“A Morgue Now Rests Where a Tomb Once Towered” is, I
think, the mission statement of Outfit of Loss, where a celebrated monument to
death and decay decays into a less-celebrated monument to death and decay.
Where one was purely ornamental, serving no purpose other than to mark a spot
of death, the other is decidedly functional, working to make sense of that
death. If there’s one thing I’ve learned through the work of power electronics
and noise artists over the years is that meaninglessness pervades, death is
absolute and random, and functionality is a big fat waste of time.
Sorry to knock the sunshine from your morning!
So let’s sit back in our easy chairs of nihilism and
watch the busy ants thinking that there’s a reason for their toil. This act can
be dutifully soundtracked by Outfit of Loss, whose manipulations of harsh noise
resolve into easily discernible patterns that jag and stutter and jolt and jerk
us through six hellacious tracks, each one less meaningful that the last. It’s
the kind of soul-ripping, mind-crushing experience that actually ends up being
a bit invigorating on the other end. Because once you experience something like
Outfit of Loss, it’s like your psyche has been scoured, the detritus removed.
So even though that kind of encounter tends to overwhelm your particles to the
point of decomposition, once you recompose and realign, you come out of the
whole thing better than you had been. And isn’t that kind of the point of this
noisy stuff?
Unless of course you don’t come out of it at all.
Tombs and morgues and stuff, after all.
https://clinquantpudendum.bandcamp.com
--Ryan