DECAYCAST Reviews: Choisir Le Pire “-” (LE TOMBEAU DES MUSES, 2018)
Choisir Le Pire is a newer project out of Metz, France focusing on harsh noise / harsh noise wall and this new cassette release is no exception. Released on the newly formed LE TOMBEAU DES MUSES imprint also out of France. “-” as it’s titled wastes no time slicing the listener with sharp, grating, alienating plumes of static filled gut wrenching harsh noise with some HNW and even Power Electronics sections to boot.
The strongest track on this release, “De Charybde en Scylla.“, which is also the opening track on the A side offers the most interesting and dynamic work on the album, featuring an ominous sludgy, fuzzed out thick droning intro which is quickly and swiftly encapsulated by violent throbbing stabs of sonic mayhem; grating, dark, and uncertain. This tape is the perfect soundtrack to a nauseating feeling that comes moments before leaping off a cliff into the black abyss. The closing track, Ce qu’il en rester. is another favorite with it’s blistering shuttering fast paced dynamic stabs and wells, peaks and troughs of a chaotic land, Choisir Le Pire wastes no time and no sound, it’s all said and nothing is said except for the blood running slowly down the side of the listeners neck out of their ear. Focused, sharp and agitated harsh noise release with beautiful design and packaging to boot. Check out more from the label and artist via the links above.
“ZSA ZSA GABOR is dead” but the sounds, voice, and pulses in a ritual are anything and everything but that. ZSA ZSA GABOR is one of the artists and founders of the Stay Strange SD Crew who boast a new label imprint, show collective and all creative force led by San Diego stalwart Sam Lopez aided in sound and words from Ariel Irbe, Esteban Flores and Micheal Zimmerman, allwith their own projects to boot under the collective umbrella. Irbe performs and records under the S O L V moniker, while Flores work as Monochromacy represents powerful, thick, radicalized guitar forward drone/noise works.
“Left Skull Bank I” opens up the cassette after a brief intro with a dark, smudged, thick drone which slowly encapsulates the listener and then drops them in a voice cell of terror, confusion, disorientation, The time to talk isn’t now or maybe again for an hour or even a year. Seal your lips shut for it’s time for the hymn of ZSA ZSA GABOR. This release is relentlessly and refreshingly diverse in its sonic character and nuance of sound and style; oscillation between spoken texts , drone, ambient, field recordings, distant screams that ring like a hammer smashing an ancient bell, and string based swells ZZG has something for everyone , but at the sane time NOTHING FOR YOU. They owe you nothing and owe everything to the void. Full tilt sonic mayhem engulfs your last thought and hope as your skull is cast aside like an extra, misshaped, unneeded brick into the ever-growing pile of death.
“Left Skull Bank 2” picks up close to where part 1 left off, with a thick, buzzing, shaking vibrato of stringed chaos while a monotone, anxious, realistic voice reads and breathes upon every swelling stringed drone of death, and after a “brief demonic interlude” the listener is cast once again into the chaotic experiments of death with Part three, twisting and tangling the false hope that we once had with harsh stabs, angry, dissonant, atonal swells through a purgatory nobody wants to even pass by for a minute. This cassette runs the full scope of experimental sounds but in a a unique and refreshing way, no rehashing, no redux, this is simply top notch experimental music, get about it, be about it. .ZSA ZSA GABOR is a thick, swollen, controlled anger, which is more or less the sound of a decaying future; you’re dead long after you found out when you’re going to die, and if you’re worthy this might make an appearance at the funeral to help shovel your lifeless corpse to rest eternally and be consumed by the wormed earth. Follow ZSA ZSA GABOR HERE and HERE.
Jasmine Infiniti comes correct with this original production track, titled “Y1” Everything about this track hits in just the right way for an industrial danceclub bomb on the unsuspecting audience. The track opens with just a thudding drum but slowly gains speed and chaos with glitched-out industrial polyrhythms, in the pocket blown out synthesizers, churning bodies melting in the smoke filled room. Jasmine Infiniti is known for her uncanny, heart pounding, leg twisting, room shaking,surrealist sound sorceried mixed genre DJ sets, but these original productions, while informed by her DJ aesthetic take things to a whole different level of body moving bangers; alien voice transmissions and thudding electronic breakdowns, blending sharp, swift vocal stabs, chopping dicing synths, and heavy, funky, abrasive four to the floor clanging percussion, Infiniti creates a sound and aesthetic thats unique, different, important and all her own. Look out for an EP and follow her collective NEW WORLD DYSORDER. Infiniti takes her knowledge of mixing, turntablism, rhythm and density and amplifies it across these original compositions with unique, heavy and promising results.
Infiniti has been setting trends in sound and image long before this track and will be doing so long after, support this important in groundbreaking, unique artist any way you can!
“The Queen of Hell, Jasmine Infiniti is a New York Native whose dj roots started in Oakland, CA. A long time member of the House of Infiniti, Jasmine became the mother of the Bay Area Chapter, though she now resides in Brooklyn, New York. She blends dark and sometimes ambient techno and industrial sounds with break beats and cunty tracks creating a unique soundscape glimpsing into the future.”
Bay Area queer deathrock stalworts MOIRA SCAR are back with their new full length on CD/CS/ and digital via Oakland’s NEAR DARK imprint, which is run by dark gothic outfit, OTZI whose newest offerings, “Ghosts” was covered HERE a few weeks ago. Moira Scar currently is in trio form with their latest offering with Roxy Monoxide: guitar, sax, vocals, LuLu Gamma Ray: synthesizers, vocals, and Aimee S: drums. Moira Scar’s newest full length, “Wound World Part 1” boasts seven snappy, punchy, femme forward dark punk/death rock cuts, intentionally building upon their unique, sought after, indimable sound of their previously released full lengths, “Psychoid” and “Scarred For Life”. With an augmented lineup, and a slightly darker and more rock forward sound, “Wound World Part 1” might be the most intentionally straight forward, intense and focused sound the outfit has concocted yet, and the recording production suits the sound perfectly. Thick pummeling percussion, wailing, screaching vocals, fuzzed-out chugging, angular guitar riffs and the staple walls of reverb’d saxophone.
“Snap Back” might be the most traditionally “Moira Scar” sounding cut on here blending heavy bass riffs, walls of sax with driving punk inspired hard hitting drumming and the signature layered vocal efx stylings which could take the sonic shape of anything from low distorted growls to high pitched shrieks of intense washes, utilized to great success on the track “Chrysalis Skull” The operatic style walls of vocals blend perfectly over the frantic, manic heavy drumming and thick slabs of guitar and bass work. Slower, more post rock inspired track “Zeta Rainbow” offers chugging, blown up guitar riffs with dragging slagged out bass lines with more traditional breakdowns where the guitar and dual vocal processions shine brightest.
Moira Scar’s sound is thick, violent, present, and demanding of the space it requires and deserves. Death rock, like any “sub-genre” can be formulaic, boring, and predictable, but “Wound World Part 1”is the complete opposite; fierce, unique, cathartic, and nasty!. In a time where we need it most, Moira Scar once again, and perhaps with more force than ever proves they are here to stay with some of the most forward thinking and necessary sonic offerings within the contemporary rock scope. This record rallies against the dying, boring, overdone and under thought droves of CIS white-male “dominated”capitalistic rock scenes, by raising the bar and flushing the boring and inspired rock trends down into the sewer where they have belonged this entire time, and serve as an assault on the normative, re-hashed, uninspired music that often fills the airwaves. Moira Scar is a weapon against a violent, patriarchal system of despair, confusion, and entanglement and “Wound World Part 1”is the next logical step in the bands seemingly endless progression of reinvention. One of the most important contemporary dark rock acts going, period. This record is not to be overlooked.
Proud Father offers up a solid guitar based drone / ambient album on the “Reserve Matinee” imprint, titled “Creations for Electric Guitar” The album opens up softly with distant sonic sine wave synth swells caked in the reverb of an ancient sonic event. Beginning like an unsure creature taking its first steps, the first track, “Kokoro no jiin de no tomin” starts with a slow crawling distant hum which begrudgingly builds with character and intensity until it’s rolling wave of psychedelic noise. Lots of patterns of stretching, loss, reaching and long swells breathe through each other to create a lush, multi timbre stew of chaos. The artist slowly and subtly builds up to a noisy chaotic crescendo via walls of fluttering guitar , ringing drones and crawling warm, decaying synths, however the work never veers too far off course for confusion.; the major drone remains omnipresent and always pulsing as the spine of the entire album.
Dispite the lack of sonic dispute between many of the sounds a rather large scope of styles within drone and minimalistic electronic music are indeed explored. One minute we’re caught in a thick fog and several minutes later the fog lifts to an arping sun of synth patterns paying homage to acts like Heldon /Richard Pinhas (who the second side of the cassette is indeed for according to the artist’s writeup on the performance which this is from) , and early Tangerine Dream / Edgar Forese. With or without that information and point of reference, Proud Father offers up their own unique twist on guitar forward electronic music . Sounds blend and give birth to new events in a ping pong of hazy tones resonating the inner ear cochlear of the listener. These aren’t songs but they are ? Is it one big song?! either way it’s more a plentiful offering for the drone fan than the one looking for a quick fix; the sonic payoff is the crescendo and the reoccurring descent from that back into a distant lost ships last cry for communication to shore or anywhere for that matter.
Two tracks on either side of the cassettes however things blend rather nicely throughout offering a consistent wash of tripped out meditative drone for us to lose the day and the grip in. Fun and unique listen overall.
DECAYCAST Reviews: Philipp Bückle “Paintings” (Moving Furniture Records, 2018)
“Paintings” is the newest work from Germany’s ambient/drone maestro Philipp Bückle via Moving Furniture Records on LP, CD, & Digital. “Paintings” offers forty plus minutes of minimalistic, thoughtful, introspective drone compositions spread over twelve tracks. The album’s intro, titled “Elegant Company In Front Of A Palace” opens with a soft, pillowed muffled wash of static and barely audible clicks of voice and potential movement. Slowly, carefully and intentionally the album’s intro crescendo’s in volume and intention with lush, sine waves, akin to the decay of a distant call for help, or love, or compassion, or companionship, The track builds and swells and before you know it we are left with an ancient, beeping, buzzing, nothing. This theme of a lost communication, reaching out across a barren empty landscape continue throughout the record, which apparently is the third in a trilogy of similar works recorded in the artists vacationing spot of Copenhagen, Denmark.
Some tracks offer more musical stringed resolve, where as other occupy a noisier more abstract space, but the tension holds well across the album as a whole, although the noisier passages seem to build the tension which is often released and resolved through the more string based, musical compositions. This isn’t 100% experimental, but it’s also somewhat indescribable as it does oscillate seemingly well intentioned between what some would call noise, ambient, and drone while still offering the listener points of resolve with fairly standard musical compositions so to speak. The more ambient tracks stand out as the album’s stronger and more interesting experiments though Bückle manages to carry forth his themes of loss, isolation, and occasionally comfort and discovery in a continuous and intentional way, which acts as a glue for the varied structures and styles of compositions presented on, the aptly titled, “Paintings”, as many of the songs feel like vignettes, posters, experience in of themselves each wearing a slightly augmented form of sorrow on it’s sleeve.
Of the more traditionally musical tracks, a quaint cinematic effect is achieved, especially on the vocal forward tracks such as “Figures On A Road Through The Woods”and “A Seascape. The Coast Of The Island In Evening Light” which both boast a rather lush, decaying, middle range voice drone which blends carefully and intentionally with the slowly evolving, churning string and piano drones which lay delicately and subtly underneath the more forward, punctual voice based sections. These are breaths in the cold air of loss, gain, confusion, and clarity, These are paintings, nothing more and nothing less. Take from that what you may. Overall a strong release from a longstanding, musically diverse, and persistent imprint, who you will be hearing more about in the future.
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Spore Spawnis a nearly decade old project based out of Japan, and also happens to be an end level boss in the popular fan favorite video game, Metroid.
The project name choice is Probably not an accident based on the title and aesthetics of the artists imprint, 16 Shots Per Second but this cassette is released by Leah and Matt’s imprint OXEN, based out of LA. “Ochistuitara”, from Tokyo’s underground legend SPORE SPAWN, boasts a twenty minutes’ sacrifice of masterfully crafted, exciting, kinetic, dynamic harsh noise, and supposedly is made from a myriad of homemade joystick synthesizers and crude noise devices. While essentially existing in the harsh noise realm, “Ochistuitara” actually covers a rather wide and refreshing array of harsher sounds, compositional strategies and dynamics, and even musicality at times, almost a virtuosic approach to harsh noise. Spawn creates dense walls of feedback that violently and aggressively cascade into spacious vignettes of ambient drone, expertly blended field recordings, slow rhythmic pops, and chirps like a glitched- out, off-kiltered, dying alarm clock that fights the plug to stay in the wall when it’s angrily yanked out. The walls of blistered, busted out, serrated chaotic mayhem crescendo into utter sonic chaos, and just as the ear bleeds for mercy rescind into a cold, alienating, isolating hum. At times, the ambient sections act as a break from the unrelenting mountains of noise, and other times, function as matrix of brain mutes with respect to the ear fatigue. Loud is only loud when quiet is quiet, and on “Ochistuitara”, the artist is no doubt conscious of this strategy in respect to the timing and composition of this EP.
Things never stay the same to become predictable or flat, Spore Spawn is constantly shifting though wavetables of disorientation, fear, chaos, tension, and even a few brief moments resolve. The tones themselves have a cold, digital body, while swells of analog chaos modulate themselves and the sharp digital pillars of extreme sonic swells and decays, and the start /stop style of aggressive noise, on more than one occasion even function as a “drop”. What was dropped we don’t know, however it carved a deep impact into the ear canal, even noted on one of CLIPPING‘s year end best of lists! In short, this is a must have for fans of ASTRO, K2, early MERZBOW and even some of the work of CLIPPING themselves. OXEN continues to remain at the forefront as one of America’s most aesthetically and conceptually consistent harsh noise labels. Grip this fantastic tape before it’s too late. Here’s a few world from OXEN that represent the complexity and brevity of this EP flawlessly,
“Ochitsuitara brings any fan of modern harsh noise (nostalgists won’t be disappointed though maybe not specifically catered to) closest to articulating what it is that sets Spore Spawn apart from decades of legendary noise pioneers, his modern myth building utilizing swirling loops of cacophony and squelching stabs, uncompromisingly outpacing any modern competition in his unique patterns of ecstatic jarring drunken fervor and (sometimes) vocal delivers closely woven into and through electronics culled from homemade disused gaming controllers. Just harsh as fuck. All measurements of harsh noise enjoyment of this genuinely gifted noise artist will be vastly rewarded and on abundant display on Ochitsuitara.”
With the rise of accessibility for artists and producers to create sound, music, art and the ability for those artists to contextualize, and re contextualize their work in a seemingly often dizzying whirlwind of labels, sub-labels, sub-labels of sub-labels, through, you guessed it, the INTERNET; questioning the role or necessity of a small independent record label in these weird, confusing post-post modern days of malleability of meaning, format and intention, seems like probably a good idea. How many of them are genuine, how many of them truly put the artist first, and in priority, how many of them believe and stand behind their “product”, behind both the “artist” and the “artwork”. Derek Rush‘s New York – based imprint, Chthonic Streams does just that, and they do it with style, focus, and intention, as exemplified by the labels’ most ambitious and potentially most conceptual release to date, at least in its packaging and form, is the “No Workers Paradise” boxset. You should keep reading, but what I also recommend is that you stop what you’re doing and instantly ORDER THE BOXSET HERE!
We are fans of boxsets, we are fans of conceptual art, and we are fans of toolboxes and ridiculously ambitious projects here at Decaycast, and Chthonic Streams exhaustive 8 hour cassette boxset titled, “V/A: NO WORKERS PARADISE” covers all of these bases and more, in one, mechanical, maniacal offering. Boxsets are awesome, and they’re even more compelling when they actually contain new material, by, gasp, even living artists. No shade on the myriad of Miles Davis and John Coltrane CD reissue boxsets that we have all seen and probably purchased, but eight hours of new material, from eight heavy hitters in the noise/industrial/power electronics scene enclosed in a matte black tool box, accompanied by a zine and customized time card to boot, is not really something we could (or should ignore). We received a rather large media mail box from New York and upon opening, the “No Workers Paradise” boxset emerged, a sleek matte black toolbox with a shiny chrome latch and basic font that reads “No Workers Paradise” is affixed to the top. Its interior reveals eight 60-minute cassettes and a zine/accompanying booklet for the release, and customized time card emerge as the tools for the job, so to speak. It was time to clock in.
As with all of the labels’ releases, the artwork is done by label head honcho Derek Rush who also books shows, is an active DJ, and works in graphic design and photography, so it comes as no surprise that all of the artwork included looks stunning and professional, accented by the printed booklet and cassette artwork itself. We haven’t even gotten into the sounds and this is already worth the $75 price tag without question, a truly beautifully put together collection. Now into the meat and bones of these disgruntled, bloody and beaten-down workers, we will delve into the sounds in reaction to the tormented work day!
The boxset starts with the label owner’s project, COMPACTOR, offering a strong, mechanically styled “old school” feeling industrial track with clanging rhythms, backed with the tick tock tick tock of the overlord’s clock. The panopticon is omnipresent and the worker must continue. Wake up. Work! Time To Work! Until you DIE, and DIE, until you can clock out at the end of the day and do it all again. Compactor’s sounds generally fall within a more mechanized style of industrial, there is soul, but it’s the soul of a robot programed to destroy itself, through repeated, violent, senseless rhythms, yet Rush’s sound and sample choices are powerful and intentional. The, slow, churning blown out percussion blends perfectly with the high squelching feedback of industry/insanity and multi-layered, multi-timbral synth workings. Compactor’s offering is the perfect opening to the project, cold, alienating, mechanized, and dense; the perfect ramp up to the more fuzzed out, abstracted works of some of the other contributors to the boxset, The Vomit Arsonist, Redrot, Gnawed, and Filth, amongst others.
Another standout sound work in this massive offering comes from Denton, TX’s FILTH, who offers up his own interpretation of an hour slice of the standard american work day. Rob Buttrum’s FILTH project is known for his menacing cacophony of industrialized noise, power electronics and analog psychedelic compositions. FILTH brings his A game to work for with a dark, brooding, menacing stitching of fuzzed out, psychedelic noise and drenched in feedback power electronics, in what can only be described as the FILTH sound, which we have covered in the past HERE in an interview with Buttrum and his label OUT OF BODY RECORDS. Buttrum does offer a rhythmic backing at times, but in a different, slightly more diffused, muffled style than COMPACTOR, but don’t skimp on the manual, because there is a harsh reality in store if you don’t, and you’re likely to get gobbled up into the machine and spat out as puny remains, but FILTH’s sound is not exclusively harsh, tripped out noise, there are abstracted broken rhythms, there is intention, it is planned, and panned, it IS the sound of the second hour of the day forcing itself into the negative space of your brain, that may in fact, prove to be your last of the day, of your life. FILTH is the sound of a rusted, dilapidated, unstable, harsh machine taking its unknowing operator with it to an early grave. Planned obsolescence, like user, like machine.
Michigan’sREDROT (Chondritic Sound, Bloodlust, Slaughter Productions)aka Ryan Oppermannoffers another standout track on “No Worker’s Paradise” with one of their tracks titled, “Work Release Program Terminations”. REDROT is blackened, harsh noise/PE, with slices of blown out beats, and angular rhythmic structures over a sea of dense power electronics and industrial. The machine has already regurgitated the one time worker into a mess of fleshy, red, sacks of rotting remains, and REDROT is the absolute perfect soundtrack to the coworkers slowly and confusingly sweeping the bloody bits into a bag for disposal. Redrot carries a white noise sword which swiftly and steadily shaves away at the listeners inner ear canal, until a drop of blood leaks out, and starts a mechanical frenzy leaving the workers, along, confused, and scared as the drop turns into a red pool where music dies.
Another standout offering on this project is Minneapolis, MN’s GNAWED, aka Grant Richardson. We’ve covered one of GNAWED’s previous releases HERE on Decaycast.
GNAWED‘s track for “No Worker’s Paradise” is similar to his other industrial, harsh noise, power electronics hybrid funeral stylings; chaotic, yet restrained, busy yet articulate, harsh but at times even beautiful. Much like FILTH, GNAWED uses homemade analog electronics to create a brooding, dark, cavernous sound all of his own. His “Terminal Epoch” album from Phage Tapes, would be the closest style wise that I’ve heard for the track for this boxset. GNAWED is a master of tension through intentional and articulate dynamics, balancing sharp, harsh sounds with lower, more brooding under swellings of terror; the track slowly and painfully oscillates between violent shudders, chaotic, dense, noise blasts and distorted, broken voice swells.
THE VOMIT ARSONIST,EXISTENCE IN DECLINE, BLSPHMand WORK/DEATH also punch in with powerful sound works blending industrial, harsh/blackened noise, power/electronics and dark, experimental moods of the harsher, angular style.
The boxset as a whole is a lengthy listen clocking in at the 8 hour mark, but when one thinks of the slow, grudging, unrelenting time clock of the american work day, this tour de force of harsh industrial / PE serves as a warm, relaxing day on the beach as a vacation, even for a day, from the alienating, hellscape robotic world that is American capitalism. Rush does right by all of the artists involved with stunningly beautiful and appropriate artwork and packaging as with all of the labels releases. A must for any noise collector, and/or hater of capitalism.
DECAYCAST#036: NIHAR BHATT : V/A: ROGUE PULSE / GRAVITY COLLAPSE DJ Mix on RATSKIN RECORDS, 2017
IMA “Meshes” TERROR APART “Perfectly Nowhere” BIG DEBBIE “E.P. Hypnosis” AH MER AH SU “Write This Off” SNEAX (LaTron + Obsidian Blade) “Till The End 100%” Piano Rain “Last Year” Remastered PRIST “Still Movin'” FORBIDDEN COLORS “Green Smiley Face Sticker” BONUS BEAST “Direct Dive” ZEEK SHECK “7777-01-07 Son” JOSHUA KIT CLAYTON “Morning Rasp” HIROSHI HASEGAWA “Homeobox” MALOCCULSION “Walk Of The Dead, Part One” S.B.S.M. “Godzilla” POD BLOTZ “The Current” MOOR MOTHER “CTM Five” BRIAN TESTER “Chrono People” GOLDEN DONNA “Wired For The Worst” THE CREATRIX “D B No Moral Universe” CIARRA BLACK “Don’t Say It, Volume 1” RUSSELL E.L. BUTLER “Technofeminism House” ZANNA NERA “In My Veins” JASMINE INFINITI “Scratchy A” ELROND “Hart Start” DIMENTIA “Specimen Identity” PARALYCYST “Untitled” SHARON TATE FETUS EXPLOSION “Personal Brand” V.E.X. “Ride The Time” arc “Breathe Couplings Undulation Map”
On The Origin Of Rogue Pulse / Gravity Collapse:About two weeks to the day before Ghostship, we returned home after days of protests; as always feeling defeated, BEING defeated another day of violence enacted upon the communities’ consciousness; Witnessing the beautiful families of oakland wading through never ending rivers of trauma enacted on all marginalized communities through state sanctioned violence and racism in Oakland, and the Bay Area at large. A compilation will not solve this, a thousand compilations will not solve this, but we have done nothing to combat this and we have to start somewhere. ROGUE PULSE / GRAVITY COLLAPSE is an uncertain yet thorough attempt to demonstrate to propose a restructuring of how artists, labels, promoters, venues and other “institutions” and INSTITUTIONS use their privilege, time, talents, and resources. But before we could do that, and begin to unpack the complexities around all of these issues, in one single night, the community lost thirty six souls, including founding members of our collective, artists on our label, family members, and so much more in Ghostship and then months after RP/GC was released, almost a dozen more in the San Pablo Fire months later which displaced hundreds of longstanding Black members of the community, and lastly the North Bay fires. There is only so many ways to process or not process this stuff, but we came up with a compilation. We weren’t sure how long it would be, who would be included, how we would present it to the public without exacerbating the commodification of grief, and without taking visibility away from traumas enacted against the Oakland community at large, outside of the “artistic” community. We weren’t really at all sure how we would divide up the money, how we would promote it, but sometimes you don’t have any other fucking choice, even if it raised $100 you never know how far that could go.. Ghostship was, and still is a horrendous blow to our local creative community, many of whom had already been resisting against the structural wrath and chaos of a white supremacist, sexist, capitalist culture, and therefore already just struggling to create and survive, day by day hour by hour minute by minute. In short, many communities were fragmented and tormented long before Ghostship, and Ghostship, for many of us, brought a blade of mass trauma slicing through reality, grief, chaos, distrust and confusion that uprooted the community in so many different ways. The Immediate Fire relief fund literally saved people’s lives by the way and all the love should be given to them and those working on the periphery as well.
What was crucial for us was linking in those deeply affected and lost in Ghostship fire while also keeping the financial and conceptual focus on the organizations we chose to support before the fire, Black Lives Matter and St James Infirmary in San Francisco. Before we knew it, it was out. It was like the best and worst possible distraction, and in MANY ways, postponed a lot of the mental and physical healing that members of the collective needed to do for ourselves but at the same time it was, and still very much is an entry point for beginning the process. For me personally, this has easily been the single most important release I have ever been a part of for numerous reasons, but the single biggest reason is because it saved my life, literally, so many times I cannot even count and it did that by showing me the undeniable ferociousness of our community. Every track on ROGUE PULSE / GRAVITY COLLAPSE, came as a blessing, a hug, a shoulder to cry on, but also they came as weapons, one hundred and eighty seven weapons, and we couldn’t be happier with the finished offering, as it strives to demonstrate the unrelenting power through all of the trauma and grief that our community and the people of Oakland, through various intersections possess and present with every moment that they exist. Nihar’s essential, heartfelt, and nearly perfect distillation of the thirteen hours of Rogue Pulse / Gravity Collapse, carefully and masterfully sharpens heavy stones of grief into razor blades of warmth, love, creativity, and determination of our community like daggers to the throat of a broken, corrupt system. Every tear shed will eventually freeze to form an icicle to thrust into the socket of a system which has cast away so many amazing, beautiful, creative, people.
This mix is one for everyone who has lost a loved one at the hands of systemic violence. Your tears will not go unnoticed, and this is just the beginning.
This mix is one for everyone who has lost a loved one at the hands of systemic violence. Your tears will not go unnoticed, and this is just the beginning.
D E C A Y C A S T Magazine 