Surely the pairing of Andy Ortmann and Seth Oubliette was a match made in noise purgatory, because even sixty minutes of material hardly seems enough. Panicsville's "Brain in the Cat" (probably a description of the album cover, which is as disgusting as you might think) could easily stand as an album in itself and is as diverse a work as anything Ortmann has released. "Gates of Hell" begins with a slow ambience but is quickly consumed by off-kilter junk rhythm loops, bagpipes (!) and greasy tape canoodling. "Horsemen's Club," "Pregnant At Birth" and the title track follow with similar collage techniques, rarely still but executed with great timing. Ortmann has a hundred methods of creating sound and enough bizarro ideas to match each one. Gurgling analog bubbles, tape decay, disorienting stereo effects, abused samples, harsh circuit-blowing cacophony- it's all there, like a gearhead's personal mixtape or a symphony for ADD degenerates. The superb mastering reveals every nauseating detail.
Oubliette's side is equally great for totally different reasons. The premise is simple: 1) cut up some Halloween sound effects records, and 2) turn on lots of distortion. Thus the greatest noise Halloween party tape ever was created. There are twelve tracks in all with slight pauses in beween, although it's not obvious why. It might have been the fun of naming two-minute snippets like "Enjoy the Scarf" and "Sad Bridal Shower," but "Never Enough Horror" sums it all up. RECOMMENDED!
www.hunglikeahorse.org
Showing posts with label Hung Like A Horse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hung Like A Horse. Show all posts
POD BLOTZ "Agents of Froth" (Hung Like a Horse?!)
To set an obvious bias out of the way, I could listen to Pod Blotz for years. If they never release anything else, Soozee and Loachfillet's slimy trails of sci-fi shenanigans will long be remembered as musically and visually unique, and an essential component of California's modern bizarro contingent. So when the new batch from HLAH?! arrived on my dilapidated doorstep I freaked out. Fans of the Blotz will be happy to know that this pre-"Swamp Command" stunner includes nearly an hour of live material from their Chicago and Oakland tenures spanning 2003-2005. At some points spacious and drifting, others anxiously claustrophobic, washes of gurgling synths and mangled cries wrestle with dirty bass frequencies and creeping static throughout the three sprawling performances. The band's hallmark use of echo manipulation for high-pitched squalor is as hallucinatory as ever, and effects box fanatics will find no shortage of indescribable wierdness to baffle over. While a Blotz record makes a perfect accompaniment for an evening of Something Wierd videos, I cannot stress how astounding this band is live, as these sets attest to. Consider it imperative to catch them now while they're ON TOUR. Originally issued in 2006, this second edition of 50 is probably going to disappear quickly, so head on over to the HLAH HQ and snap it up.
16 BITCH PILE-UP “Seeping Reaper” (Hung Like A Horse?!)
These ladies have been burying strangers and magnetic tape deep in their cavernous industrial lair for years now and their cathartic predatory improv mode still freewheels leagues above the limbs of lesser drone broods, so it was great news/fortune to have this hot pink C60 show up one day. HLAH?! has a habit of sitting on material for years before releasing it, which could be construed as frustrating for some but in this case the delay transformed a basic raw noise document into a semi-crucial historical artifact, as both sides here showcase the original and long-dead 16 BPU pentagrammic five-piece line-up in action. What’s strangest is that despite the extra players the sound is almost sparser than the current trio formation, with tape crawl and metallic creaks ringing inside basements of negative space. The A side is swampier, swelling with gross heat and green-eyed drone bog, recorded live in Columbus, OH in ’05, while the B was tracked at the Flywheel in West Mass the same year, though it’s far bleaker and emptier…sampled voices echo against numb banks of hiss and silence. Weird stuff, and comes with a classic killer cover of deranged faces getting knifed repeatedly. More freaky bloodletting from the Bitch Pile.
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