Providence is a straight-up spooky place. At night, it's a ghost town with people living in it, it's bizarre and beautiful. In comes semi-recent transplant SHV (an acronym for "Superior Human Vomit"), the identity of Ali, a former member of Boston supergroup Dreamhouse, and someone who waves that freak flag high. She's also a regular collaborator playing with Carlos Gonzalez (Russian Tsarlag) in the new band, Swamp Tease, and has also contributed to Christopher Forgues' Hexmorb project.This is only Ali's second release under the SHV moniker, the first being the "Endless Love" cassette on Geoff Mullen's Rare Youth label, but it's definitely a fully-formed sound. The first word that comes to mind is "industrial", with piston-pumping drums and super fuzzed-out bass sounds. Imagine your favorite Joy Division tape getting super worn out and then having the pitch turned up a bit higher. This seems to be the primary concern on this tape, but it also has moments of goopy oscillations and found sound clips from "Some Like it Hot", including a brilliantly placed outro of Marilyn Monroe singing "I'm Through with Love". The lyrics otherwise remain relatively unintelligible, with a few exceptions (my favorite being a sing-along of "one hand on your neck, one hand on your chest"), and the lyrics sheet within is unreadable due to the small size of the type bleeding during printing (well, at least I think they're lyrics). I think this is really cool actually, and sort of prevents the listener from getting too direct of a message, because when making my own interpretation of this work, the broadness feels like something that really helps you understand and connect to the creator's process and their intentions. Between the eeriness of the music itself, and the sort of "tongue-in-cheek" vibe from the mass of cats on the cover, this makes for a remarkably sincere listen from someone who could own the world if they wanted to. Another good example of a c40 that goes by without a minute of redundancy.
http://www.raccoo-oo-oon.org/np/
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