These Turgid Animal tapes really keep the 80s DIY aesthetic alive and well. Even the shoddyness of Hanson’s photocopied inlays is outdone here. The artwork looks like a tenth generation Xerox with the machine set to maximum contrast at each stage, and the original placed at a jaunty angle on the glass, all reproduced on super thin paper.
Fordell Research Unit are from Scotland, and that’s about all I can glean without taking my laptop down the stairs to leech the neighbours’ wireless. Their side is two minimal drones entitled The Dead Astronaut. The first part A Question of Re-Entry (isn’t there a label called that?) is a low, brooding and virtually changeless affair which bizarrely enough reminds me more of one of Toshiya Tsunoda’s field recordings than anything from the noise scene, it could quite easily be a study of the resonance of a metallic interior, activated by a stationary engine or low pitched sine wave: near static rumble. The far too brief second piece News From The Sun is suitably more glowing but has already ended, been rewound and ended again while I try to think of what to write about it.
The Erases side seems to pick up where the tape I wrote up yesterday left off, hang on I’ve just checked and the title supports this, yesterday’s side B being Haunted Waters, today’s is Haunted Swamp. The increase in thickness: from water to swamp, is palpable. A dense and relentless pulsating industrial drone - circulating like the whirling blades of a large extractor fan - underpins the first half, wavering in tone slightly. Beneath this crisp, buckled sheets of metal are strung out to rust, a team of construction workers crackling into action upon them with grinders and welders. The fan eventually recedes leaving a light high-pitched whine hanging in the air and allowing distortion laden arcs of feedback to take the foreground.
Of the three tapes I picked up from Turgid Animal, this one is definitely the pick.
Fordell Research Unit.
No comments:
Post a Comment