Mo*Te – Insane Dog Run
Drone, Noise, Industrial. The people at discogs sure know their stuff. Or at any rate, lone discogs contributor NOIZESTORM sure knows her stuff. At the very least, NOIZESTORM knows enough to acknowledge that the styles of sound served under the name Mo*Te are seldom the easiest to tag. "Drone, Noise, Industrial." Yup, that about describes every single artist in existence, past present and (no doubt) future, whose work I've enjoyed (or will no doubt enjoy) at some point. But kudos to NOIZESTORM for being so damn literal. "Rainstorm Meditation" is the side-long Drone which sets Insane Dog in motion. Droning, thick and heavy, whose finer points are obscured somewhat in the downpour- or so Mo*Te may hope. Personally, the sound conjures up visions of vast, cracked, sun-baked, plains, toasted golden-brown under the angry gaze of a gravitationally challenged deity rolling slowly across a dark and milky expanse, the determined exertions of emotionally taxed dung beetle drawn out in calculated, scraggy, analog protestations squealing in from on high. I'd have suggested the title "Acid Safari" if a certain ex-CCCCer hadn't already taken that one. In the case of Astro's so-named effort on Xerxes, it took the combined contributions of Clone, xdefenestratorx, intransitive, and, again, NOIZESTORM, to render the singular Style tag "Noise". But maybe they too were as disappointed as I in the way the analog slitherings undercut the denser possibilities to be explored in the thick of the jungle. Not so here. These may be the meditations of a parched, withered, loin-clothed supplicant who probably wouldn't know a rainstorm if he was drowning in it. But the fire of the mind is fierce, well-toned, muscular, tightly packed elements desperately sucker punching one another in an effort to assert themselves in a crowded, near monolithic, field. Early Tibetan Red could be a reference if we allow for a good measure of additional oomph- right in goddamn pelvis. As for the quavering synth permutations slithering over top, these can be taken or left, a light dusting of seasoning which may serve, in any event, to remind that the fire of someone's mind is still alight. Flipping over then, we may duly expect the Noise, Industrial. Certainly the Noise is to be the dominant force, but perhaps the Industrial might be admitted in the way the harsher incursions only occasionally manage to crack through the wall. "Crack in the Wall" is a wall of low-frequency rumble graced with the vaguely acoustic character of live recording in the smoking hells of seashells by the seashore. The cassette insert depicts a live performance with Mr Nagura + table of gear in the foreground whilst in the background a Japanese gentleman gesticulates at a pasty, shaved-headed, Facialesque character huffing hooliganisms into a mic. I would take these vocal hooliganisms to constitute the "cracks" in the burly, surging, swell but most of these are utterly lost at sea, drowned in coursing waves of definition which slowly reveal themselves as frothy processing of ghostly gasps and whitewashed, pasty-faced, hellhowl. "Death Interview" commences with a looped repetition of the words "the job interview", processed into increasingly harsh deformations that owe little to Drone or Industrial and everything to Noise. Then things start to get brutal. So savagely brutal are the mangled, tortured sounds ripping through the Death Interview that I'm tempted to consider entering descriptors like "deranged", or even "spastic". This is especially disconcerting when weighed against Mo*Te's broader body of work, which, among the harsher bodies of noise, is almost singularly measured and even-handed. It's something I don't recall ever having directly remarked on, but with Mo*Te the contributing materials are always ever so carefully staked, evolving slowly and methodically through a well-defined range of considered mutation. Though perhaps, on second reflection, some of that does come through, albeit in inverse proportion: the mind a steel trap through which not the slightest crack may emerge, the clear-eyed, determinedly vicious hemorrhaging of all the pretty little mutations. Just as suddenly, hemorrhaging gives way to extended, raggedy, drone and a false finish which starts brimming, again, with the familiar ripped raw derangements. The texture achieved is one of utter blow-out, on the one hand suggesting the barest hint of ragged-out meditation and on the other- bilge-infested, cantankerous, fart. So to find a second, abbreviated, even-more-raggedy, drone, sputtering spitting splurting into the flatulent fields, densely compacted spray of crunched, filth-flavored, lacerations allowing sporadic bursts of "the job interview" snippet to poke through. It's all a bit much, or would be, without the consolations of Thomas Ligotti:
"I don't think I could make it through an interview for an office job--or a job of any kind—without breaking out in mad laughter. I'm simply no longer fit to be part of the American working world."
