Quote from: Zeno Marx on February 21, 2023, 08:52:54 PM
In an age of bravado and machismo in the noise scene (pretty much ever-present, so maybe nothing to do with the times)
As I read this I am reminded that a lot of what gets termed "heavy electronics" (and rather less occasionally power electronics) often strikes these earholes as fairly drenched in deep-sunk enveloping pools of downright
lysergic permutation. I do recall some sorry sod making
comment to the effect back when
Aube dropped his first disc on Alchemy
[scroll down if interested, it's the last review], how easy it would be to imagine William Bennet doing his (willfully emasculating?) angry granny over the infinitely orbiting piercings on tap. A better sense of this might be obtained when referring to the occasional dabbles into vocal-less (or vocal light) work certain of these projects might occasionally offer. Some of
Shift's earlier disconsolations (though
Ruminations could also make the cut) or, say, the first morbid vibrations of
Am Not.
Other avenues into psychedelia might be those honing in on fairly tightly constricted fields of sound, constant and cycling or spiraling returns that might provoke perceptually meditative austerity. And this would fairly blow the lid off the definition because any number of (harsh) noise projects have cycled into this territory at one point or another, perhaps more notably in live incarnation, fidelity duly absorbed into ozone depleted spheres of lost decibels. On some level, as certain sorry sods have intimated at one time or another, Hasegawa gets everywhere. But I'd like to return to that previous term, austerity, because I often feel that it is in the more intensely focused fields of sound, a la
Gody Fishing, that attention might necessarily be forced below the surface, into cycling non-patterns of overtones and undertones, with the potential to fool the puny noisebrain into divining some horrific-cum-ecstatic sense.
Resisting the monk-like paths to inner ecstasy-cum-hell, a third way might take a more macro approach, throwing all kinna shizzle at the 'holes to see what sinks, including but not limited to smudged and broken acoustic elements, scattered recordist fields, so on so forth, to net something no less amorphous but also traversing a line that almost but never quite threatens to entertain a classically minded compositional disposition.
Slacking and, more recently,
Toanche Dwelling are perhaps two projects that seem to cross that line, if shifting the line some degrees into harsher territory simply by virtue of the more abrasive textures in play. This again would be blowing the lid off any specific definition, but might come together in that indeterminate space where fidelity or focus gets blurred by degrees at some remove from conscious appraisal of position or place, this third placed lysergic de-positioning of ear from hole if you will.
I haven't watched the Slacking episode yet, need to do that. Interested to see if the WCN discussion is completely at odds with this little ramble.
