CONSCIOUS SUMMARY “Exhaustions” C32 (Skin Trade)

Samur Khouja left Los Angeles for India one day, spending a month on the road there before returning home and recording “Exhaustions,” which he conceived on his journey. I, on the other hand, went to California for a wedding for six days and returned home and did basically nothing. I guess I listened to Conscious Summary. Wrote about it a bit.

Having clearly proven that Khouja has a more drive one single pinkie finger than I do in my whole body, I now turn to “Exhaustions” itself, three tracks composed for synthesizer and voice that overtake your attention. The tracks hover there, like landscape covered in fog, and move in slow motion, punctuated here and there by bursts of noise and shrouded in a sort of orchestral ambience. It’s a bit creepy, I’ll give it that, and it sounds perfect right about now in the days leading up to Halloween.

But “Exhaustions” isn’t a “Halloween” record – it’s much more of a mood piece, and connecting it to Khouja’s Indian jaunt is important. In it you can hear the weariness of experience and interaction, as well as the intrigue of traveling through and discovering new places. Eyes widen and dim in the ebbs and flows of an endless voyage. It’s all here – the full experience. (Re)live it with Conscious Summary.

Skin Trade


--Ryan

SEAMSTRESS “Euphrates” C30 (Skin Trade)

How do we endure lengthy periods of great stress or hardship? Seamstress artfully tackles this throughout “Euphrates,” a “30-minute track of hallucinatory and caustic sound intent on conveying the effects of physical and emotional drought on the human psyche.” The cover photo, a barren ditch cut through the earth, is a striking counterpoint to the Euphrates River in the cradle of civilization, from which springs life. The filtered sky looks as brown and dead as the dirt and rocks. It’s a metaphor for the individual mentally strip-mined to emptiness, as well as a reminder that all life eventually returns to dust.

Seamstress feels the lack. Seamstress has been overwhelmed by it.

“Euphrates” begins with a boiling shriek and settles to a drone, through which emerge what sounds almost like a choir. It returns to utter desolation, but violently: sandstorms, swarms of insects, plague. Samples and effects pierce the air before dissipating, leaving only the long, lonely night whose emptiness, whose complete and utter aloneness, reverberates like phantom signals feeding back on each other. But hey – all that’s probably just in your head. Your poor, lost, dying head. Sleep tight!


Skin Trade



--Ryan 

nfiLAST "Appropriate Modes & Zones” C40 (Skin Trade Recordings)

Permanently etched into my consciousness is Dylan Carlson’s assertion that “there is nothing heavier than the drone,” (roughly paraphrased from an interview included with Earth’s  “Hibernaculum” DVD).

LAST truly embodies this sentiment, 200%, with the gold-star niche that Hi-Fi speakers are pretty much required to truly get all of the nuance that has been magnetized to this tape. With a below-low end that varies texture like a good massage, “Appropriate Modes & Zones” may well be the number one hit for the deaf community… if marketed correctly.

I once went to a show where the composer arranged pieces that were all played under 20Hz (for the layperson, that’s below what most mortals can actually hear), and the audience all wore earplugs so that the reverberations from the specially fabricated speakers could better shake our noggins like an empty snare drum (our chests like floor toms and bass drums, depending on our physiques), and this particular tape bridges the gap between that experience and what a longform SUN O))) chord sounds like, wrung out into infinity.

Living in an apartment building,  I couldn’t really give this tape its proper due by playing it through a full stack bass cabinet, but I hope one of y’all get a chance to, soon! Deep tissue massage on all your internal organs, I tell you whhuuuutt!

https://soundcloud.com/skintraderecordings/milk-of-wisdom-part-1
and/or
http://skintraderecordings.blogspot.com/

-- Jacob An Kittenplan

ACTUARY / SEAMSTRESS “Split” (Skin Trade Recordings)

Atonal blackness envelops, night rife with existential danger. Caustic machinations manipulated for maximum terror haunt rather than emanate from stereo speakers, their psychic dread lasting long after the final tone is sounded. These cosmic nightmarescapes are augmented with horrifying vocalizations, communications from the very darkest pockets of existence, universes where decay and destruction mask the demonic inhabitants. The sounds resolve themselves in pulses of charred oblivion.

And that’s just the Actuary side! In somewhat of a reversal of what I’ve just described, Actuary has this message of gratitude on the inside of the j-card: “To those who struggle but get it done anyways.” Actuary gets it done, but the sound is the sound of struggle, difficult to hear and digest. But that’s the point. At any rate, “Possessing Power” is one of the coolest noise tracks I’ve heard in a while. It’s harsh but it’s surprisingly listenable as I recline in the jaws of an irate hellhound.

Seamstress does not let up on the unholy racket, plowing through the single track on side B, “Carbon Silhouette,” like their hair was on fire, or their gear, or the ground upon which they walk. Hallucinating the entire way through the side, Seamstress doles out harsh trip after harsh trip, magnifying the darkness inherent in the shadow of the silhouette cast. A nice counterpoint to Actuary, Seamstress plays music that’s the equivalent of a lava lamp filled with black liquid buoying black bubbles of a slightly different blackness. This whole thing’s a harrowing experience. It’s great to dig into.

Actuary
Skin Trade Recordings

--Ryan Masteller