Max Nordile doesn’t strike me as the paisley-wearing type, yet here is
on San Fran’s Paisley Shirt Records with Primordial
Gaffe, his latest controlled and blurted performance art/noise tape. Kevin,
proprietor of the label, also thinks it’s “unlike anything else on Paisley
Shirt,” so here we have a true original, a misfit from across the bay willing
to plant his flag wherever avant-loving masses can get to it. Kevin’s happy
about it, so let us be happy about it too!
Max makes skewered guitar/bass odes to the sound of the current of a
quarter-inch jack being plugged into a practice amp or a tuning peg cranking
waaay beyond the point where it’s doing anyone any good. As such he’s an
explorer, a sound savant that’s either so far ahead of his time that we’re just
hoping to catch up or so deep in the weeds that we can barely see the path
connecting the main road to the remote fieldsite where he’s tinkering. Either
way, the seasick hammers of performance suggest rhythms and patterns and
connections to each other that only those with the keened ear will be able to
put together, like detectives on the case.
Never noise rock because not rock and barely noise, but perhaps
claiming no wave as an ancestor, making this no no no no wave or something
equally absurd as a descendent category, Primordial
Gaffe will satisfy the adventurous among you. Like those of you with
guitars and beat-up fedoras and an inkling to traverse the far corners of the
world in search for archaeological rarities. Plus, the tape has a neat silver
shell and j-card!