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I get financially why it was probably necessary to put this out on cassette 5 years ago, but I for one am super glad this is on wide groove 45 high speed 12" vinyl. Nice screened cover from Shawn Reed of Racoo-oo-oon too, which is just a bonus.
The frequencies have room to breathe, the compression is limited...and you can hear it. This is a true remaster of the original material... I mean if I want to get super nerdy about it, it's going to sound the best on vinyl like this, not hissy cassette. That would add it's own layer of something else...and it's not even tapes fault...I don't trust the shitty tape players I have. I don't care about them, never cleaned them, they have bad headphone jacks. They're a bucket full of problems I have to listen through. But I've taken the time to clear up all these problems with the record player usually, so I can trust it to be a listening neutral experience. It's as close to what the original artist intended. You might as well listen to a karaoke version of the song...I mean that could be interesting too, to have that interaction with the material...So here we are as close to the intention as possible, and I'm still questioning the sonic limitations of my equipment. It'll never end. Dan Friel is fucking with the peaking of synth sounds, there are no nice, clean tones to be found anywhere. I like that most percussion rhythms sound like they're cobbled together from glitchy synths , it's something you don't notice at first, but it's clear he's taking massive control over all of the textures. So much so that you don't want to necessarily introduce that standard 808 drum machine...it's not going to add anything to the sound. At this point it's almost ignorable as a stand in for an actual beat. These are far better.The first track, 'Obsoleter' has a sustained bellowing tone twisted faster and slower, to a distorted beat. A melody sounds like it's breaking through the mass of effects that can't quite contain it. As a member of Parts and Labor, this is someone who is just heavily acquainted with sound manipulation. It's always rooted in some kind of rhythm though, but whatever the original sound is, it's really being beaten to death.'Pink Helicopters' uses a vocal melody screamed into a guitar pickup, and the electronics here start to get really gamey, almost decades ago videogame soundtrack...well not so much soundtrack as just button actions. Then a tropical melody breaks in, which varies between pan asian and 8bit Ducktails. I have to hope this is recreated live with 25 little blinking boxes in front of him and not standing behind a laptop. It also makes for a more interesting performance, I'm watching it being created, although I guess that takes a more intimate space to make that make sense. I keep remembering seeing Ducktails once and Matt was crouching, moving all over the tiny space to keep up with the evolution of the tracks I recognized, but clearly were just templates for another experiment.'Intervention '05' has this epic U2 quality to it...you can sense the build up from the very beginning, like the robot streets-have-no-name program is running. There's some theremin sounding work over an increasingly pulsating beat and it all sort of ends before it can go down a dreaded dance attack mode, I appreciate how concise his constructions are, there's no filler moments or long stretches of ambiance...it's clearly got a destination, and one hell of a complex way of getting there. God dammit! All the toasters lead to his myspace. I tried them all! His other work over on that page is equally sonically interesting. He's really pushing the sounds...I'm already lost on the direct reference and he's always taking everything one step further.Spooky Tree has done a major service releasing this, and it's one more jenga piece pulled on the west coast sound/noise domination of NNF.1. Obsoleter
2. Pink Helicopters mp3
3. Intervention '05
4. Glass Kite
5. Imploder
6. Untitled '05
Vinyl release of Dan Friel's out of print 2005 EP (originally released on cassette by Night People). Featuring artwork by Shawn Reed (Wet Hair, Raccoo-oo-oon, Night People). Friel has been making primitive electronic music under his own name and as part of the Brooklyn-based noisepunk band Parts & Labor since 2001.
To round out the latest Spooky Tree Records releases, Bob Gratis, aka Urthquake has this offering to the world of northeast noise 7", which turns out to be his first release on vinyl...the split with Noise Nomads came after this one.After hearing his side on that split from last week, I knew a little what to expect as this sleeve is really almost misleading. I thought it would (and almost still did) think it would be the usual death metal...all the signs were there....the gothic font...a black and white skull... especially the insert, which has a lengthy obituary about Bob saying he was 'found dead in his garage apartment....apparently from a home-made guillotine device.' I checked around online, and I'm pretty sure this isn't true...but it still has me guessing. This of course influences how I'm listening to it now...like some kind of suicide note. But instead of growling satanic evil, you get on 'Last Known Address' a metronome kick drum machine with a haunting, minimal, no effects electric guitar...which might be a sample, it kind of drifts to and away from the hypnotizing rhythm. It rides along with the beat at times and then slightly veers off path...it's really delicate and is the eerie foundation for the distortion blasts of vocals that are mixed pretty low...sounding like plucked strings with the gain at 11, screechy Marshall stack metal...but there's just a hint of a human voice behind it...I think the bursts of air from words gives it away, but just barely. To have any idea of what he's saying you have to turn to the insert: Last known address / In decline / In demand.The B-Side, ...As well as you should' uses a similar structure...the most basic kick beat and stripped down slight reverb electric, strummed really slowly which is interrupted by massive waves of heavily delayed distortion from another guitar and vocals that match the guitar in texture. It's an interesting way to solve the vocal problem in this genre...I have to admit, most times the words black metal will bias me immediately to expect the growl deep vocals, speed percussion and power chords...and unless you're really in that world daily the nuances of bands techniques are lost on me...what can I say, it's all the same? Urthquake has just battle-axed that idea to pieces. It's just what black metal needs...someone to defy expectations and apply the punk DIY aesthetic to the doom. A Blank Dogification of the metal...one guy in his garage, messing around making guillotines, watching horror movies and messing with a tried and true formula, putting his own bloody fingerprints all over it. Or as the gutter says 'True New Jersey Black Ambient Metal'Get this one from Spooky Tree, who says:Bob T. Roller follows up his 2008 CD compendium with a 7" of true New Jersey satanic suicidal black ambient metal. Urthquake's first vinyl release.
He has a full length from Spooky as well...I wonder where he would go with 70 minutes of available space....
Last up this week is another single from Spooky Tree Records, this one a split with Diagram A and
Chrome Jackson. The sleeve is a pretty good idea of the sonic aesthetic direction both of these guys are going. Out of focus collages of chain link fences, old glued together newspapers, scratchy negatives from photos...all taken in hell.Chrome Jackson is Stephen Mattos from Arab on Radar infamy. I've only heard about their live show years ago...that entire Providence no wave scene that they're now down in the books as founding. So where does that leave CJ on this side of the split? The insert says this track 'The Icicle Men March' was recorded in April this year at 88.1 Brown Student Radio.
First of all forgive me if I talk about this at the wrong speed...I think it was 33, but then I convince myself it's too drone-y and slow, that it has to be 45, but that's a little thin sounding, maybe hyper, so 33 it is. Maybe it's the melody played back with low sample quality...but something is making this guitar sound like a kettle drum, with layers of distortion...and when it jumps, or autotunes the lower notes and starts panning back and forth, it completely rumbles. This is why this track is best heard on vinyl. I know your pathetic desk stereo you play the ipod through is not going to sound like this. No way. It's a hellish kind of scale melody repeated, played frantically until it fades out.It's artists like this that constantly renew my faith in the guitar as a valid instrument forever. It's never going away...it's the blankest slate to future generations. If you are bored with performing with a guitar, then it's you because there are sounds no one has ever heard still waiting. Maybe this is musician's music...kind of only blowing your mind when you start to deconstruct it as a performer, but then there are still assholes that say they could paint a soup can. THAT'S NOT THE POINT!Diagram A's side 'Artery Drawing Anterio' sounds based more in the digital world, meaning he is triggering something that translates into a digital sound that's then of course completely fucked with. I think that's the other side of the guitar that keeps it so vital is the physical performance when creating this noise, you have to really interact with this object that adds something to the sound (of course) that is going to change every time. Not that it isn't present here, it's just not a guitar, but the idea is the same. Diagram A sounds like it relies on the unknown a little to get some of this sound. This is handmade electronic circuit bent style...the sounds are cleaner and harsher. Every possible open space in the waveform hasn't been filled up with hiss. It's more minimal and carefully constructed sounding with no consideration for a vibrating string...it's just a mechanical sound that goes on forever...or until you flip the switch. It makes me want to pull out the Justice Yeldham single from Load.Check out some instrument construction on his blog. These noises don't make themselves.This is another great single in Spooky Tree's series of solo noise artists. Quickly becoming the Not Not Fun of the Northeast...solid singles with just enough taste of these guys to look them up and start tracking down full lengths, to hear where individually they'll go when given some space. I haven't heard anything with a recognizable melody for days and I just want more. That reminds me about this piece at PS1 this weekend, Saturday 4PM:Daniel Perlin performs Re: construction, an attempt to simultaneously build a model house and create an audio composition based on the sounds of its construction. Referencing both Robert Morris' Box with the Sound of its Own Making (1961) and the sampling work of Matthew Herbert, Perlin makes full use of hammers, screw drivers, and other tools for their physical and sonic capabilities.
I want to hear either of these guys build (or take apart) their electric guitars for a double sided seven inch. Or the sound of a seven inch being pressed! Ok, now I'm getting stupid.
Darrin from Spooky Tree sent me a nice note and their latest batch of singles and I started with this first split from Noise Nomads and Urthquake who just finished touring together not long ago and I missed them at the Cinders Gallery. In doing some research about Noise Nomads I think I found out that Jeff Hartford has something to do with Woods? I know Shepherds is (a) members of Woods....but some poster said they recognized one of the guys from Woods in Noise Nomads...so the internet said it, I believe it.If that's true then that is one talented group of guys driving all kinds of amazing sound...and right in my backyard. It's insane, and I'm a little jealous...the Woodsist label, all the side projects... Silent Barn...it's an entire flowchart scene in and of itself. Whoever they are, Noise Nomads have the A-Side of this vinyl 'Soaked Blanket'. It starts off with really low bit sampled synth keyboard running through a ringtone effect, at least that's what I think anyway, this is really an exercise in trying not to examine the recording too much. The squeals, pitch shifted, homemade electronics bleeps...it's all layered on top of each other. The whole thing is slowed down towards the end, like someone holding their finger on the tape hole...see the old four track is good for something. It seems to all get more chaotic...I keep trying to listen if it's actually true...what parts are repeating...but it's impossible. Like a nightmare in a hong kong toy factory, the room where they product test all the beeping toys for longevity has caught on fire...you can watch it melt through the blast shielded door. Or listen to their last cries on this side thanks to Spooky Tree.The Urthquake side is another solo noise maker, Bob Gratis, with a track 'Intra Muros' this actually has some structure to it, with repeated regular synth sounds, and heavy effected guitar (?) that comes off as cymbals practically. It's an old videogame soundtrack you don't remember, or an 80's martial arts movie training/travelling montage. Like the sleeve, it's a moody, scary day in ancient greece, but eighties style. That era of naivety of new sound. It's a preset on this thing called a synthesiser...it's going to change everything! Everyone's using it!Then the massive explosion and a shattering of glass completely scares everyone in the room...I don't know what the hell that just was, but it sounded like the end of the world. I think our hero just karate chopped a huge crystal castle. I would authentically believe this was created 20+ years ago. Excellent. Great weirdo noise split from Spooky Tree records go get it...more to come...
