Category: Noise

TRACK | Fili – Automatic

5/5 golden merles

Lo-fi garage thrash from Mexico, Fili’s “Automatic” is my favored track off a real superb, tarnished and smeary set. Egg punk tones and bedroom recording methods combine to contaminate one another, a resourceful and regenerative dossier.

From the intro we are fed the requisite raving through a grit of vocals so tactile they’re practically percussive. A series of small instrumental melodies combine to make one great net that effectively colludes to capture. And all this lovely melding and mashing affixed to the discursive litany, today / i don’t want to be disturbed. The album art alone should warrant a peak; it’s good & fun.

TRACK | GEE TEE – Mutant World

5/5 golden merles

More common era essential lo-fi punk rock by Kel Mason (DRAGGS), “Mutant World” has all the essential vitamins: it is blown out but remarkably to a more ideal proportion, the synths are sampled from a Godzilla mouth beam, and it contains the unmistakable reflection of your face reflected back in a pool of your own blood.

The track’s a well worked clobbering. Over 81 seconds, ascendant minor melodies combine to accent the the nebulous bulk and vividly this breach is annexed and incorporated into the spiraling form. At the chorus the vocal channels rend apart, tearing across the sound scape. It’s sensed then plotted out with a lot of care and calculation.

It’s a good week for new media. After the JWST release today, there’s a new GEE TEE 7″ out Friday on Goner Records.

TRACK | Druggy Pizza – Like Pigs In A Slot

5/5 golden merles

Featuring members of Dusty Mush, Cédric Bottacchi/Druggy Pizza’s “Like Pigs In A Slot” convenes the crunching and crushing of waves in a not dissimilar manner. Unrest and deliberate deconstruction, it’s surf rock on a sea of molten gloom and Midas detritus.

The blistering, proximal bass synth continues grinding in perpetuity, as the focus shifts from the background grind to the central figures portrait, breaking the established mold a few times in a matter of minutes. The whole EP/split’s worth spending some time with.

If you, like me, hold its contortions in high esteem, look also into the 2020 set and checkout the handful of vinyl from the Peace And Love Barbershop Muhammad Ali split.

TRACK | Sterile Cuckoo – The Ghost of Saint Claire

5/5 golden merles

“The Ghost of Saint Claire” has a composition that incorporates more creative tools than most songwriters employ and with more conviction. I’m very fond of these configurations, their sequencing — from field, to shoegaze, to ambient drone — is always dreamy, always threatening to break into bloom. It is mesmeric, captivating material.

Three things primarily pique my interest among its graces: First, the cohesion of its assembled genre influences. Second is the structural invention and pacing. And third is the collaborative element. Each of these involve their own degree of risk and reward.

There is some risk in breaking free from the yoke of strictly enforced genre limitations, attempting to create the more refined/unique niche, and the prospective audience readily available to receive it. Another risk is in leaning into the expanse, allowing the void to patiently fill itself with subtle field and noise cues, breaking the form but maintaining a series of footholds. Yet another risk is in collaboration with others to contribute toward the fundamental ideas and ambiance (orion lake & Antonio Svisa).

But, truly, they’ve all paid off tremendously well here. And, from the outside, that act of crafting feels honest and refreshing, to have honed the influences or held a vision intact throughout. It’s realized to a point that probably none of it seems like risk at all to its progenitor, but rather the only way to properly render the material and synthesize the influences. Listening to it feels a little bit like taking part in that conviction and it is a joyful event. There is much to admire in its grandiose and ephemeral lo-fi textures, and the deteriorating and rising of its well designed phases and fractals.

TRACK | Times New Viking – Half Day In Hell

5/5 golden merles

With the proper balance of muck and bile, “Half Day In Hell” conspires to deliver noise pop rock with great wrath and fission. In this base of static hum, no melody is sacrificed to the texture but heightened by it.

Not exactly discordant, it is raised to extremes of saturation with very modest deterioration to melodic intent. Elliott and Murphy trade vocals in the haze, refining the wavelengths. It’s the best produced thing I have listened to (revisited) in ages.

After the last week of inconsequential societal response into a myriad horrors, lines like “we will stay forever for a week,” “we have done all that we can do,” “and don’t agree on what to do just to kill time,” and “we couldn’t come together even if we tried,” land a little bit differently, arbitrarily recontextualized to the present in the constant mire of all that is. But these statements remain vaguely stated enough to interpretively address any given scope of social incongruity.

It is modestly miraculous, full of fine trepidation, not reliant on habits and precedent but reaching in its forms to match the emotion and intention. It feels refined but natural and that is a bit freeing. Often when this path is followed it leads into greater abstraction that discounts melody and a greater loss of coherence. Which is fine, but needn’t be the case. Finding that balance is powerful and admirable.

TRACK | Datenight – Gone Tomorrow

5/5 golden merles

In the muck and bile of all that is, distractions can be a primary preoccupation for a preponderance of your existence. Good news then that Datenight is here to remind you, in stunning fashion, to just let it go.

Clearly recorded live / in the room, whichever one was available in Ben’s parent’s house, there’s much resonant synchronized thrashing and the band is tight. These coordinated exertions in the service of noise are criminally underrated. And I have not even yet arrived at their 2020 release, Is This Also It.

You fools, you feckless thugs, you can still purchase the thing off of Discogs, gently used for about $13 USD, assuming you live near enough to these superficially united states. When I get some more pennies in the piggy bank, I’ll do it myself. That is, however, a second hand purchase and doesn’t benefit the band. Buy the digital version that does.

TRACK | Dusty Mush – Faux Sabotage

5/5 golden merles

“Faux Sabotage” is a collapsing edifice of a track. Only the barest ingredients and essence remain. Whatever came before has been ground down into a few remaining functional base components. The song is approximately 93 seconds of rooting about the rich tones of rubble.

If the tones can be this rich, I apparently can be temporarily endeared to the greater abstraction. There is a point at which style can overcome most minimal thresholds for substance, if it has at least some posturing towards coherency for a few lines, found here toward the meridian, and the track ultimately does not overstay its welcome.

There was a very limited run of lathe cut Pizza Dischi physical forms. Apparently etched on CDs using machines from the 50’s, these are then played on a turntable with individually unique lo-fi buzz. No one at the moment wants to exchange them for monetary reward at Discogs. But the digital form is well worth your converting into Euro for our French friends in Melun.

TRACK | Perpetual Ritual – Perpetual Flood

5/5 golden merles

Seattle’s Perpetual Ritual have made a track of grinding gears and muted fireworks. A death rattle of a drumkit keeps the tempo for the mélange of blur and buzz.

Two rhythm guitars sit on either side of the channels and simulate the flood in all its perpetuity. The geographic configuration alters, leaving the deluge and a first-hand tale of adaptation for those that remain to hear and tell it.

The myths don’t do it justice; all the tired misinterpretations of nature’s intentions. It happened and here is the evidence, ready to be passed down and mangled and misread.

Temporarily, anyway. Until the Bandcamp servers rust or are willfully redacted. And the WordPress isn’t renewed for lack of funds. And the Wayback Machine shutters, and the google cache expires. And all the digital foundations that seemed fairly sturdy for a generation cruelly wash the thing away again.

But for a couple more minutes or years you can hear it on the Skrot Up page just over yonder.

TRACK | Banned Books – Fuselage

5/5 golden merles

“Fuselage” is Banned Books stunning opener from their 2016 self-titled LP. Full of stars and false starts, the track asks: What’s the worst thing that could happen? Then later addresses the picking up and patching over.

Its movement is staggered like an unpaved route navigating over mountainous terrain. The path is guided by fractals of drums and the coursing, world-on-a-wire guitar channels.

There’s a great deal of vacillating, variance to elevation, and the track is no stranger to intermittent silences. This has its own internal logic or natural tectonics, and maintains a balance that feels both original and jarring.

Each jagged and convulsive element is intricately plotted and administered by familiar, well produced instrumentation. Strong work from Philadelphia: Pop, Rock, Noise, with experiments to structure and pacing.