Decaycast REVIEWS :Kelly Churko : Transient Compared to Stone CDr (Mandarangan Records, 2012)

The CD we received in the mail wouldn’t play in the computer.

So I listened to this recording on http://mandarangan.bandcamp.com/album/transient-compared-to-stone.

1.History of Wind

A machine like animal greets us,  gurgling us in its throat while strings are plucked in the tonsils pattering through stereo space something scatters its scales down a hallway slow strobing, something rising stalling waiting lurching along a old haunted train ride in an abandoned park there is a lost child whose mother is long since gone and swallowed by the writhing machine.

The pulse fades and metallic brakes skate in and grind to a halt . A light ahead goes out. By the end of the first track you are sure that somewhere someone is in need of help or at least in need of being woken up from a fever dream thats torturing them.  Long ambient drone-scapes with scraped swells.

2. Keitai Casualty

Someone starts attacking you with a vacuum hose in the ear, throbbing demon grips  with convulsing rhythm and highly resonate screeching. Pummeling ear drum cleaning.  An elephant trapped in a rubber balloon is chained to the bottom of a swimming pool. Spaces slide out from stereo space, pulses mix and new interwoven rhythms emerge.  Digital bomb decays to blast a hole in silence. Full stop.

3. Outside Context Problem

A zippy stomp bounce crunches through razor sharp layers and fat pulpy chunks cut to stomp roll then we climb a cloud of impenetrable cicada whirs but find ourselves breaking through some barrier and slamming into a bouncy tom and snare roll rhythm. then abruptly thrust into high pitched ear scrubbing. Eye bulging blast. then spit into blast scape of maniacal power surges and almost train horn rhodes drones lain under blistering ear cooking. My ears are cooked. Raw. Exit on ping pong chirping .

4.Palette Fatigue

Giant pillar of Church drone is cooking under the breath of some lawnmower man squeegeed grimace rumbles.  The Church organ is tumbling through space wrestling with Noise sheets that give birth to a quiet plucking melody that then gets swallowed by a 6000 foot tall Tsunami wave scorch your braincells, but have no fear the Church organ is here to save you wrapped in noise stain.

5. I Cant drive

We are tumbling down a hill and see some godlike sparkling tone and then tumble out into a different plucking chirping space sounding like the batteries are dying in the space ship then a chugging sludge metal noise throb emerges with something sounding like tape warp manipulations fast forwarding to noise blast then insect night, a roaring motorcycle, back to the dirge slum chug accented by a high ringing percussion. A ping ponging doodle and spongey mumbling gives way to a pipe bomb in a toilet.

6.Flattening deceleration

A slow tone creeps in overhead and some soft shortwave-like radio fuzz undulates with the slow stereo wafting tones rising in frequency I see the ultra violet light and the flat long open space of a parking garage : A lower distorted throb begins to rise into the mix, I imagine the parking garage strobing and evacuated cars and silently screaming people flickering in and out of the evacuated garage. A bilging microphone ruffle bump sound makes me feel like Im trapped in someones pocket in the machine room of ship accelerating to light speed.  A digital feed back flutters and tenses all the neurons in my skull giving way SLOWLY to softened white noise when a big dirty synth churns and bubble through, we emerge in a slow whistling scream  traveling through the VLF spectrum—this is what it must sound like to be attached to a NASA Rocket brought up to the pinnacle of the Ionosphere and then dropped falling back to earth and being sucked into a ride through slowed down shortwave surfing. At 21:12 this track is definitely for an altered time scale. A meditation piece that crawls into the smallest places of your brain.

This Disc is for  those interested in Harsh Noise, rhythmic throbbing raw synthesizer blisters and intensely crafted sheets of scathing sculpted white noise mosaics. The first half of this disc is a well paced journey through finely edited varied noise throb spaces that happen just long enough before changing to hold your attention on well sculpted noise drifts pulses and attacks. The second half is the opposite: a slow melt through the frequency spectrum giving the disc a good balance. Coming in at over 40 minutes this is a pretty demanding onslaught of a listen but it rewards with lavishly sculpted blasts and psychologically haunting and psychotic spaces.

http://mandarangan.bandcamp.com/album/transient-compared-to-stone.

written by: Verbjieff