See bottom of this post for digest commentary. And let me here apologize for going a bit overboard on the verbal diarrhea. It's a condition. I'm getting help.Mo*Te – Uncut boxsetWith Mo*Te, you always knew what to expect. Until you didn't. This is reflected neatly over two halves of handsomely packaged retrospective. First the (expected) million noisegasms per minute: chalk-a-block straight-edged psyche-grits wrapped tight in seething whitewashed sheeting. Then the (less certain)
plop into murky festering splooge-pools: gloomy tides washing up hemorrhaging gloop-smeared floaters, concussed misshapen harsh heads only occasionally poking out the drizzled lines of bleary buzzkill, melted plastic features glowering through one yellowed-purple eye, nailed haphazard to tar-blackened cassette casing.
Once again, kudos to faithful discogs org contributor
NOIZESTORM and her bang-on style tags:
Noise, Drone, Industrial, Experimental (which once again, on reflection, cover pretty much everything I'll ever need to listen to). Per the assertions tendered in the first paragraph, above, you'll find most of the Noise crammed into Discs 1 & 2, with Discs 3 & 4 picking up the Drone, Industrial, Experimental (if punctured occasionally by Noise-inflected spasms of melted plastic harsh heads poking through the murk).
It's worth reflecting that all this messing about with expectation, and style, took place over, at most, four years, the bulk of it confined to the years 1996 – 1998. After which our good man Mo*Te almost completely disappeared from the recording medium...for the better part of a decade.
So here and now, two decades later, what does the good man have to say for himself? For starters, check with your friendly neighborhood
Skeleton Dust. Meanwhile, below, a little run through of Mo*Te, The Early Years, un-redacted, un-cut, unrestrained by expectation, flopping it out for the masses, four fat honking discs, well in excess of the recommended dose, good for a good half-life, tripping hard, in a peaceful new world.
Harsh-ish half:Disc 1. Uncut-01. Good and harsh start from the self-titled
Mo*Te, 1996. Only 10g, but this here's potent stuff. Clatter of acoustic metals gasping at whiter washed inclination. Uneven dialog of pelvic-directed oomph, more straight-edged shear. Outlying warbling oscillation drops into fray, then what sound like fragmented rips of badly abused vocal. By which point, nine minutes or so, we are well in for the harsh-ride, barest hint of psychedelia flashing at the perimeter. This is almost certainly recorded in one take, as perhaps is all the most memorable Mo*Te, working its magic the good old fashioned way, dragging attention toward the movement of the moment, and, smothering all sensibility in the warm embrace of pure fire. "Skunk Dub" drops straight into the thick of it, the stench of it, grittier distortions panning very slowly in hypnotic convergence of psyche-tipped undulation. Heavy in measure, softly sweet in texture, over-ear conch shells, lingering un-harsh in the wake of prior dosage, reminiscent of, um, Timisoara at her most introspective, the finest elements twisting turning, licking lapping, under over and through one then the other, complexities slowly emerging from the DENSE of it, the deep of it, grinding hard through gritty saturated grooves.
Uncut-02. Jittery frazzled brainstroms of electronic sizzle, sudden bite of incisive drilling a clear invitation to uh LET LIGHTNING STRIKE MY DICK. Call it cracked- severely cracked- ambient drone, static-charged particles prickling coldly along the drawn-out lengths of electrified schlong-abrasion. Track the second then, and nothing even vaguely ambient, brittle and broken crumble-textures obscuring garbled message seemingly itching to burst through. At rare interval the teasing suggestion that we're gonna get it, massively distorted vocal blurts slamming, blurting, against dense slathering scathe walls... ultimately swallowed up in tense curdled balls of shaking, purple-faced, rage. So to the "Painful Thing" closing out the set, a seeming mix of the raging electro-storms of the first track and the message-smothering textures of the second. Here, in the third, voices no less submerged but better positioned to communicate their ill-assuaged agonies, dynamic pitch of singed elements in constant heaving struggle, the battle won (or lost) in final batch of burbling clustered crunch.
Disc 2. Uncut-03, from a split with Stimbox, and upfront attempt, perhaps, to complement split-mate's signature saturated psychedelia. Wide-bodied waves of smoothly surging drift, strong tidal backwash sucking up occasional bouts of harshed up electrified shrieking, mindsear sucked into silkily sleek undertones caressing heated exchange of frothy overtones to output a HARMONICA-ness flooding, so satisfyingly, the whet, panting, palate. Just the sort of thing to be expected of in the wake of
Life In A Peaceful New World, and possibly why the two tracks to follow are so perfectly positioned to fuck with expectation. Call it "Momentary", call it weirdly piercing shit, or call it first attempt at experiment with space: harsh biting stabs pepper openmouthed echoing chambers, ice-knives shattering on squalid flooring, muffled mournful strings, whining violins, violas, reaching deep into darkened recesses, repeated ear-bleed incursion netting wretched and brutal atmos par excellence. Then, a little extended metaphor, a "Drowning": two-minutes worth of ripped and raw burntout blurt, flopping and smacking against steady, severe, high-end whine. Drawn out, high-end whine. Whiiiiine. Um. Final five-second wig-out shriek-fest, end. Now, return, again, to upper edges of ear-bleed pshychedelia, slathering about the "Wet Floor", white-washed extremes in almost perfect counterpoint to disordered flap n flop, distorted bass burble. This, is the cracked and shredded HARMONICA-ness, the Real Harsh, to which the true anti-CCCCer might, deep in her lysergic heart, aspire. Broken, seething rocket shrines. All consuming. Swallowing, swallowed, whole. The hole, the howl. Painful, perfect, GULP. Yes.
Uncut-04. Okay, here's the rub, the burn. Softly burnt, tape-head molested, psyche-slather, slowly seeking escape from sniffly sphinct-snuffle, so suggestive of something harsh but only really the vaguest of hint of so much subdued and mufflered rise, and fall. And then. Ten minutes in, the proverbial tape recovers. Significant harshening up, too little too late, but no- this is great. White-sheeted scathe, revenge of the nerd noise, bring it on, the raging, perfect, storm. That was the "5mg", now to "Replenish": high-end wheedling meets fuller meatier abrasions and skin blisters. When it drops, it is convincing, full-on, full-force, all the flesh, and blood, you could need, slowly cycling into the requisite whitewashed waves, oscillations, undulations, filling out the sound palette, sliding effortlessly into cycling chrome-tipped waves, peaked with glistening throb.
Not-so-harsh-ish half:Disc 3. Uncut-05,
Rest Stop Entrapment, and the afore-indicated inauguration of more experimental urging, collapsible crunch chunks, shredded scorch-gristle, drugged out oscillation. Source materials provided by the inimitable Humectant Interruption. It's not exactly harsh, or not consistently so, but it's got most of the elements required in a good and a proper harshening. Screeching scathe storms. Squealing skitter twist. Surging scratch n sniff of the white-washed shriek-walls. These elements, and others like them, piss about in intervals broken by the abovementioned druggy oscillations, sometimes to overlap in dirge-inflected un-harsh. Regardless, this is fifteen minutes of brilliance, insecure in each of its many diversions and detours, but utterly convincing display of erratic discombobulation, flailing in abbreviated fits of warped derailment, before, ever so slowly, completely pulling itself apart, grinding down into gritty kernels of low-grade belch-chafe.
Uncut-06, and a decisive dive off the deep end, into the unexpected, the unknown, the grim and the gloom-laden. Waterlogged metallic clank overflowing through dank drainage filters. Low-end coursing waves undulating through deep sunk quiver, quaver, smother, repetitive clunk and ker-plunk filling out a brooding acoustic hollow. Deep sea documentary of the creepy kind, downer trip through rusted spelunk and shudder, concussed melted harsh heads bumping ineffectually against unyielding hull, drawn out funneled brood shifting in fits and blurts against latent bilge-encrusted bludgen-fields. In the closing minutes a dull percussive thumping against severely blistered tape-head rupture, looped repetitious rubber hosed percussive, warped and warbly oxygen-depleted blurrrrr.
Fer fucksake wake-up man. But nil. "Deepsleep Flash Be Too Late", woozy methane chambers, enclosing the altered perspective in numbed lethargy, deep rolling lumber like something fresh out an Atrax Morgue deadbag. As the din escalates through grey and hazy dirge, the deepest bass sets off higher ended needling, muted scrapes drifting across dead-panned fizzle... or what could be the muffled finale of choked out gasp.
Disc 4. Uncut-07. Melted Plastic Head Core! Not actually Mo*Te here but longform collab, with Crack Fierce. Sufficiently different from the principle as to earn a new project title, perhaps even to designate a whole new genre. This much is not immediately apparent. "Your Little Heart" finds CF working through MT source materials to net harsh punishments just about on par with CF proper. Just about. An initial pizzle through extended synthetic dronebuzz trades time with squealy-mouthed knob twizzlers. Then at eleven minutes the anticipated harsh. A somewhat Mo*Te-sque sort of muted harsh, never quite to work itself up into full metal lather, whitewashed psych-inflection ranging all the hell over the place, unhurried, deliberate, content to bask in warm analog texture.
"Your Little Eyes", aka Mo*Te molesting Crack Fierce, takes things clean off the map- and easily takes the melted plastic prize. Warbled loop of tense ambient burn anchors slow-panned rhythmical huff n gasp. At the edges, keening calls of distressed acoustic squawk claw at frayed nerves, creeping cold comforts feeding uneasy mood with promise of ills to come. And then the drag, sudden and strong, muffled violent undertow flushing murky floor with steady heave of dirge-saturated grey-wash, plastic heads smothered, smooshed flat, twenty thousand leagues beneath the roiled and roaring waste waters. Nineteenth minute and abrupt surge into electrified wheedle-bleat, fleeting scorchlights of whitewalled harshening faintly scalding the periphery. Now, drop the bongos, tribal rhythms signaling final bee-line for exit tunnel. Closing minutes and the sneak attack, the surprise harshhead reversion: piercing needle-shriek severity, rage of fake plastic memories melting in an amnesia of deformed stupor-bliss, reversed bass slops neatly folding up the many and molestible loose ends, abused 'holes slowly bleeding out their thanks. That much, at least, was always to be expected.
Digest spew:Four discs showcasing two flavors of Mo*Te, one noise the other not. The noise is consistent with Mo*Te classics a la
Life In A Peaceful New World. Smooth whitewashed psych flavors, softly searing tape saturations, not overtly harsh but surging, overflowing, robust with muscular dynamism. The not is consistent with the spirit of experimental fucklery, sliding smoothly across a range of deadpanned deepsea detours, deviations, only occasionally to allow the concussed and melted plastic harsh heads to poke their stupored features through the murky, undulating, depths.
