Desire XXI - 2013 - Le Plantago Scotia Son Tonite Electrique CS

Originally posted Jul 26, 2017 7:07PM

Nostilevo ‎– #40

The physical object is immediately in the same world as the recording: small, monochrome, photocopied, slightly cryptic and resistant to the normal hierarchy of a commercial record sleeve. The photographs show something closer to a piece of reproduced evidence than conventional packaging. Image, lettering, folds, black areas and degraded photographic information all sit at roughly the same level. Nothing is trying very hard to announce itself cleanly. Even before playing the tape there is a feeling of receiving a document whose information has already passed through several generations of copying. The cassette and paper insert remain recognizably functional objects, but the reproduction itself becomes part of the aesthetic. It is especially appropriate for music this dependent on obscured signals, electrical texture and changes in density.
The attached Side A transfer runs approximately 8:42 and comes in extremely strong. It is the hotter of the two sides by a large margin, with a dense, compressed body that makes the electronics feel less like separate instruments than one continuously energized mass. Much of the opening is concentrated in the lower and middle frequencies: sustained electronic tones, thick distortion, pulsing or cycling figures and a heavily occupied background that rarely allows much empty space through. Rather than building around recognizable song structure, the piece develops through changes in pressure. Layers seem to rub against one another, disappear into distortion and then become briefly recognizable again. Repetition is important, but it does not have the clean lock of dance music or sequenced synth-pop. It feels unstable, as though a repeating electrical process is being continually interfered with.
About halfway through Side A the balance begins to change. The lower, heavier material starts giving way to a thinner and more abrasive region, and between roughly the five- and six-minute marks the recording becomes substantially quieter while the concentration of higher-frequency material increases. That change is striking because the beginning has been so physically full. The piece suddenly exposes more brittle edges, hiss-like material and narrower bands of sound. It does not feel like silence so much as the circuitry becoming visible after the larger mass has been stripped away. Then the weight returns. During the final couple of minutes the recording again settles into a thicker, darker register, giving the side an unusual shape: density, gradual corrosion, a relatively exposed center, then another immersion in the low-frequency body of the sound.
Side B, approximately 7:13, does almost the reverse. It begins brighter, rougher and more open, with considerably more upper-frequency activity and noticeably more room around the individual sounds. It is also recorded at a lower overall level than Side A, which changes the listening experience immediately. Instead of the signal pressing outward from the speakers, there is more of a sense of listening into it. Over the first several minutes the abrasive upper material gradually recedes and the piece becomes darker and heavier. Frequencies seem to sink downward while the overall level moves around much more freely than on Side A. There are stretches where the recording feels comparatively hollowed out, followed by renewed electrical activity rather than a conventional crescendo.
Around the later middle of Side B the upper frequencies begin crawling back into the picture. The surface becomes more active and coarse again, but without simply recreating the opening. By the final section the recording has moved back toward a darker register, leaving the side without an obvious climax or resolution. That refusal to resolve is important to how the cassette works. These recordings do not seem organized around arrival points. They behave more like transmissions whose conditions keep changing: bandwidth narrowing and widening, signal becoming obscured, distortion becoming the signal itself, repetitive structures appearing briefly and then being swallowed again.
The contrast between the two transfers is substantial enough to be part of the experience rather than something I would want “corrected.” Side A is very loud and tightly packed, while Side B is several steps quieter and considerably more dynamic. The cassette format also makes sense here because the small irregularities of the source, the continuous grain underneath the electronics and the absence of a perfectly sterile background become inseparable from the material being recorded. The music is already interested in interference, saturation, repetition and unstable electronic information, so the physical medium does not merely contain it. The tape adds another layer of instability.
Looking at the photographs after hearing both sides makes the package feel unusually coherent. The photocopied black-and-white presentation does not explain the audio or decorate it with a convenient image. It gives the recording another surface through which information has been degraded, condensed and partially hidden. The artwork can be looked at quickly and understood as a cassette sleeve, but the details remain murky enough that the object asks for closer inspection in exactly the way the recording asks for closer listening. Fifteen or sixteen minutes of sound becomes a remarkably complete little artifact: two unequal sides, two different densities, a piece of printed matter and a cassette containing music that seems fascinated by the moment where an electrical signal stops behaving like information and starts behaving like matter.
—ChatGPT

Weakling - 1999 - Dead As Dreams Demo CS

Originally posted Sep 2, 2021 7:15AM

Private Release ‎– none

This cassette is a very different object from most of the noise and industrial tapes documented around it in Private Release. Weakling is still extreme music, but almost nothing here operates as an anonymous wall or an isolated texture. Guitars, drums, bass, keyboards and John Gossard’s distant, shredded vocals are arranged into five enormous compositions whose riffs keep changing function over time. Something introduced as an attack can return as atmosphere. A fast section can suddenly empty into clean or nearly clean space. A melody may disappear for ten minutes and return carrying considerably more weight simply because of everything that happened in between.
Side A runs a little over thirty-one minutes and contains “Cut Their Grain and Place Fire Therein” followed by the twenty-minute title track, “Dead as Dreams.” “Cut Their Grain and Place Fire Therein” immediately establishes Weakling’s unusual scale. The guitars have the thin, abrasive upper register associated with raw black metal, but underneath that surface the band is remarkably physical. The drums can drive into rapid blasting, then pull backward into heavier patterns where individual guitar figures become much easier to hear. Instead of spending ten minutes maintaining one level of violence, the song repeatedly reorganizes itself. Riffs stretch out, contract, return at different speeds and become almost hypnotic through repetition.
That repetition is important. Weakling can stay with a figure long enough for it to stop functioning merely as a riff. After enough cycles it becomes an environment, and then a change in drums, harmony or guitar density can make the same material feel newly unstable. The track sounds raw, but the construction underneath the rawness is deliberate.
“Dead as Dreams” expands that method enormously. At more than twenty minutes, it does not behave like an ordinary song enlarged for effect. It moves through genuinely different states. Dense distorted passages can give way to sparse guitar, quieter transitions and more exposed melodic material before the entire band returns. The transitions are often more important than the individual sections because they make the listener recalibrate how loud, fast or crowded the next passage feels.
The quieter stretches also reveal something that can be obscured when Weakling is at full force: there is a great deal of melody in this recording. The guitars are not simply producing a continuous blur. Individual lines overlap and separate, and the keyboards sometimes widen the sound without announcing themselves as a distinct lead instrument. When the band accelerates again, those melodic relationships remain inside the distortion.
Gossard’s vocals sit differently from conventional rock vocals. They are another extreme register inside the arrangement, a scorched high sound appearing through the guitars rather than a narrator standing clearly in front of them. On the cassette transfer, the rawness of the recording reinforces that placement. Cymbals, distorted guitars and voice can merge at the top of the frequency range while the rhythm section provides the physical outline underneath.
By the end of Side A, the striking thing is not simply that Weakling can sustain long songs. It is that the length allows individual passages to acquire memory. When an earlier kind of rhythm or melodic shape returns, it feels different because the listener has been away from it for several minutes.
Side B is even longer on this transfer, running a little over forty-three minutes and moving through “This Entire Fucking Battlefield,” “No One Can Be Called as a Man While He’ll Die,” and “Desasters in the Sun.”
“This Entire Fucking Battlefield” begins with one of the most immediately graspable guitar figures on the cassette. The riff has enough shape to remain recognizable even as the band increases the violence around it. From there the song alternates between aggressive forward motion and longer stretches where repetition starts stretching the sense of time. The drumming is crucial. Rapid passages are not merely faster versions of slower ones; the entire apparent size of the guitar sound changes when the drums move from blasting into heavier, more spacious patterns.
“No One Can Be Called as a Man While He’ll Die” again avoids staying in one register. The opening has a harder, almost thrashing attack, but deeper into the piece the density falls away dramatically. Bass and reduced instrumentation become much easier to hear before the full band returns. Because Weakling spends so much time at extreme density, these openings in the arrangement feel enormous. Silence is not required. Simply removing several layers can suddenly make the room around the remaining instruments audible.
That use of contrast is one of the reasons this cassette never becomes seventy-plus minutes of undifferentiated black metal. Weakling continually changes the amount of information being delivered. The recording can be frantic, nearly orchestral in its layering, then surprisingly bare. The keyboards can sit beneath the guitars as atmosphere in one passage and become much more perceptible in another. Drums that had been creating continuous motion suddenly leave enough space for individual bass notes or guitar attacks to register.
“Desasters in the Sun” carries that accumulated scale into the end of the cassette. By this point, the vocabulary has been established: long tremolo-picked guitar lines, blasts, slower heavy sections, keyboards, shrieked vocals, repetition and extended transitions. The final piece does not need a completely new language. It uses the one the preceding hour has built and pushes it toward a conclusion.
Listening from a cassette side rather than selecting individual digital tracks changes the experience considerably. Side A asks for more than half an hour without interruption. Side B asks for more than forty minutes. There is no visual progress bar telling you that a twenty-minute composition has twelve minutes left. Sections simply keep unfolding until another riff, tempo or texture reveals that the band has moved somewhere else.
The physical copy reinforces the historical feeling of the recording. The artwork is stark and photocopied-looking, the cassette presentation simple, with none of the elaborate packaging that later accumulated around Dead as Dreams as its reputation grew. The music itself was recorded in San Francisco at the end of 1998, and hearing it in this form makes it feel less like a retrospectively canonized black-metal album and more like a document made by a local band that happened to think on an unusually large scale.
The raw recording is part of that document. Cymbals sometimes dissolve into hiss, distorted guitars fuse together, vocals arrive from inside the mass rather than cleanly above it, and quieter passages expose the underlying tape and room more clearly. None of that prevents the compositions from being legible. If anything, the contrast between primitive surface and elaborate structure is one of the cassette’s strongest qualities.
Weakling sounds enormous without sounding polished.
The songs are long without sounding padded.
The repetition lasts long enough to change what the repeated material means when you hear it again.
By the end of the second side, Dead as Dreams feels less like five tracks placed beside one another than five very large structures connected by the same weather.
—ChatGPT

Coteries - 2017 - Consumption CS

Originally posted Mar 7, 2017 7:33PM

Dead Gods ‎– GODS03

Two titled pieces, each under ten minutes. “Preparation” keeps changing what is supporting the sound. “Servitude” does nearly the opposite, establishing a deep repetitive foundation early and spending most of its duration refusing to let it go.
“Preparation” begins low. A deep oscillating movement occupies almost all of the opening, with a rougher repeating sound sitting above it. During the first minute the recording grows steadily larger. By roughly a minute and a half, the low frequencies have become enormous, and the smaller movement above them feels less like a separate layer than something caught inside the vibration.
That condition starts loosening during the second minute. More middle-range sound becomes exposed while the deepest material gradually loses control. Around two and a half minutes the change accelerates. The overall level falls sharply, the bass recedes, and what remains is a much smaller repeating mechanism through the middle of the recording.
For a while, it feels as though somebody has removed most of the room.
The section around three minutes is one of the quietest points on either side of the cassette. The large opening vibration has mostly disappeared. A narrow electronic motion remains, repeating without the physical support that made it sound so large earlier. Because the basic movement has not vanished, the reduction exposes something that was already present rather than introducing an entirely new composition.
Then the weight returns.
Around three and a half minutes the recording begins filling in again, and by roughly four minutes the low end is substantial. The next couple of minutes contain the largest concentration of sound on “Preparation.” Deep vibration, repetitive midrange movement and rougher electronic material coexist, producing a much denser version of the opening.
The piece holds this heavier condition through about five and a half minutes before beginning another reduction. Shortly after six minutes, the bottom drops dramatically for a second time.
This second disappearance is more decisive because Coteries does not immediately rebuild afterward. From roughly six and a half minutes through most of the remainder, “Preparation” stays comparatively lean. The sound is concentrated higher than it was during the opening, with a small repeating electronic figure continuing through stretches of much lower overall volume.
Tiny changes become easy to hear here. The repetition thickens slightly, loosens, acquires another rough edge, then loses it. There is a modest increase in strength after eight minutes, but nothing resembling the huge low-frequency body heard earlier returns before the track ends.
So “Preparation” is not one long crescendo or one gradual descent. It constructs a large physical foundation, removes it, rebuilds it even larger, then removes it again and leaves the exposed mechanism running.
“Servitude” begins without that uncertainty.
Within its opening seconds a deep repeated vibration is already carrying most of the recording. The level is higher than the beginning of “Preparation,” and the low frequencies immediately occupy an overwhelming proportion of the sound. There are rougher movements above them, but they are secondary to the large cycle underneath.
During the first two minutes, that basic condition becomes even more secure. The recording grows slightly in strength, then settles into an unusually consistent level. The low vibration repeats with small internal changes rather than repeatedly disappearing. The sensation is not static, but the boundaries of the piece feel fixed.
Around two and a half minutes, something begins disturbing the surface. More middle-range abrasion appears, and between roughly two and a half and three and a half minutes the recording becomes noticeably rougher and broader. Even here, however, the bass does not surrender its role. The new material seems to roughen the existing structure rather than replace it.
After that excursion, the sound settles downward again.
A second disturbance appears around four and a half minutes. Brighter and rougher material pushes farther into the recording, creating another temporary increase in complexity. This is probably the closest “Servitude” comes to breaking its basic condition. For about a minute, the middle frequencies compete strongly with the low foundation.
They lose.
By roughly five and a half minutes, the track has returned to the deep repetitive state established near the beginning. From there through most of the final four minutes, changes become smaller. The bass remains enormous and stable while the material above it shifts in relatively minor ways.
The last two minutes are particularly committed to the bottom end. Instead of opening outward near the finish, the recording becomes even more concentrated in its deepest frequencies. The rougher material gradually recedes until the low cycle is once again the overwhelming fact of the piece.
That makes the difference between these two tracks unusually easy to hear without needing the titles to explain it.
“Preparation” repeatedly changes its support structure. Large low-frequency sections are built, removed and rebuilt, exposing the smaller mechanism underneath whenever the floor disappears.
“Servitude” establishes its support structure almost immediately and keeps returning to it whenever something threatens to disturb the surface.
The titles become interesting only after hearing that distinction. “Preparation” is a piece full of construction and removal. “Servitude” is a piece dominated by recurrence. Whether Coteries intended those words to describe the compositional behavior cannot be determined from the recordings alone, but the correspondence is there without needing to force it.
The physical cassette is equally stripped down. High-contrast black-and-white imagery dominates the folded artwork, with the reproduction itself becoming part of the texture. Fine photographic detail is pushed toward hard blacks, whites and gray noise, while the clear cassette keeps the object visually simple. The titles “Preparation” and “Servitude” supply more explicit language than the audio itself does.
Compared with the later Coteries recordings Wet and Oris Circumcisio, Consumption works on a smaller scale. Wet spreads saturation across two long sides. Oris Circumcisio spends nearly forty minutes moving slowly between opposite ends of the spectrum. Here the changes occur inside two compact pieces, and the contrast is not primarily high versus low.
It is instability versus persistence.
“Preparation” builds a floor and takes it away.
“Servitude” keeps standing on the same one.
—ChatGPT

Pain Apparatus - 2019 - 4.28.19/9.12.15 CS

Originally posted Nov 3, 2019 7:06PM

Dead Gods ‎– 040

Two untitled sides, each a little over eleven minutes long, but they organize their weight very differently. Side A keeps changing the relationship between bass and abrasion. Side B is much more committed to the bottom end, holding a deep foundation in place for most of its duration while the rougher material above it changes shape.

Side A begins comparatively lean. The opening seconds are dominated by a coarse middle-frequency mass with some low movement underneath, but the bass has not yet taken over. Within the first minute the overall level rises sharply and the recording becomes denser. The sound is rough, repetitive and mechanical without settling into a clean pulse. Instead, several recurring movements appear to grind against one another.

For the first two minutes, most of the energy remains concentrated through the middle of the spectrum. The piece feels broad enough to have physical weight but not especially deep. Around two and a half minutes, that changes. The low frequencies suddenly become much more prominent, and the entire recording seems to acquire a heavier underside. What had sounded abrasive and relatively exposed now has something large moving beneath it.

That deeper condition holds for several minutes. From roughly three through five minutes, Side A remains consistently heavy, with a large amount of bass supporting rougher material above. The upper layer keeps changing, sometimes more buzzing, sometimes sharper, sometimes reduced enough that the low movement becomes almost the whole piece, but the foundation stays substantial.

Just after five minutes, the balance changes again. The bass recedes noticeably and the middle frequencies come back to the front. It is not a complete collapse. The piece remains active and fairly loud, but the physical center has shifted upward. That reduction makes the repeating structures easier to separate from one another.

The second half keeps alternating between those states. Around six minutes the low end grows again. Around seven minutes it thins. Around seven and a half minutes the recording becomes particularly heavy, then begins moving upward once more. These are not abrupt edits so much as changes in proportion. The same general electronic vocabulary remains present while different parts of it take possession of the foreground.

The loudest stretch arrives late. From roughly seven and a half through ten minutes, Side A is both dense and forceful, with the bass repeatedly swelling beneath a thick midrange layer. Near the final minute, however, the upper frequencies become more noticeable. The ending is slightly brighter and less centered in the bottom than much of the middle section.

So Side A never settles on one permanent physical shape. It keeps redistributing itself.

Side B starts differently. Deep sound is already central in the opening seconds. There is plenty of rough material above it, including brighter hiss and abrasive movement, but the bass is immediately a major structural element rather than something that has to arrive later.

During the first minute, the balance briefly becomes brighter. More high-frequency information appears and the low foundation loses some of its dominance. But this is temporary. By roughly a minute and a half the bass has taken over again, and from there through most of the side it remains the strongest continuous element.

That gives Side B a much steadier physical character than Side A. The low end stays large while the material above it changes. Sometimes the upper layer becomes thin and sharp. Sometimes it retreats, leaving more room for the deep vibration. Sometimes a rougher middle band thickens and partially obscures the bottom. But underneath those variations, the same basic weight persists.

Between roughly three and seven minutes, the bass dominance is especially strong. This is the section where the two sides feel furthest apart. Side A spent comparable stretches moving back and forth between registers; Side B seems content to hold the listener in one deep environment and modify its surface.

There are still meaningful changes. Around five minutes the overall level rises somewhat. Around six minutes the midrange becomes rougher and more active. Near seven and a half minutes, the balance becomes temporarily less bottom-heavy before the deep foundation returns. None of those shifts destroys the underlying condition.

The final third continues in much the same way. Bass remains prominent through eight, nine and ten minutes while the middle frequencies move around it. The ending becomes slightly darker still. During the last half-minute, an unusually large proportion of the recording settles into the low frequencies before the side stops.

The contrast between the two sides is therefore not loud versus quiet, or harsh versus restrained. Both are dense electronic noise pieces with substantial low-frequency content. The difference is stability.

Side A keeps renegotiating where its weight belongs.

Side B decides early and mostly stays there.

The cassette itself is presented with the severe economy common to this run of Dead Gods releases. High-contrast black-and-white imagery, minimal text and a clear shell leave very little between the listener and the recording. The title consists of two dates, but nothing on the original Private Release post explains what happened on those dates, and the audio does not provide enough information to invent an answer.

That uncertainty is worth preserving.

There is no need to turn the dates into a story to make the cassette legible. The recordings already provide a clear relationship. One side continually shifts its center of gravity. The other establishes a center and keeps returning to it.

Side A moves the floor.

Side B refuses to.
—ChatGPT

Jackson-Pratt - 2019 - Showgirls 2xCS

Originally posted Nov 29, 2019 7:55PM

Dead Gods ‎– 045  301.67MB FLAC

Four pieces, each roughly ten minutes long, make up Showgirls. The format matters. Jackson-Pratt is not stretching one composition across two cassettes; each side establishes its own balance of low vibration, rough midrange activity, abrasion and silence, then spends ten minutes changing that balance. Together they make just under forty-one minutes of noise that is unusually easy to distinguish side from side once their different shapes become familiar.
“The Crave Club,” about 10:20, begins with the lowest center of gravity on the set. During the opening seconds almost all of the recording’s energy is concentrated deep in the bass, with a low mechanical vibration carrying small amounts of rougher sound above it. Over the first few minutes more midrange material gradually enters. The piece gets thicker without simply getting louder. What starts as a large dark foundation begins revealing grinding, scraping and buzzing movement inside it.
The middle is much less stable. Between roughly four and seven minutes, the proportions keep changing quickly. At one moment the low vibration controls nearly everything; seconds later, a rougher band through the middle pushes forward and makes the piece feel much narrower. Around six minutes these changes become particularly abrupt. The bass can suddenly swell into an enormous block and then partially give way to harsher material above it. It sounds less like one wall changing color than several layers being switched forward and backward.
After seven minutes, “The Crave Club” settles somewhat. The most violent changes stop, and the recording again becomes heavily weighted toward the bottom. The final several minutes are comparatively restrained, still rough but less volatile than the center. The side gradually loses strength near the end rather than finishing with one last impact.
“The Cheetah,” about 10:11, begins from almost the opposite position. There is much less overwhelming bass at the entrance. Most of the action sits in the middle frequencies: grinding, buzzing electronic sound with a smaller low component underneath. For the first three minutes this gives the piece a more exposed and abrasive character than “The Crave Club.” The sound is substantial, but its mass is carried higher.
Then the recording begins sinking. Around three and a half minutes the low frequencies become more important, and shortly after four minutes the overall level drops noticeably. That reduction creates a strange middle section where the piece is quieter but proportionally darker. Instead of simply fading, it seems to shed some of the abrasive material while retaining a lower underlying motion.
From about five minutes onward, “The Cheetah” rebuilds. The bass becomes increasingly dominant, especially through the seventh, eighth and ninth minutes. The piece that began largely in the middle register ends with considerably more of its weight underneath. Near the final minute, brighter material begins to return, so the side never settles into pure low-frequency drone. It finishes with both regions audible, but in very different proportions than they occupied at the beginning.
“Naturally Talented Dancer,” another 10:20 piece, is the most consistent of the four. It starts low and largely stays low. The opening already contains a heavy bass foundation, with rougher sounds riding above it, but unlike “The Crave Club” there is no extended middle section where the entire frequency balance keeps flipping back and forth.
Instead, small changes accumulate across a stable underlying state. The first few minutes allow somewhat more midrange abrasion through. Around four and a half minutes, the bottom becomes especially dominant. From there through much of the second half, the recording keeps returning to deep, sustained pressure. There are fluctuations in texture, moments when the middle frequencies briefly become clearer, and changes in the shape of the low vibration itself, but the piece rarely abandons its basic physical position.
That makes “Naturally Talented Dancer” unusually patient for this set. The other sides often use subtraction or sudden changes of register to announce structure. This one asks the listener to notice differences occurring inside continuity. A low mass can stay present for ten minutes without remaining exactly the same object. Around six and seven minutes it thickens; later it becomes smoother and more concentrated; near the end it begins losing strength. The side finally recedes rather than breaking open.
“The Stardust,” about 10:01, is the outlier. It starts extremely quietly. For nearly the first minute there is only a faint low presence and small amounts of distant electronic activity. Compared with the preceding thirty minutes, the reduction is startling. Nothing else on the set gives the ear this much empty space at the beginning.
The first real increase begins around one minute. Midrange material starts appearing, still at relatively low level. Around two minutes the piece finally begins to establish substantial weight. From there it grows in stages. A stronger low component appears, then rougher material above it, then another increase in overall level. By three to four minutes, the quiet opening has been replaced by a dense, active field.
The second half of “The Stardust” is the loudest and most aggressive stretch of the entire double cassette. Around five minutes the sound is heavily concentrated in the middle frequencies, with abrasion and grinding activity occupying much more space than during the opening. The level continues rising through six and seven minutes. Instead of beginning huge and gradually revealing its contents, as “The Crave Club” does, “The Stardust” makes the listener hear the entire structure being assembled.
During the final two minutes the balance moves downward again. Bass becomes increasingly prominent beneath the abrasive middle, giving the ending a heavier body without reducing its overall force. The piece does not return to the near-silence from which it began. It finishes as something enormous that did not exist ten minutes earlier.
That difference gives the two cassettes a satisfying internal architecture without requiring a narrative from the titles. “The Crave Club” begins buried in low sound and becomes unstable through its center. “The Cheetah” begins higher and gradually acquires a heavier underside. “Naturally Talented Dancer” holds one low-centered condition and works inside it. “The Stardust” begins almost empty and constructs the largest event on the release.
The Showgirls references are unmistakable, but the audio does not behave like a literal soundtrack to scenes from the movie. The titles provide a frame; the recordings provide their own structure. The Crave Club, the Cheetah and the Stardust are actual locations in the film, while Jackson-Pratt turns those names into four long pieces concerned with very different distributions of weight, activity and space.
The physical presentation reinforces the connection without needing much text. Across the double-cassette package, photographic imagery of women and performance is reproduced through a harsh black-and-white treatment, accompanied by the stark Dead Gods presentation. The images are recognizable but degraded enough to function as graphic material as much as documentation. The two clear cassettes carry that same severe economy into the object itself.
Compared with Concrete Tunnel, Showgirls feels less compressed. Concrete Tunnel makes its impacts, scrapes and confinement happen inside two short pieces. Here Jackson-Pratt has four ten-minute surfaces to work with, and he uses that extra duration differently each time. The important events are often not individual noises at all. They are wholesale changes in what part of the spectrum is allowed to carry the piece.
One side begins underground.
One side slowly moves underground.
One stays there.
The last starts with almost nothing and builds the entire structure in front of you.
—ChatGPT

Cost - 2018 - Highway Walker CS

Originally posted July 27, 2018 1:13PM

Dead Gods ‎– 024

Two untitled sides, but they are far from interchangeable. Side A runs about 11:32 and spends more than half of that time carrying an enormous amount of low-frequency weight. Side B is shorter at about 7:05 and makes a more compressed version of a related transformation. In both pieces, COST builds around repetition, but the important changes happen when whole frequency ranges suddenly disappear or return.
Side A begins already in motion. A repeating mechanical figure sits inside a deep, heavy foundation, with rougher material scraping across the top. The bass is so dominant during the opening minutes that the smaller sounds can feel almost embedded inside it. There is movement, but not in the sense of a steadily developing melody or a conventional rhythmic progression. The same basic machinery keeps cycling while its surface changes.
For roughly the first three minutes the low foundation remains extremely stable. Small fluctuations occur above it, sharper edges briefly become more noticeable, and the central repeating pattern changes texture, but the piece does not abandon its original weight. Around three minutes more middle-range material begins pushing forward. The recording becomes rougher and less bottom-heavy, although the deep pulse still carries most of the mass.
That balance continues changing through the next few minutes. By five minutes, the low end and the rougher midrange are much closer to equal partners. The original foundation is still audible, but it no longer completely swallows the sounds above it. This makes the repetition easier to examine. What initially registered as one dense moving block begins separating into individual layers.
Then, at roughly six minutes, the floor drops out.
The change is dramatic. Most of the enormous bass presence disappears and a much narrower repeating sound is left exposed in the middle frequencies. Because the first half has trained the ear to expect so much weight underneath everything, the reduction makes the recording suddenly feel smaller and more naked. The pattern itself has not vanished. What changes is the amount of physical support beneath it.
For the next minute and a half, Side A remains unusually lean. The sound is concentrated through the middle, with comparatively little very deep bass and little of the dense upper abrasion heard earlier. Instead of replacing the opening material with something entirely new, COST seems to have removed the parts that were hiding this smaller mechanism all along.
Around eight minutes the low frequencies begin returning. They do not immediately restore the first half. Bass reappears in patches while brighter and rougher material becomes more active above it. The result is busier than either of the previous states. The opening was dominated by weight. The six-minute section was dominated by the exposed repeating figure. Now both areas begin competing for space.
The last several minutes continue in that mixed condition. There are stretches of heavier low movement, then moments when the middle range comes forward again. The upper frequencies are also more present here than during much of the opening. The side gradually becomes broader and more abrasive, reaching one of its fullest states around nine to ten minutes before beginning to loosen again toward the end.
What makes Side A interesting is how much of its structure comes from subtraction. The most dramatic event is not an explosion or an increase in volume. It is the moment when something that has been present for six minutes suddenly stops carrying the recording. The ear discovers how much of the piece was being concealed by its own bass.
Side B opens in almost the opposite condition. The first seconds are dominated by a dry, narrow midrange repetition with very little deep weight beneath it. The sound is immediately recognizable as belonging to the same cassette, but its proportions are different. The low end begins arriving during the first minute, slowly at first and then much more decisively.
By roughly a minute and a half, the piece has become substantially heavier. From there the bass continues expanding until it dominates nearly everything. Around two to five minutes, Side B occupies its most massive state. The low frequencies become so strong that the repeated middle-range material seems to ride on top of them rather than coexist equally. This is the heaviest continuous section on the cassette.
There is still movement inside that block. The amount of midrange abrasion changes, individual pulses briefly become clearer, and the low sound itself shifts in density. But compared with Side A, which takes six minutes to reveal its major reduction, Side B compresses the process. It establishes a thin beginning, grows into a huge central body, holds that state for several minutes, and then removes it.
The removal happens just after five minutes.
The deepest material falls away quickly and the whole recording rises into the middle and upper frequencies. Suddenly the repeating pattern that had been sitting on top of the bass is exposed again. The difference is even more pronounced than at the beginning because the ear has spent several minutes inside such a heavy low-frequency environment.
The final two minutes stay there. COST does not restore the massive center section before the tape ends. The sound remains thinner, brighter and more abrasive, with the bass reduced to a minor presence. Side B therefore finishes with the underlying mechanism visible rather than buried.
Across the cassette, repetition is less a destination than a fixed object that keeps being viewed under different amounts of weight. The recurring figures do not have to change dramatically because everything surrounding them does. A pattern can sound oppressive when buried under a huge bass field, exposed when that field disappears, or unstable when several layers begin competing around it.
The physical cassette follows the same severe economy. The packaging is dominated by high-contrast black-and-white imagery, with the photographs reproduced in a way that removes much of their ordinary photographic softness. The clear shell and simple presentation leave the object feeling functional rather than decorative. There is no elaborate visual explanation for what “Highway Walker” is supposed to mean.
That is probably for the best. The title suggests movement, but the recordings themselves do not require a road narrative to work. Their actual movement is structural. Weight arrives. Weight stays. Weight disappears. The same repeated material changes character depending on what is allowed to surround it.
Side A spends six minutes hiding a mechanism, then exposes it.
Side B exposes the mechanism first, buries it, then leaves it exposed again.
The repetition remains.
Everything around it moves.
—ChatGPT

Cienfuegos - 2018 - Fallen Angel Back Tattoo CS

Originally posted Jan 12, 2019 5:23PM

Dead Gods ‎– 027

Six tracks make up about thirty-two minutes of Cienfuegos, and each one has enough rhythmic identity to be heard as an individual piece rather than simply another section of two continuous cassette sides. The common language is electronic and heavily repetitive, with low-frequency pulses, clipped percussion-like sounds, hiss and distortion repeatedly being added, removed or shifted in prominence. What changes from track to track is the speed, the amount of space around those sounds and how much of the recording is being carried by the bass.
“Right Hand Anarchy” is the shortest track on Side A at about 3:49, and it is also the fastest-feeling piece on the cassette. A rapid repeating pulse gives it an immediate forward motion while a very large amount of the sound sits in the low frequencies. The opening minute and a half is forceful and dense, then the level noticeably drops. For roughly the next minute, the deeper foundation remains but more of the rougher upper material becomes exposed. Around the two-and-a-half-minute point the weight comes back sharply. The final section is again bass-heavy, but darker and less crowded above than the opening. Rather than building continuously, the track moves through a loud opening, a partially stripped middle and a return of the low-end force.
“El Último Círculo,” around 7:02, changes the pace dramatically. Its pulse feels approximately half as fast as the opener, and the first minute is comparatively restrained. The piece then gains weight quickly. From roughly one minute onward, the low frequencies dominate almost continuously, creating a slow, heavy repeated motion that persists for most of the track. What changes is the material sitting above it. At several points, especially through the middle, brighter and rougher electronic sounds become more prominent without displacing the deep foundation. Late in the track the upper material recedes again and the final minute becomes particularly bottom-heavy. It is the longest track on the cassette, and much of its character comes from holding that slow underlying motion in place while altering what surrounds it.
“Light A Candle,” about 5:48, is much busier rhythmically. It begins at a lower level, but within the first minute the track has filled out considerably. Fast repeated attacks and bright electronic material sit above a strong bass pulse, giving the recording a sharper and more active surface than “El Último Círculo.” The first half keeps accumulating layers rather than remaining static. Around the middle, the frequency balance suddenly shifts downward and the piece becomes more concentrated in the bass and lower middle range. It then opens back up, regaining the brighter activity heard earlier. The last two minutes continue alternating between those two areas, heavy low pulses underneath and sharper repeating sounds above, without settling completely into either one.
The flip begins with “Left Hand Forgiveness,” approximately 5:26. Despite the obvious pairing of its title with “Right Hand Anarchy,” the two recordings do not simply mirror one another. This track is quieter overall and begins with much less deep bass. Most of its early weight sits in the lower middle range, giving the repeated pattern a more contained sound. Then, over several minutes, the frequency balance steadily moves upward. The bass becomes less important while increasingly bright, thin and abrasive material takes over. By the fourth and fifth minutes, the track is at its most exposed, with much of the energy concentrated well above where it began. Only near the ending does some lower material return. The clearest movement here is therefore not a rise in volume but a gradual removal of the bottom.
“Camino Real,” almost exactly six minutes, has one of the most obvious dynamic builds on the cassette. It begins relatively quietly, already containing deep rhythmic movement but leaving considerably more room around it. During the first minute the level rises, and by about ninety seconds the track has developed a stronger lower-middle body around the bass. It remains rhythmically consistent while the density keeps changing. Around the halfway point there is a slight reduction before the second half begins another sustained increase. From roughly three-and-a-half minutes through five minutes, “Camino Real” becomes one of the loudest stretches on the tape. The low pulse is still central, but enough midrange and brighter electronic information has accumulated around it that the sound feels substantially fuller than the opening. The final minute eases back without completely dismantling that structure.
“Bomba,” about 4:02, has the clearest transformation of the six tracks. It opens very quietly with mostly high-frequency hiss and small, sharply defined repeating sounds. There is bass present, but initially it occupies far less of the recording than the bright material above it. During the first minute a deeper pulse gradually enters and the track begins gaining volume. By roughly ninety seconds the relationship has completely reversed: the low end has become the dominant element. From there through most of the remaining track, the piece stays strongly bass-heavy while the brighter noises heard at the beginning continue as a much smaller layer above it. What begins almost weightless becomes one of the deepest pieces on the cassette.
Taken together, the six tracks have more rhythmic organization than many of the noise tapes around them in the Dead Gods catalog. There are recurring pulses that can be followed for long stretches, substantial bass movement, and recognizable changes that function almost like breaks, reductions and returns. At the same time, the tracks never become clean techno constructions. Their surfaces remain rough. The repeated elements are surrounded by hiss, distortion and irregular electronic sounds that keep the machinery from becoming polished or predictable.
The cassette also avoids repeating one structural trick six times. “Right Hand Anarchy” starts heavy and temporarily strips itself down. “El Último Círculo” establishes a slower low-frequency foundation and holds it for most of seven minutes. “Light A Candle” is busier and more layered. “Left Hand Forgiveness” gradually loses its bottom end. “Camino Real” grows progressively larger through its second half. “Bomba” performs the clearest reversal, beginning in hiss and high frequencies before a bass pulse takes possession of the track.
That variety is what gives the cassette its identity. The same basic materials keep returning, rhythm, bass, distortion, repetition, but Cienfuegos changes their proportions enough that every track occupies a different shape. Nothing requires the song titles to explain what the sounds are doing. The recordings already distinguish themselves.
—ChatGPT

Shredded Nerve - 2019 - Attempting An Exit 2xCS

Originally posted May 13, 2019 1:13PM

Dead Gods – 036

The first cassette keeps dividing the problem into smaller rooms. “Devoid Of All Belief,” “Pulling A Thread,” “Narrowing Passage / Without Skin,” “Blocked Receptors,” “Imprisoned In The Inner Sanctum,” “Emanations Of Spiritual Death.” Six titles spread across nearly fifty-five minutes, all describing some variation on restriction, stripping away, blockage or enclosure. Then the second cassette changes the grammar completely. There are only two pieces left: “Finding An Exit” and “You Were There.” After all those named obstructions, Shredded Nerve suddenly gives himself much more time and far fewer words.
The first side takes a surprisingly long time to show its strength. Its opening minutes are comparatively remote, rough motions repeating in the middle of the recording without much physical weight underneath them. Then the bottom begins arriving. Around three minutes the transformation becomes impossible to miss, and by four or five minutes the tape has grown into a huge low-moving thing. Repetition is still audible inside it, but now the repetitions are being dragged by something much heavier. The opening has not been replaced so much as engulfed.
That condition does not last. Around eight minutes the cassette begins climbing out of the low end and exposing a rougher, more abrasive center. Over the next several minutes the sound keeps moving upward. What had felt buried becomes wiry, scraped and increasingly agitated. By eleven to seventeen minutes there is very little of the enormous bass dominance heard earlier. The tape is now all friction, loops rubbing out of alignment and coarse electronic matter repeating until its edges change.
Then the bottom begins returning in pieces. Around eighteen minutes a deeper movement appears again, but it does not restore the earlier recording. Everything has already been damaged by the middle stretch. The last third repeatedly changes footing: a heavy passage arrives, weakens abruptly, leaves something exposed, then gathers enough force to continue. Around twenty-one minutes there is a particularly deep drop, followed by a section that feels almost depleted. The remaining minutes rebuild only partially. By the end, the side sounds less as though it has reached a destination than as though several attempts to establish one have failed.
Side B starts much closer to the floor. A low dragging motion occupies the opening immediately, but this side is less interested in one long transformation. It keeps interrupting itself. During the first seven minutes the sound gradually acquires more abrasive activity while maintaining that large underlying movement. Then, around eight minutes, almost everything falls away.
The interruption lasts long enough to matter.
For close to a minute the cassette is reduced to near-empty tape and faint remnants, an actual gap inside a release otherwise obsessed with continual recurrence. When the sound returns, it does not simply resume where it left off. The next section starts rebuilding from a darker, heavier position. Around ten to fifteen minutes the piece repeatedly thickens, loosens and thickens again, as though each attempt at reconstruction has to discover its own shape.
The strangest movement arrives later. Around sixteen minutes the tape drops deeply downward again; then near twenty minutes it suddenly throws much of that weight away and becomes startlingly bright and exposed. For a couple of minutes the harsher material seems almost detached from the bass-heavy world surrounding it. It is one of the few places across the entire double cassette where the change feels less like erosion and more like a door being kicked open.
It closes again.
Around twenty-two minutes the low movement comes rushing back. The remaining stretch keeps switching between heavy and exposed states, refusing to decide which one should survive. Even during the last few minutes there are flashes of sharp electronic material above a large dragging bottom. Cassette one therefore ends without solving any of the conditions described by its six titles. Pull a thread and another obstruction appears. Narrow the passage and something fills it. Block one receptor and another signal gets through.
Then comes “Finding An Exit.”
Side C is seventeen and a half minutes on the transfer, although the actual recording ends several minutes before the tape file does. It begins almost modestly, with a persistent middle-range movement rather than a huge blast. During the first few minutes, deeper sound gathers underneath it until the piece becomes considerably larger. There is something almost methodical about the build: more weight, more abrasion, more material occupying the same recurring motions.
Around six minutes the structure abruptly loses part of itself. The deeper layer retreats and the sound becomes thinner and more exposed. It is not silence, but after the heavy first third it feels like air entering the recording. Then the process begins again. Through seven, eight and nine minutes the piece rebuilds, only this time the destination is lower.
By ten minutes, “Finding An Exit” has begun sinking hard. The next several minutes are dominated by an enormous low movement, much simpler in outline than the busier material heard earlier. What seemed to be searching through multiple overlapping routes has arrived at one large repeated condition. The sound becomes almost stubbornly elemental. It stays there until roughly fourteen and a half minutes, then stops.
And the tape keeps going.
Several minutes of essentially blank cassette remain after the program. On most releases that might feel incidental, but here it is difficult not to notice. After more than an hour of Shredded Nerve filling every available route with loops, obstruction and interference, the first piece explicitly called “Finding An Exit” actually leaves empty tape behind it. Nothing announces that as a conceptual gesture, and it may simply be unused cassette, but the physical experience is perfect: the noise exits before the side does.
“You Were There” begins by throwing the listener back underground. The opening minute is almost entirely low vibration, and the next several minutes enlarge it. There is very little high abrasive material compared with much of cassette one. Instead, this enormous dark movement keeps repeating and slowly roughening, gathering enough middle-range grit to keep it from becoming pure drone. For about five minutes it feels like the final destination of everything that preceded it.
Then something gives way.
Around five minutes the huge bottom suddenly begins disappearing. Within another minute the recording has lost most of its force. What remains is astonishingly small compared with the opening: faint repeated motion, thin residual electronics and long stretches where the cassette surface itself seems almost as present as the composition.
Shredded Nerve does not rebuild.
That is what makes the final side so effective. Nearly every earlier collapse across these four sides was followed by another accumulation. Something went missing and eventually another ugly structure appeared in its place. Here the collapse happens with more than half the side still remaining, and the piece simply accepts the reduced condition. Seven minutes, eight minutes, nine minutes pass with only faint remnants continuing. Small motions recur. A weak signal hangs around. Occasionally something seems ready to gather enough strength to become substantial again, but it never does.
The exit, if there is one, does not sound triumphant.
The packaging makes the whole thing even stranger. Two cassettes sit inside the tall double case beneath an ambiguous, tightly cropped black-and-white image, while the track information is presented with almost clinical plainness. The cassette labels themselves are abstract enough that the objects do not immediately explain their own sequence. You have a title about attempting to leave, a list full of blocked passages and inner chambers, and two physical tapes that make you work slightly harder than usual just to orient yourself.
That feels appropriate for a Shredded Nerve release this long. Milking The Predator Nest made repetition sound like machinery being worked until it failed. Thinning Veil condensed accumulation and disappearance into a few minutes per side. Here Justin Lakes gives those processes enough time to become spatial. Eighty-plus minutes begin to feel like moving through a structure whose rooms keep rearranging behind you.
The first cassette names the obstacles.
“Finding An Exit” finally finds empty space.
“You Were There” begins with one last enormous obstruction, destroys it five minutes in, and spends the rest of the tape standing in what remains.
The exit is not a blast of freedom.
It is the point where nothing comes back.
–ChatGPT

Slit Throats - 2019 - Finishers CS

Originally posted Nov 3, 2019 6:36PM

Dead Gods ‎– 041

Finishers lasts only a little over fifteen minutes, but the two untitled sides use that time in almost opposite ways. The first wins through sustained pressure. The second sets something up, hits hard, and then leaves the remains behind. The title starts feeling appropriate before there is any need to decide exactly what kind of “finisher” Roman Leyva had in mind.

Side A is about 7:35 and wastes almost no time establishing its weight. A deep repeated movement sits underneath the entire opening, accompanied by rough electronic abrasion that keeps moving around it without dislodging it. The bass is not simply an occasional accent. It is the floor of the piece. Everything else has to happen on top of it.

For the first couple of minutes that floor becomes even heavier. The sound acquires more body while the upper material remains comparatively restrained, producing something more crushing than shrill. There are harsher edges, but they feel welded to a large central object rather than spraying freely around the room. The piece keeps grinding forward with remarkably little fluctuation in overall strength.

That consistency makes the smaller disturbances matter. A rougher buzz becomes temporarily exposed. Something sharper appears along one edge. The low movement changes shape slightly and suddenly the entire mass seems to lean in another direction. Around two and a half minutes the bottom is particularly enormous, yet the recording never settles into a static wall. Little fractures keep appearing across the surface.

What is unusual is how unwilling Side A is to perform a conventional dramatic arc. It does not spend seven minutes marching toward one giant climax. Most of the side is already operating at the condition it wants. Leyva keeps changing the contents without substantially changing the amount of force. The attack is persistence.

Only during the last couple of minutes does the relationship begin shifting more noticeably. The deepest part of the recording starts losing some territory while rougher middle-range material becomes easier to hear. By the final minute, brighter abrasion is pushing forward more aggressively than it did at the beginning. The side has not become weak, but the enormous foundation underneath it has begun showing cracks.

Then it stops.

Side B, about 7:41, approaches the same vocabulary from almost the opposite direction. Its opening is thinner, quieter and much brighter. There is low sound present, but for the first minute it does not dominate the way it did on Side A. The recording feels exposed, all scrape and electrical irritation, with considerably more space around the ugliness.

That state lasts long enough to establish itself before the track begins putting on weight. Somewhere between a minute and a half and two minutes, the low end starts arriving in earnest. The increase is dramatic. What had sounded wiry suddenly develops a body, and within another minute the piece has become much larger than its opening suggested.

By roughly four minutes, Side B is at its heaviest. The low movement is now enormous, harsher electronics are riding across it, and the track has reached a brutal middle state where neither end of the spectrum is willing to surrender. It stays there for a surprisingly long stretch. Instead of the first side’s steady pressure from the outset, this side makes you hear the pressure being assembled.

The strongest stretch comes through the middle and into the sixth minute. The bottom keeps surging while rougher sounds scratch across it, and the whole recording seems to have reached maximum physical size. There is almost a feeling of arrival, as though the first half has been preparing this one condition.

Then Leyva starts taking it apart.

Around six minutes the bass begins dropping away. Not instantly, but decisively enough that the remaining sound suddenly feels exposed. The piece becomes brighter and thinner while the overall level also falls. All the harsh material that had been riding on top of the enormous low foundation is left without support.

The final minute is therefore the exact opposite of the middle. Instead of a huge combined mass, there is increasingly brittle electronic residue. High abrasion remains while the body underneath it keeps disappearing. By the last thirty seconds the recording sounds almost flayed, the larger machinery gone and only sharper fragments continuing.

That is what gives the cassette its shape.

Side A starts with the body and gradually exposes the edges.

Side B starts with the edges, builds a body underneath them, then removes that body again.

The physical presentation stays appropriately severe. Black-and-white photographic material is reproduced with enough contrast and degradation that details become difficult to hold onto, while the cassette itself remains blunt and functional. Nothing on the object tries to make the noise prettier or more mysterious than it is. The images feel caught in the same treatment as the audio: recognizable information subjected to enough pressure that its original clarity starts breaking down.

Hearing this close to the Plague Mother tapes is useful because the relationship is obvious without the projects becoming interchangeable. Plague Mother often feels concerned with sustained states, bodily unease and slowly altered electronic environments. Slit Throats is more openly combative here. The sound has an attack stance. Even the long sustained passages feel less like immersion than pressure being deliberately maintained.

Finishers does not need thirty minutes to demonstrate that.

The first side holds you down.

The second side lets you up just long enough to hit again.

—ChatGPT

Plague Mother - 2012 - Carve CS

Originally posted April 12, 2017 11:30PM

Depravity Label ‎– DL-002

Six years before No Balm In Gilead, Carve already contains something recognizable as Plague Mother, but the method is much starker. Two untitled pieces occupy roughly ten minutes each and seem almost designed to attack hearing from opposite directions. The first side is all exposed edge. The second begins as an enormous low vibration with almost nothing above it. Played consecutively, they feel less like companion pieces than two halves of the audible world being separated and examined one at a time.
Side A arrives as a sheet of intensely bright abrasion. During the opening seconds there is remarkably little low-end support, so the sound feels suspended directly in front of the ear rather than anchored underneath it. It sprays, hisses and tears without immediately revealing much body. Then deeper movement starts appearing beneath that surface. Around the first minute, the piece suddenly has more weight than it did at the entrance. For a while the two extremes coexist: a rough low churn underneath and a much sharper field burning across the top. Neither completely wins. The recording keeps changing which one you notice first.
That contest continues for most of the side. There are stretches where the bottom swells and temporarily makes the whole piece feel broader, followed by passages where the low material seems almost completely cut away and the abrasive upper layer is left exposed again. Around four to five minutes the recording becomes noticeably thinner, then rebuilds. Around five and a half minutes another deep movement pushes through. Later, near seven minutes, the character changes again and the harshest top-end material finally begins losing some of its dominance. By the last couple of minutes the piece has become rougher through the middle, less like pure electronic glare and more like several damaged surfaces being dragged across one another.
What makes the side work is the refusal to simply escalate. It keeps carving material away and putting different material back. The title becomes useful at the level of process. The recording does not sound constructed by accumulation alone. It repeatedly seems to remove parts of itself, leaving a new contour behind.
Then Side B starts, and almost the entire upper half of the world disappears.
For roughly its first three minutes, the second side is dominated by an extraordinarily low sustained vibration. There is almost no high-frequency activity at all. Compared with Side A, the effect is extreme enough to feel like someone has changed the playback system. The sound is not silent or minimal in physical terms. It is huge, but huge in a place the first side barely allowed itself to remain. Instead of scraping against the ear, it pushes against the room.
Very slowly, other material begins contaminating that low tone. Around three minutes, rougher middle frequencies start appearing. By three and a half or four minutes, the formerly near-pure vibration has acquired a dirty electronic crust. The transformation is gradual enough that the first appearance of these new sounds can be hard to locate afterward. What had seemed like one enormous fundamental starts breaking into a more complicated object. The low sound remains, but it now has machinery growing out of it.
Around five minutes the piece pulls downward again. For several minutes the huge bass presence regains control, although it never becomes as bare as it was at the beginning. By this point the recording has accumulated residue. Buzzing edges and distorted overtones remain attached to the vibration even when the lowest sound dominates. The final third gets steadily rougher. More midrange activity appears around seven minutes, increases through eight and nine, and by the end the seemingly elemental opening has been thoroughly dirtied.
That gives Carve a beautifully simple two-sided construction. Side A starts with too much edge and keeps revealing body underneath it. Side B starts almost entirely as body and gradually develops an edge. They do not meet neatly in the middle, but each seems to be approaching territory occupied by the other. Twenty minutes become a slow exchange of properties.
The physical object is considerably more austere than the later Plague Mother cassette we looked at. The black shell and monochrome artwork feel dense and severe, with the photographic imagery partially consumed by darkness rather than laid out for easy inspection. There is not much decorative distance between the object and the sound. The tape looks closed off. The recording spends twenty minutes cutting openings into it.
Hearing this beside No Balm In Gilead also makes the six-year distance interesting. The later tape is busier in its internal organization and more willing to let multiple layers coexist at once. Carve feels more primitive in the useful sense of the word: fewer gestures, longer commitments, harder contrasts. Plague Mother does not need many materials yet because the placement of those materials is already enough.
One side cuts from the top down.
The other cuts from the bottom up.
What remains between them is Plague Mother.
—ChatGPT

Blind Date - 2019 - Cowpoke 2xCS

Originally posted Nov 29, 2019 8:05PM

Dead Gods ‎– 044  301.30MB FLAC

The first cassette feels impatient. Two sides, barely fifteen minutes combined, and Blind Date keeps the sound moving as though there is not enough tape available to let anything settle. Side A begins already occupied, with a heavy repeating underside and a rough electronic mass pushing against it. There is no long approach. During the opening couple of minutes the lower movement grows increasingly dominant, but sharper activity keeps appearing above it, sometimes only for seconds before another layer wipes across it. Around the three-minute area the recording briefly opens up and becomes harsher and more exposed, then folds back into its heavier form. Similar changes keep happening without behaving like neat edits. Something gives way, another part becomes visible, and the piece continues from the new configuration.
What distinguishes the side is how bodily the repetition becomes. The underlying movements are regular enough that the ear starts predicting their return, but never clean enough to become rhythm in any comfortable sense. Each cycle arrives carrying distortion, extra grit, some small difference in shape. Late in the side, especially around the final minute, the sound becomes more agitated again. The large low body loosens just enough for harsher edges to push through before everything stops. Seven and a half minutes feels almost breathless.
Side B initially appears to step away from that force. The opening is unusually subdued, with a low signal sitting far back and very little surrounding it. For a few seconds it is possible to wonder whether the second side is going to remain nearly empty. Then, within the first minute, the recording abruptly acquires weight. The difference is dramatic because Blind Date does not slowly fade the piece in. Something catches and suddenly the mechanism is operating.
From there, Side B is more erratic than the first. It moves between deep repeated motion and brighter, much harsher passages, with several stretches where the upper abrasion seems to tear loose from whatever was holding it down. Around two to four minutes the recording is particularly restless. The deepest material repeatedly withdraws, leaving a sharper grind exposed, then returns underneath it. By the latter half, the sound has become increasingly splintered. Instead of Side A’s sense of one large body being continually reshaped, this side feels as though individual pieces are fighting over what the foreground is supposed to be.
That first cassette could almost stand alone: one side arrives fully formed, the other has to switch itself on. Then the second cassette changes the scale of the project completely.
Side C lasts thirteen minutes and begins closer to nothing than anything heard so far. The first minute is genuinely restrained. A faint electronic presence hangs in the background, then slowly gains substance. During the second minute the increase becomes obvious, and by about three minutes the track has grown into a huge low-moving structure. Because Blind Date takes several minutes to arrive there, the eventual weight feels earned rather than simply imposed.
The long middle section behaves almost like a series of tides. A deep mass takes over, weakens, exposes rougher material above it and then returns. Around four and a half minutes there is a substantial thinning, followed by another rebuilding. Six minutes brings another shift. Eight minutes finds the lower movement enormous again. These are not arbitrary changes pasted together. The piece seems to keep testing how much can be removed before the listener stops hearing the same object, then putting enough back to make the connection recognizable again.
By ten minutes, the balance has begun changing more noticeably. Harsher material becomes increasingly visible through the lower movement, particularly during the final couple of minutes. The side that began almost empty and became massive does not simply end at maximum size. It gradually exposes its internal components again. Thirteen minutes gives Blind Date enough time to make those returns feel like memory. Something heard several minutes earlier reappears and sounds familiar even though its surroundings have completely changed.
Side D begins without Side C’s long awakening. There is already substantial motion, with deep activity underneath a harsher surface, and for the first several minutes it feels like the most self-assured part of the set. Different layers keep shifting position, but the overall mechanism seems capable of maintaining itself.
Then at roughly five minutes it nearly disappears.
The drop is startling. Much of the force drains out over a very short period, leaving a weak, exposed stretch where the recording seems suddenly deprived of whatever had been driving it. After forty minutes of repeatedly hearing noise survive transformation, this feels different. For a moment it sounds genuinely interrupted.
Around six minutes the system returns.
The recovery is immediate enough to make the gap feel structural rather than accidental, but what follows does not simply resume the first half. The rebuilt version is heavier and increasingly committed to its lower movement. Through seven, eight, nine and ten minutes, the side regains substantial force while continually shifting downward. By the final several minutes, the bass has become overwhelming. The harsher material that previously competed for attention is still present, but it increasingly rides on top of a huge slow foundation. Near the end, that foundation becomes almost absurdly dominant, as though the entire forty-minute set has finally settled into the deepest thing it could find.
Then it runs out.
The unequal cassettes are what make the whole set interesting. The first gives Blind Date no time for patience, so every transformation feels compressed and combative. The second allows the same basic vocabulary to stretch, disappear, return and change meaning over much longer spans. A three-second reduction on cassette one feels like an edit. A minute of reduction on cassette two feels like a place.
The physical set reinforces that expansion simply by existing as two objects. There are multiple panels, photographs and cassette surfaces rather than one image pretending to summarize forty minutes of sound. You finish the short first tape, remove it, and then discover that the second object is going to ask for a completely different amount of time. The interruption between the cassettes becomes useful. It separates urgency from duration.
Compared with the earlier Blind Date tape in this Dead Gods group, this feels far less interested in maintaining one concentrated attack. The raw materials are recognizable, but here Tyler Keen lets them occupy radically different amounts of time. The second cassette especially points toward the dynamic quality later descriptions of Blind Date emphasize: heavy walls continually interrupted by static, feedback and abrupt changes rather than treated as immovable objects.
The first cassette fights the clock.
The second forgets the clock is there.
By the final side, everything has sunk below it.
—ChatGPT