous foreboding. Here, these signs are reversed, as the gradual build-up to dense layers of sound becomes the excuse to return to its native simplicity. Spastic Colon have made sparseness and quiet here achieve a function more meditative and sublime, as the unmoved mover behind the particular waves and swells of occasional frantic interruptions.
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