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
No comments:
Post a Comment
Hi.