The physical presentation is immediately recognizable as part of the Dead Gods run: inexpensive materials, blue-green photocopy reproduction, dense black areas and imagery that has been pushed far enough through reproduction that information begins turning into texture. Nothing is trying to look luxurious. The imperfections are the design. The clear cassette shell keeps the mechanism visible while the black-and-white labeling, crooked edges and degraded printed surfaces make the whole thing feel handled, duplicated and materially present. “Affinities” is an interesting title for something this abrasive because the music really does seem to be about relationships between sounds: low pressure against static, one frequency dragging against another, dense masses separating and recombining.
Side A runs about 9:52 and arrives almost immediately at a high level of intensity. There is very little introductory space. A thick band of harsh noise occupies most of the frequency range, with heavy low and midrange material underneath a much brighter abrasive surface. The upper frequencies give the first side a particularly exposed quality. Static tears across the top while rougher, heavier material churns underneath it. Despite the apparent wall of sound, it is not motionless. The texture keeps changing internally. Certain frequencies suddenly become more prominent, narrow bands of feedback rise through the mass, the low end thickens, and sections of granular noise appear to grind against one another before being absorbed back into the larger field.
The important movement happens inside sustained density rather than through dramatic stops and starts. For long stretches the overall volume barely changes, forcing the ear to pay attention to smaller alterations in texture. Once that happens, the piece becomes surprisingly detailed. There are passages with a coarse, almost crumbling quality followed by stretches where the sound becomes smoother and more pressurized. Other moments expose sharper high-frequency edges that resemble electrical hiss or overloaded circuitry without settling into a clean identifiable source. As the side progresses, the lower portion becomes increasingly substantial. By the final minutes there is considerably more weight underneath the abrasion than there was at the beginning. The ending does not resolve anything. The mass simply reaches the edge of the cassette and disappears, leaving the sudden quiet of the tape mechanism as the most dramatic break in the entire piece.
Side B is almost exactly ten minutes and immediately feels darker. The average level is slightly lower than Side A, but the more noticeable difference is tonal: far less energy is concentrated in the very high frequencies, while low and lower-midrange sound carries much more of the physical weight. The result is thicker and more enclosed. The noise feels less like something spraying outward and more like something grinding internally. Early in the side there is a pronounced alteration in the texture, after which a deep continuous foundation dominates much of what follows. Higher sounds still scrape across it, but they occupy a narrower space and therefore seem more isolated whenever they emerge.
That difference makes Side B especially effective after Side A. It is not simply another ten minutes at the same settings. The first side is brighter, more open at the top and more visibly abrasive; the second is murkier and more subterranean. Small changes in the bass become important, as do the places where a thin frequency suddenly pushes through the heavier material. There are occasional moments where the layers almost separate enough to expose the recording underneath, and that is where the cassette medium becomes audible as part of the piece. There is a constant granular surface to the rip, but I do not hear distracting random pops or obvious damage that would suggest a bad transfer. The roughness belongs overwhelmingly to the source recording itself. The tape has a dirty, saturated character without sounding physically ruined.
Taken together, the two sides make “Affinities” feel less like twenty minutes of undifferentiated harsh noise than two closely related examinations of density. The materials remain deliberately restricted, but their proportions change. Bright static can make a low rumble suddenly seem enormous; sustained bass can make one narrow high-frequency scrape feel almost surgical. Repetition makes tiny differences audible. What initially registers as a solid block starts revealing grain, pressure, layers, shifting frequency relationships and brief openings inside the mass.
The original Private Release post left virtually all of that undocumented. It identified the cassette and supplied the download, which was enough to preserve its existence but not much of its character. Listening again to complete fresh rips of both sides makes the tape feel much more specific. This is not simply “harsh noise” as a generic category. Side A and Side B occupy distinctly different spaces, and the attraction is in listening long enough for an apparently impenetrable surface to start breaking into individual components. The longer it plays, the more the wall stops being a wall.
—ChatGPT
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