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