Momentus sound artist, label head of Corpus Callosum Distro, longtime noise queen, and curator and founder of the legendary Ladyz In Noyz compilation series, UK based Marlo Eggplant offers her newest work via Travis Johns VAUX FLORES imprint (who also happen to make some fantastic pedals and homemade electronic instruments). Eggplant’s newest offering, titled “head/rush(ed)” enacts a wide array of sonic offerings through short but powerful tracks.
From minimalistic, low keyed crawlings of static plumes, plucks and voice breaths, such as highlighted in tracks such as “one1one“,to spacious, prickly, washed out hills of dark reverb swells of distorted, orchestral style string drones to harsher, more rhythmic and industrial leaning works such as my personal favorite on this release, “Premeditated”; Eggplant covers a wide but cohesive range of experimental styles.
The album’s standout, “Premeditated” blends droning sawtooth synthesizers, high frequency, high tension noise walls of static fuzz, and screaching, crawling voice stabs spike out from out of the darkness of confusion. This track could easily hold a torch to early Kevin Drumm, Chelsea Wolfe, or even Diamanda Galas without even a sonic flinch of disorientation, but offers yet again so much more for contemplation through it’s own aural and compositional strategies. Nothing on “head/rush(ed)” come off as flat or static works however, they are short intentioned sonic offerings of sacrifice of self, weight, brevity, and sonic deconstruction. Eggplant has never strayed too far away from the harsh side of noise, however these pieces, while harsh, hold a cinematic and even musical character to them without losing a single percentage of intensity, and abstraction; a line that is rarely toted this successfully by any contemporary artist, and this album is no exception. Eggplant has clearly mastered the high tension model of dynamic composition and uses this to her favor with no end in sight. These tracks could easily be scenes to a yet imagined film and yet hold so much narrative within themselves that the listener is almost forced to imaging the physical and etherial spaces that Eggplant sonically articulates throughout “head/rush(ed)”. The record crescendos with an equally intense, albeit more musically and slightly less noisy and possibly deeper and more personal offering titled “onmyown” which features a vocal and chord forward morose and sad ballad in the vein of Tara Cross or an early more subdued Daniel Johnson, which focuses on the erasure and heartbreak of not being seen. A beautiful and humble ending to a strong, sharp and intentional offering from Eggplant, always honest, present and esoteric, Eggplant remains one of the most interesting and unique unsung heroes of contemporary noise.
This collaboration shifts honestly between many many different sonic spaces; in the least contrived blending of beat oriented synthesis and, well plants. Riffing off a theme of the releasing label, Biodiversità Records, Katatonic Silentio / Tremco / Neurosplit / Oromë create a dense, special world of sonic possibilities in a structurally rhythmic call and response ping pong of tense, delicate, and complicated sonic events. Oscillating between dissonant beat oriented electronic music which the artists admit could be considered “techno” but the four to the floor mindless speed comedown hooks are left by the wayside for a more atonal, arrhythmic, deconstruction of traditional “techno”, “dubstep” or whatever step” you take away from these quaint but pungent sonic exercises. “Pteris Variata” unduates between slower, cold, tense pulsing rhythms, occasionally backed by more straightforward percussive voices, however the ambient swells and tense array of noises never allows this to become too much of a unique sound; the tracks and sections move swiftly and articulate their space and move on, nothing forces the listener into a corner relentlessly, rather creates a dark and interesting space for the listener to crawl into if they choose and explore a lush, dark, cinematic sound.
Background swells of anciently articulated sawtooth waves swell and wobble under a filter noose and offer an ambience which the percussion rhythms can dance around without dominating the mix. Overall the vibe is minimalist, tense, cinematic, ambient. Clickity, tapping, bass drums drive the rhythm exercises through a full workout of sonic possibilities ending with perhaps the EP’s strongest track, ” Oromë – Athyrium cantem” which speaks to early Phaedra era Tangerine Dream, Wendy Carlos and even references current producers such as Cloudland Canyon or Peaking Lights.
Will be digging more through this Italian based label’s catalog and seeing what other dark, pulsing treats we can find hiding in the brush.
Anti patriarchal pro femme photo punk from the PA outfit, BLEEDERS. from Miami’s Crass Lips Records Intro track “I Hate Men” starts out in the perfect foot forwad for smashing the patriarchy, Angular guitar, punchy, punded drums, and screamed / yelled “crew style” on the chorus of “I Hate Men” prove you do have to bash a man in the side of the head about fifteen times before you get a small enough crack for anything to sink in, but when it does, for 4/4 punk, this is the type of ear blood you want dripping into your brand new headwound. Super fuzzy and distorted sounding recording, but the playing is phenominal, and for the style its done super well and interesting. Straight up all women/non pinary proto punk stylings churn out three heavy and guitar/vocals forward tracks of pure misandry! It’s fantastic! Other track titles such as “Backstabbing Scumfucker” and “Forced Vaginal Ultrasound” don’t let the listener map their own confused musings into these tracks, they are exactly what they are and don’t need to be interpreted, if you have an ear, you’ll get it, if shit clogged canal is how you roll then move right along and await the eight am ding of the churchbell for the three thousandth time (to go away)
Grave Moss play fuzzed out psychedelic lo fi synth punk/rock/death/doom/comedy/sludge. But it’s not really that, but it kinda is? The label whom released this short little ripper of a cassette, Crass Lips Records, is just as all over the map in a great and eclectic, but uncontrived way. Sabbath mock band? Perhaps, but it sounds damn good? I think? I can’t tell my mind seems to be altered by some gooey, slippery off blue fungi, that could only be described as one thing; mosswave. Borrowing equal parts from Chrome, Black Sabbath Volume 4, Sisters of Mercy, and a broken Yanni answering machine greeting, Grave Moss create a style of deathrock that is both comical and serious, lighthearted and menacing, heavy yet gurgling with comic relief, nauseous yet satisfied. Drugged out, fuzzed out, mold puffed riffs, cavernous percussion, and angrily sneered vocals are the go to weapons of Grave Moss. The hammering guitar makes you split your head open like the village wino running circles until he spins out his blood and collapses from disorientation.
Oscillating between synth-driven death rock, dirged -out pop power chord progressions, scraping their way to the bloody tip of the mix, flustered with doubly duty screeched/howled vocals to boot. The falsetto voice it’s so low oscillates sub bass gurgle for an accentuated evil grin. Almost sounds like it could be mocking early Christian Death in the laugh out of the side of your mouth smile slicer. This is fun music to discuss how much Death in June is not that interesting, whilst keeping awake at the wheel to the next five-hundred-mile marker of death. Driving music to vomit to all whilst still head banging, this appears the aesthetic of Grave Moss Probably a laugh-treat live if they play it up to the absurdity of these recordings. The thickly churning bass lines and bass/lead synth parts glue the low end perfectly together to belch to thick, quivering sound, a tonal, dissonant, and slightly comical versions of alienating guitar and synthesizer riffs, pummeling bombastic percussion chugging away like the ergot beneath the old wooden keg nobody would dare drink out of, sans the drummer. Infected sound, stitched side to side through the singer’s flanged out, chopping, angsty barking fits which are hurled at the listener like a rickety crossbow, and with a creaking, sinking, smelly, ship collapsed into a swamp of disease and mutation, the sound of GRAVE MOSS is complete.
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.
The Pregnant Spore side opens up with a fuzzed out, distorted thud percussion pulse and slices of choking voices aboot. The blown out crawling bass slam and garbled voice slices play off of each other quite nicely, and occasionally giving way to blown out sawtooth death note blasts that come from below and pierce through the mix. Albeit them a little hot in the mix, these jagged bass blasts create a rhythmic structure which shapes a dense and articulate bassline for a plethora of stuttering, flickering , and what sounds like sampled piano notes bounce off of each other in a loose and playful yet, rhythmically interesting way. The first half of the track held a little more tension for me personally, but the dense buildup toward the end created a relieving and necessary contrast. Overall a wide scope of timbre and dynamics of sound are utilized in a short amount of time. Will be writing more about this project in the coming reviews for sure, as we have at least one more tape by Pregnant Spore in the piles of stuff to do. Now let’s get to the second side.
The Vertonen side comes right out of the gate with a warm yet sharp sounding repeating oscillation of unknown origin which goes on seemingly unchanged and tightly hinged to itself. gently beneath the surface, as if a failed distant audial telegraph, a slow tone begins to oscillate deep beneath the surface and causes a subtle yet growing psychedelic phasing of the original pulse. Slowly but with a determined tension, more and more complimentary voices trickle in and out of the mix, and cautiously roll over each other into a Terry Riley/ Steve Reich esque nod to minimalist classical composition. A short, relevant and beautifully articulate offering from Blake Edward’s Vertonen project.
Overall, a nice short release, although both projects could use a little more room on the ol’ magnet as i felt both pieces were cut off a bit abruptly, however sometimes that’s the way she goes , leave them wanting more yes? a solid release overall, with a brightly collaged color xerox cover, and plushly purple tapes which complement the J card’s nicely. Will be reviewing more from this label in the following weeks.
Somnaphon creates glitched/data bending digital audio and visual synthesis. Signals run into each other creating psychedelic, colorful matrixes of broken digital cell rendering. Who knows the signal flow of this glitch artist but it seems geometry is running amok, backed by a minimal but all present digital noise/ambient soundtrack,. Visual , architectural loops with varying but repeating Colors, shapes, and planes bend, distort, tear and melt into each other through digital loops of circuit bent video pulses. Out Of Body Records usually releases all analog artists, but with the release of the Somnaphon VHS, OOBR presents these eleven tracks digitally moshed and twisted visual experiments in an analog format, compared to some of Somnaphon’s other online works, “Anthology Of errors” has a distinct hybrid digital/analog feel, often times appearing as digitally glitched out scenes of confusion presented and pressed onto analog tape, or reprocessed through analog devices. Somnophon does a good job at masking, or rounding out the digital aesthetics of “data bending music” for a more 1970’s analog feel. Cascading pillars of pixels, lines, and rogue color palettes gently , yet meticulously morph and pulse into and out of each other to create visual poems of distorted geometry. Mirrored madness through the multiplication of destroyed and wrong pixels creates a visual journey or errors inside the first ever broken computer- error in, error out, blood in, blood out, bad human in, bad human out. Despite subscribing to the “data bending” strategy of visual construction, which can often display a somewhat limited visual palette, Somnaphon employs a wide array of image creating techniques, which morphs, pulses, generates and multiplies over the entire eleven tracks, creating an obtuse visual representation of what is possible with “data bending” .
The sounds compliment the images quite perfectly, at times, to a point, where it seems they are often coming from the same source. Glitchy, choppy, digital distorted pillars of failing and flailing spikes and pulses and apparent silence create a synesthesia effect within the work itself. Lots of digital reverb coat the structures of computer hard drives crashing into a sea of blackness. Sharp electronic blasts, spurt out chopped up transmissions of broken morse code ; sending a message out into space to the unknown. Sometimes more beat/loop oriented, and other times more sporadic and random, Somnaphon keeps the sonic and visual palette fresh and ever changing on “Anthology of Errors”
At times more painterly images are formed and other times, more rigid minimal, geometric structures and rendered and bled into new forms of their previous incantations. Somnaphon is seeking to destroy and redistribute the pixel, to create “anti digital-digital art and music” and this VHS is the perfect introduction to just that! Beautiful packaging , as always from this label, complete with the STOP PLEASE REWIND sticker!!
Hello and thanks for keeping up with decaycast . 2015 will bring a lot more reviews , interviews , podcasts and even our own bandcamp for easier streaming / downloading of all of our past and future episodes . If you’d like to submit PHYSICAL material
For review please email
Decaycast(at)gmail.com and we’ll go from there . We’re also happy to announce that we have two new writers so we’ll be able to crank out more lengthy reviews quicker and with more love and precision! The band camp will be up by the end of the week and expect interviews with PCRV , Crank Sturgeon , Jason Wade and tons more !!!
The tour kickoff in Oakland last night was sooo heavy. Loved it. The Styro gyre is at top spin, about to make land. Open wide murfukrs!
And the STYROFOAM SANCHEZ “Empire Underwater” LP is a required listening milestone. The past just floated away, this is serious soundcraft, lo-fi grabs hi-fi by the skullholes and has its way. Did y’all know what lyrics have been clattering out of the ocean’s brain all this time? Like Sun Ra said “There are other worlds they have not told you of who wish to speak with you.” SS lyrics are too core to their music, grab the book and see what you’re hearing. The illustrations are too much, a labyrinth for the eyeball while lost in the record… none of this distracted half-heard imusic… FULL IMMERSION.
Don’t look past the all new “Coastal Ruin” cassette, neither. Stretched out live sound, perfectly recorded darkness, suited to tape, triggers gooseflesh at the mere memory of styrene squeaks.
Damn, and the whole “macular Edema/Occular oOil Pond” DVD! The huge glue-jewel of this whole chemical crown. No spoilers though, suffice to say… don’t let your life suck on milquetoast mediocrity, grip this intense labor, one pkg includes the LP/DVD/BOOK, then the tape is its own. Sink yourself in mile deep layers of some heavy pitch black prescient shit, the future is cresting, about to pile onto your chest. Don’t say you were busy lookin’ at your phone glow. http://www.ratskin.org/index2.html
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