SSRI – Schwartze Sonne Ritual Invocation cd (2016)
SSRI – Swollen By Noise cd (2015)
Some like it rough. Others like it rougher. Schwartze Sonne Ritual Invocation picks up and fucks the Swollen corpse of PPT n pal's previous F&V entry – right where it did draw breath. Rough racket of thwacked metals, smacked vocals, cracked electronics, hurled through big ol' amps over bruised battered tables at single dingy mic made to swallow whole heap o' swollen crudsandwich... or very rough approximation thereof... in all shitty glory. A certain... density prevails, massed mess of competing elements condensed through single pick-up to render: long-ass jam, strung out, spaghetti-like... strands of sick splooge sticking to slicked out swollen slut cracks like ragged rust covered reams of... ripped-raw runny-long ass-jam. Hella harsh, hardly heavy, in other words, very much of the live persuasion, jizzed up with a certain envocalled single-mindedness as documented in the accompanying printed lyrics. Ah, the lyrics... Well, I've no doubt as to the sincerity of delivery, but the coherence – or lack thereof – might raise a few eyebrows. How to sum? Rabid frothing incandescent slurred drunken vocal outpouring coming in clumped clusters as each movement of massed mess reaches its ill-begot stage of climax. "Kill the goat.. fill the oath... hail to the aryan race.." Not, one might say, the most sober of rituals, but certainly... poignant? Whatever the intent, the net effect, for me, is kind of suffering man-beast-in-the-machine, raging blindly, ineffectually, with all impotent force of some sorry goat caught in huge and burly mass of messy filth... and violence. I imagine this is how Jean-Marc Vivenza might sound if he were to envocal his industrial-strength symphonics; not in overall tone or bruitiste texture, but rather in browned palate of muted, mooted vocal struggling to rise above the all-consuming bruitisme. Forty-three straight minutes of unceasing clamor driven through assorted breaks and shifts in clankity spankity scrap-texture – but at no point does The Sound really seem to give a shit that, yes, a real, human, voice is in there, hollering away. A slight deviation at the thirty or so minute mark, broken down electronics giving way to utmost non-coherent vocal shriekery, launching, finally, into full-metal discharge of purest power, to usher in non-finessed a-capella strains of... anger? self-loathing? good old fashioned hate? "Total control! TOTAL CONTROL!!" Uh, yeah... Just the impression I got there...
If Schwartze Sonne Ritual Invocation isn't rough enough for your filthy holes, spread em open for the previous year's missive. Swollen by noise, eh? Don't even pretend you haven't been there. Same two chaps (channeling Incaps to go by the sleeve photo). Same raw mix of live-amped-up electronics, metals, vocals. This time at some distance from the mic- possible consequence of larger performance space- and at some distance from higher-minded fidelity. Early on, things even seem to get completely detached – unhinged is the probably the better word – as someone, let's call him PPT, gets a tad exercised by the toy of the moment. Soon the proper settling into extended filth, but the taste of unsettled unhinge-edness holds. Well done! Here the vocals are rather more spare, rather less coherent (if that were possible) and somewhat more complementary to the dirge-flooded shitsonics struggling to get a grip on their slowly unraveling selves... just as the voice seems to be struggling to get a grip on why, exactly, it is so compelled to continue yapping on. Perhaps a handy lyric sheet would help.... but I doubt it. There may be repetitive structure at play: heavy-duty blast of full-force shred... to sink, slowly, into almighty filthmurk. Again the ultra lo-fi confines of the recording chamber lend the atmos a degree of density, or depth. Lost details, smudged decibels, the occasional well-aimed clank more or less buried in solid-state layers of snort, snuffle, sniffle... all to beg a most lubricious molestation of the volume knob, though I am sorely tempted to just let things sputter about way in the background, take a hot steaming dump on all my pretty harshheaded predilections. In the latter half, shitsonics pitch ass-first into chrome-lined motorway tunnel, buffed up circular alloys suggesting the barest ambient tinge, smidgens of good ol' CCCC flavor spurting onto the plate. A final longish wind-down of almost pure feedback squeal, just to ensure that a few more months are shaven off your auricular expiration date, end.
SSRI – Robust tape
If not for SSRI's last two offerings of F&V, I'd be tempted to call Robust a turning point for the project. Junked sources out the hidey hole, field recordings, turntable, tapes, ssrippertronics galore. All check. But filtered, all of it, through that peculiarly ssripperesque style of vision, an unexpected and very welcome turn to experimentation proper. Opening title "Modern Turntabalism 01" could be a statement of intent. Over rough n tumble smudge-hiss shitmospherics, a carefully spaced array of jagged, scritchety, blurt establishes a tone of almost perfect dishevelment. Individual shards, ratted and rumply, splatter at uneven interval in through the outer edge of the channel pan. Trapped now in the stale confines of crud-infested airlocker, bits of badly abused recording gear alternately grunt our their dying snorts, and snort out their dying grunts, as though slowly ripping apart at the seams. "Modern turntabalism" read: someone taking a paring knife to raw slabs of vinyl and allowing the unwary needle to fall where it may. Smudge-hiss shitmospherics continue on in "Be Without Fear", though now large metal buckets filled with assorted crumpled scraps are dropped directly onto the unprotected mic, which then falls over and gets dragged around the ill-kempt toolshed, occasionally forced through heavily distorted mounds of filthgrit. A sudden Nursey fragment of easy-listening announces "Modern Turntabalism 02" before sudden harsh whitened scree flattens the field amongst flits and wrinkles wriggling against sounds of aforesaid toolshed getting torn apart with gusto, scrappy distortion layers fighting grainy growth of hollow greywash, the whole surging together in kind of ditch-digging rhythmic medley, ratcheting up the tension for fully filthed, somewhat char-burnt, finish. Flip over and... the "Release From Denial Of Perversity" you were waiting for! Smudge-hiss shitmospherics, check, but much more robust trough of nuance through which to drag the filth-snuffling snout. Could almost be field recording conducted in an industrial... barn, lumbering full-metal racket shoved deep down into plugged up drainage pipe, emerging now and again to reveal acoustic sources, distorted ssrippings of wrinkled trash compaction clambering from 'hole to 'hole as the background stammers out machine-hum cum bovine moaning cum flee-bitten greased-monkey tapping out a pattern of ding-a-ling on an old pitchfork. Acoustic sources re-emerge in closer "More Robust Than You", well-stocked oven drawer entertaining deliberate exposition of variegated clanging and whanging, pausing to admire the elongated reverberant strains before converging in abbreviated fits of distorted excess. Free jazz for instrument-deficient jazzist denied even two turntables and a microphone meets urban gamelan collective confined to a few dinky pans n potlids. Total win!
SSRI – Circle Of Positivity tape
Heavy shit! SSRI in singularly Sick transitioning from sources Seeded circa 2012-2013. "Sickly & Seedy" the appropriate round of recycling to ssripp things off: rusted out metal junks meet feedback vocalization in reverberant thunder chamber brimming with overtone-age up the harmonicaness hole. Nothing subtle about this nor particularly filthed, just a fat load of boorish heave-ho to get them 'holes primed and perky. Then... what-the-fuck? "Cut-Up Exercise 01" takes all that shizer and plonks it neatly into intermittent panning of rust-hole clank 'n tape-head shizzle. No you may not settle down, you are to remain the spastic mess that you always were, shut-the-fuck-up hit the nitro and twerk that spine like a champ. Sounds of low-end revving meet whiplash-ed shriek-clack. Wait- hit the fucking brakes! Or not... sorry about that, thought we were free of the heavy stuff. Sniff. Did you just- Phat burly trashcans rain down from on high. Duck! Or not... sorry about that. For a few seconds I think we are foreshadowing Mr PT's Robust tape, but things are over almost before they start- call up the "Ugly Spirits"! Orgy of boozing demons in your head, slowed down bellowing way past red, massed cluster of rust-shredded scrapmetals consuming all light, all breathing room. Constant bleed-level squeal held back at some ambient remove to occasion somewhat percussive downward slam of scrapped ka-blong. Howl and holler of Publically Castrated beast hammering out an arrhythmic message of decided non-pleasure as though caught in some shitty Nottingham Garage, never once to suggest this was A Good Idea. Alright then. Flip to title track hogging the whole of B-side, at which point we can safely conclude that, in retrospect, the whole of that A-side can go fucking die. Harsh, heavy. Pure scrapmetal abuse. Amped up room ambience for hint of depth. Feeding back screechies. Heavy handed pounding on fat rusted-through chunks, rusted strain, rusted whine. Rust. Rust. Only rust is real. Only rust is- SCREEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeyyiiiiiich. Rusted massed feeding back cluster scorching the Ugly Spirits out the goddamn filthchamber. Repeated gasps for air, pleas for respite, just enough before the metal-bashing assault is renewed with all percussive force, ultimately to lurch into the inevitable clusterfuck scrap-orgy, channelling Incaps Almighty as though to prefigure the full circle to be realized via Mr PT's most recent F&V offerings. Circle Of Positivity. I get it. I fucking- scrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeyyyyyyyyyyyyiiiiiiiiiiiiiichhhhhhhhhhh. Only rust.
