BIRDS OF DELAY “Live From Mind Avalanche” (Arbor)

UK noise duo offer up a C25 of high-pitched tonal flatlining. Way less ragged and enveloping than their usual white light/white heat pedal-heavy fare. The A side picks an ear-piercing frequency and holds it for the better part of 8 minutes, with a few waves of electronics oscillations floating through sporadically. It’s a tense scene, but ends quickly, leaving a long stretch of non-music tape hiss to unwind in. The B terrain is a little more varied, with an evolving landscape of looping densities, feedback blocks, and Line 6 groans/moans. Overall a fairly repressed patch of sonics compared with the explosive rapture of a lot of the Birds back catalog. Maybe they are trapped under Mind Avalanche, tapping out SOS signals with broken fingers on frozen delay pedals?