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
No comments:
Post a Comment
Hi.