Skin Graft - 2019 - Solstice CS

Originally posted May 13, 2019 3:11PM

Dead Gods ‎– 034

The first side begins so far below its eventual size that the opening minute almost functions as a distant warning. A low vibration is already there, accompanied by thinner electronic abrasion, but the recording feels held back. Nothing suddenly announces the beginning. Instead the sound spends the next several minutes steadily approaching. By two minutes it has gained considerable force; by four, what had seemed remote has become unavoidable; by six, the cassette is operating at an entirely different physical scale from where it started.
What makes that rise effective is how little it resembles a conventional crescendo. There is no melody climbing toward a peak and no obvious series of dramatic steps. The same damaged machinery simply keeps gaining authority. Low churning motion remains underneath while coarse electrical material rubs against it, occasionally producing sharper squeals or brief flashes of something almost metallic. Individual sounds are difficult to isolate because they seem welded together, yet the proportions are constantly changing. The first few minutes feel deep and muffled. Later, more of the middle of the recording opens up and the whole thing becomes rougher, broader and increasingly exposed.
Around seven minutes the ascent finally seems complete. From there the side does not need another trick. Skin Graft holds the accumulated force in place and lets it grind. The last two minutes are the fullest section of the recording, with the underlying rumble and harsher material operating together rather than one hiding behind the other. Only near the very end does the upper edge sharpen noticeably, almost as though the piece has burned away enough of its heavier material to reveal something hotter underneath. The interesting part is remembering how little was present ten minutes earlier. Side A does not travel by changing subjects. It changes scale.
Side B starts by taking nearly all of that accumulated scale away.
For almost four minutes the recording stays remarkably restrained. A deep continuous sound sits underneath sparse abrasion, and the level barely moves. After Side A, it feels almost unnaturally calm, not peaceful exactly, but contained. The piece seems willing to remain there indefinitely. That patience makes what happens next far more effective.
At roughly the four-minute point, the entire recording steps forward. The increase is abrupt enough to feel less like gradual development than somebody opening a valve. Suddenly there is far more activity in the middle of the sound, the low foundation becomes surrounded by a dense mechanical churn, and what had been distant becomes immediate. The contrast is enormous because Skin Graft has spent nearly half the side refusing to prepare you for it.
From there the piece stays lit. Buzzing, grinding and repeated surges continually reshape the surface, but the dramatic event has already happened. The threshold has been crossed. There is no return to the subdued opening. Instead the remaining six minutes work through different versions of this louder state, sometimes letting the deep vibration dominate, sometimes allowing harsher material to scrape its way forward. Late in the side the upper portion becomes increasingly active, giving the final minutes a more agitated quality without requiring another major structural break.
The word “solstice” makes an interesting title for that design without needing to turn the tape into a cosmic metaphor. A solstice is a point where movement in one direction reaches an extreme and turns. These two sides repeatedly make the listener notice such points. Side A is almost all approach, moving steadily toward maximum force. Side B establishes a long plateau and then abruptly leaves it behind. The important moments are not individual noises so much as the instant when the relationship between everything changes.
The artwork stays restrained enough to let that idea remain implicit. Several black-and-white photographic images, sparse lettering and the cassette itself provide fragments rather than an explanation. Nothing on the package tells the listener what the word is supposed to mean. It simply names the object and leaves the audio to produce its own turning points.
Skin Graft is Wyatt Howland, whose recordings have long combined harsh electronics, feedback, industrial clatter and enormous low-end movement. What is especially good here is the control underneath all that ugliness. Nearly twenty minutes are built around only a few large decisions, and Howland trusts them enough not to clutter the tape with unnecessary ones.
Side A spends ten minutes arriving.
Side B waits four minutes before opening the door.
Neither bothers to close it.
—ChatGPT

Hostage Pageant - 2019 - Shielding CS

Originally posted on May 13, 2019 3:04PM

Dead Gods ‎– 035

For two sides that last almost exactly the same amount of time, these recordings behave very differently. Side A is the more immediately imposing half: close to ten minutes of heavy electronic movement that rarely gives the listener much distance from it. Side B is quieter, less uniformly forceful and much more willing to let pieces of its structure collapse, disappear or reassemble somewhere else. Together they make “Shielding” feel less like two matched noise pieces than two different ways of obstructing access to whatever is underneath.
Side A begins low and blunt. During the opening seconds an enormous bass-heavy signal occupies most of the recording, with rougher material working around its edges. It does not sound like an introduction waiting for the real piece to begin. The machine is already running. Over the first couple of minutes that initial bottom-heavy character starts acquiring more detail: buzzing layers, scraping movements and distorted shapes appear through the center of the sound, sometimes becoming distinct for a few seconds before another element pushes over them. Hostage Pageant keeps the overall level remarkably steady, so the changes happen less through dramatic volume shifts than through one thing continually blocking another.
That becomes the side’s particular trick. A sound starts to reveal itself and another one moves across it. A repeating mechanical figure becomes noticeable, then a heavier surge masks part of the repetition. Something rough and almost rhythmic pushes through for several cycles before the surrounding electronics swallow its outline. Rather than creating a clean sequence of sections, Shane Church seems to continually replace the visible surface while leaving the overall force intact. The piece feels busy without becoming frantic.
Around the middle, the low end becomes especially stubborn. For several minutes the recording sits inside a thick band of rumbling and grinding motion, and the smaller events have to fight their way out of it. There are brief moments where some of the weight disappears and a sharper electronic shape becomes suddenly obvious, but these openings rarely last. The shield closes again.
The last two minutes change that balance more decisively. The deepest part of the sound begins losing ground, and the recording becomes increasingly centered on a rougher middle register. What had spent most of the side feeling massive begins to seem thinner and more exposed. By the final thirty seconds, the transformation is striking: there is much less of the subterranean body that dominated the beginning, leaving a comparatively wiry, abrasive remainder. Side A does not end where it started. It has gradually shed its armor.
Side B enters at a noticeably lower level. That difference matters immediately after flipping the cassette. Instead of another huge entrance, the opening feels as though the same machinery has been moved behind a wall. Deep sound is still present, but there is more room around individual motions, which makes the odd details easier to notice. The first few minutes repeatedly alternate between heavy low vibration and scratchier passages where the recording suddenly seems much smaller. Hostage Pageant is constantly changing apparent distance.
Then, around three and a half minutes, the piece seems to stumble. The signal briefly loses a substantial amount of force, almost as though something has been disconnected or pulled backward. It is one of the clearest events on the cassette precisely because so much of the surrounding material is continuous. The sound recovers quickly, but once that interruption has happened the remainder of Side B feels less dependable. Similar changes keep occurring: a thick section abruptly narrows, another low surge arrives, a rough midrange pattern takes over, then the bass reasserts itself.
The second half becomes increasingly restless without ever turning into obvious cut-up noise. The transitions are rough enough that the listener can feel them happening, yet they rarely behave like clean edits. It is more like watching electrical current repeatedly find another route through damaged equipment. Around eight minutes the recording grows sharper again, but instead of following Side A toward an exposed ending, Side B eventually sinks downward. The final half-minute is dominated by deep low sound, almost the reverse of Side A’s finish. One side ends after gradually abandoning its bottom. The other ends by returning to it.
That makes the title unusually useful without needing to force a story onto it. Throughout these twenty minutes, sounds repeatedly shield other sounds. The loudest layer becomes a cover for quieter activity underneath it. Remove that cover and suddenly an entirely different piece seems to have been present all along. Then something else moves in front. The interest is not simply that Hostage Pageant changes textures quickly. It is that the hierarchy keeps changing: foreground becomes obstruction, obstruction becomes subject, and whatever seemed hidden eventually becomes the thing doing the hiding.
The physical package reinforces that refusal to offer one clear surface. Images, reproduction and cassette documentation arrive as layers rather than a single explanatory picture. That suits Hostage Pageant especially well. Church’s harsh noise has always been unusually mobile, built from sounds colliding and being redirected rather than from maintaining one immovable wall. Here that mobility is compressed into two nearly symmetrical ten-minute lengths.
Same amount of tape.
Different protection.
—ChatGPT

Shredded Nerve - 2019 - Thinning Veil CS

Originally posted on Nov 21, 2019 11:24PM

Dead Gods ‎– 037  56.32MB FLAC

Thinning Veil lasts only about eight minutes, but its two sides seem to move in opposite directions. Side A begins at a distance, gathers itself into something substantial, then spends its final stretch gradually disappearing. Side B starts restrained and comparatively patient, waits more than half its length, and then suddenly becomes the louder and more violent half of the cassette. Put together, they feel almost hinged at the center: one closing down while the other eventually tears open.
Side A runs about 3:56. Its first seconds are surprisingly modest, with a rough repeating shape sitting inside plenty of open space. During the first minute the recording steadily acquires mass. More sounds begin clinging to the central motion and what started almost skeletal becomes increasingly tangled. By forty or fifty seconds the piece has reached a much more forceful state, but Shredded Nerve does not simply leave it there. The components keep rubbing against one another, sometimes producing a dull mechanical churn, sometimes a more brittle scrape, with bits of repetition continually surfacing just long enough to suggest a pattern.
The middle is the fullest part. Several layers seem to be moving at different speeds, and the attraction comes from trying to follow one before another obscures it. There are moments where a repeating figure almost behaves like rhythm, but it never becomes orderly enough to provide a dependable beat. Things drag, catch and slip. The sound feels constructed from loops that have been allowed to deteriorate through contact with one another.
Then, a little after two minutes, Side A begins changing character. The solid body accumulated earlier starts thinning out while sharper, rougher remnants become increasingly exposed. By the final minute the piece is clearly losing strength. Sounds that had been buried inside the larger construction now hang almost by themselves. The decline continues in stages rather than through one conventional fade, until the last seconds are barely holding anything together at all.
Side B lasts about 4:05 and initially refuses to answer that ending with another big entrance. It begins quieter and more exposed, with a scratchier repeating surface and considerably less weight underneath. For almost two minutes the piece remains relatively contained. There is motion everywhere, but it feels withheld, as though the cassette is idling rather than announcing itself. Little rough cycles repeat, change slightly and repeat again. Shredded Nerve lets that condition persist long enough that it starts feeling permanent.
It isn’t.
Around the halfway point, the recording begins swelling. The change is initially subtle, but by roughly 2:20 the whole side has started accelerating into a much more aggressive state. New material appears underneath and around the repeating figures, the recording gets physically larger, and the previously exposed loops are suddenly being crowded from every direction. Instead of Side A’s gradual erosion, Side B keeps adding force.
The final ninety seconds are the cassette at its most intense. What had spent the opening half scratching quietly at the surface has become a hard, continuous collision of repeating fragments and electronic abrasion. The increase is especially effective because the track made you wait for it. Nothing in the opening promises this much sound. By around three minutes, the restraint is gone.
Even then, there is still organization inside the attack. The noise keeps circling around recognizable recurring shapes rather than dissolving into an anonymous blast. Something returns, gets buried, pushes back through, then returns damaged again. That repeated survival of small sounds inside a larger destructive process feels particularly characteristic of Shredded Nerve. Lakes has long worked with loops, field recordings, ordinary objects and electronics, and here those materials seem less like ingredients than things being subjected to wear.
Then Side B collapses quickly at the end. After spending its final section getting increasingly large, it suddenly has nowhere else to go.
The title becomes unusually physical across the two sides. “Thinning veil” can suggest something mystical, but the cassette does not require that interpretation. You can simply hear material being concealed and exposed. Side A gradually removes what had been covering its smaller sounds. Side B begins with those smaller sounds exposed and eventually buries them beneath something much larger. What lies behind the veil keeps changing depending on which direction you approach it from.
The packaging suits that ambiguity. Across the folded artwork and cassette photographs, images are cropped, obscured and reproduced rather than presented as one clean explanatory picture. You keep getting partial information. Nothing quite offers itself whole. That is also how the audio behaves: loops appear without revealing their sources, recognizable motions repeat without explaining what made them, and sounds continually pass between foreground and concealment.
Compared with the earlier Shredded Nerve material in this Dead Gods group, this feels remarkably concise. There is no need for twenty minutes of accumulation. Each side gets one strong trajectory and follows it.
Side A gathers, then evaporates.
Side B waits, then breaks through.
For a tape called Thinning Veil, the most interesting thing may be that neither side ever shows you what was supposedly hidden behind it.
—ChatGPT

White Rhino Taxidermy - 2019 - Detriment CS

Originally posted May 13, 2019 1:08PM

Dead Gods – 033

Detriment sounds less like White Rhino Taxidermy assembling noise than trapping it.

Side A is about six minutes and ten seconds, and after the initial entrance it settles into an unusually persistent roar. There are changes everywhere inside it, but almost none of them provide relief. The overall force barely budges. Rough bands of electronics grind together, narrow whistles poke through and disappear, heavier material keeps churning underneath, but the piece refuses the obvious drama of stopping, dropping out or suddenly becoming twice as loud. It simply remains.

That constancy becomes the point.

During the first couple of minutes, the sound has enough lower material underneath it to give the abrasion a solid body. Around a minute and a half, that foundation becomes less dominant and the middle of the recording seems increasingly crowded. Instead of one giant bass vibration doing the work, several uglier shapes begin fighting for the same space. Some scrape. Some buzz. Others sound almost like a motor being forced to operate while something is caught inside it.

There is a particularly strange passage around the middle where the underlying weight briefly increases again, but even that does not turn into a conventional change of section. White Rhino Taxidermy seems determined to prevent the listener from getting a clean boundary. One condition contaminates the next.

By four minutes, the side has become slightly brighter and more abrasive, but the transformation has happened so gradually that it is difficult to say exactly when the earlier version disappeared. That is one of the differences between this and Baphomet Medusa. The earlier cassette had several transformations that felt almost anatomical, as though the sound were visibly changing shape. Here the alteration is closer to deterioration. You notice the damage after it has already happened.

The final minute becomes particularly nasty. More of the grinding middle and upper material pushes forward, and the piece finishes at nearly the same sustained intensity with which it has spent most of its life. There is no reward for surviving it.

Side B is shorter, about 4:41, and immediately feels physically different. The opening has far more underneath it. A deep vibration repeatedly pushes against the rest of the recording, making the first couple of minutes feel heavier and slower even though plenty of abrasive motion is occurring above it. Where Side A seems determined to occupy one broad hostile zone, Side B has a bottom.

That low foundation keeps changing its relationship with everything else. Sometimes it dominates so completely that the harsher material feels like debris skittering across a large moving surface. Seconds later the abrasion becomes more prominent and the bass seems to retreat behind it. The two elements never quite agree about which one is the piece.

Around three and a half minutes, the balance starts tipping decisively upward. The deep foundation loses some of its authority while rougher, brighter sounds become easier to isolate. The last minute is therefore much more exposed than the beginning. It is not necessarily louder, but it feels increasingly stripped of protection. What had been cushioned by the huge low movement is left scraping by itself.

Then it ends.

That gives the cassette a compact shape without requiring much narrative: Side A refuses to let go; Side B slowly changes what it is holding onto.

The physical presentation is harsher and more deliberate than the earlier White Rhino Taxidermy cassette too. The photography has the uncomfortable quality of documentation rather than decoration, and the repeated treatment of the images makes looking at the package feel related to listening to the tape. Information is present, but it has been damaged by the way it is being presented. Detail survives without clarity.

The title Detriment is almost boringly plain compared with Baphomet Medusa and its spectacular track names, and that plainness suits the recording. There is no monster to identify this time. No strange creature assembled from multiple references. “Detriment” simply names harm.

The music does the rest.

Baphomet Medusa sounded like alteration.

Detriment sounds like what alteration leaves behind.

—ChatGPT