Ahlzdeveloper – Ahlzdeveloper cd
Took me a while to work up the nerve to comment on this. With this kind of cut up stuff, this... hyper-spasmic spine-jerking neck-twisting bung-ripping... I'm exhausted before the first word hits the page. I'm exhausted before I press the play button. I'm exhausted before I peel off the fucking shrinkwrap. The simple aim: go in, harrd, explore the incisive, sphinctpipe-rending texture of slice, rip, stab. The ignoble end: come out sounding like spastic gibbering mess. Commentators with a more advanced sense of decorum might suggest a certain remove. Peel back the preferred orifices and just... let the massive raging horde thunder on through. Thing is, with an approach like that I might as well be fellating HNW. Or ambient drone. Cue the spastic gibbering mess.
Ahlzdeveloper. Pretty much like you'd expect. Only better. The big disc collects the entire output of Ahlzagailzehguh + Developer, as previously spread over two tapes and two comp appearances. Ahzlagailzehguh molests Developer on three tracks, Developer does likewise the other three. It's an hour long and I am beaten before I start. Roll the mess.
Fat mess of sounds, scrunched in tight. Finely detailed, strategically shredded, never repeating, ever jerking twitching lurching. Smoldering smorgasbord of epilepsy, raw, mangled, flatulent meat-chunks flapping about, blood spraying everywhere. Wild, ragged. Shades of vicious virtuosity. Acoustic darts unleashed and zipping zapping slamming smacking. Storms of whitehot nails, screeching in rage-raped blistered scorchout. Rough-hewn wack of broken, frayed-edged shards, glimmering glittering dys-symmetry, frantically cobbled together off the rust-flecked fly-hook. Jerrrrrrrrrrrk.
Tracks 1 & 2, ten minutes apiece, from a Factotum tape dated July 2014. 1 has Ahlzagail manhandling Developer to supreme effect, by far the strongest track of the set. Frenzied full-in-body hyper-smasmation, panned harrd as almighty frig, taking that body and doing unholy violence to kingdom ruin. Exceedingly harsh in pointed precisions, metallic slashings betraying only the barest smidgens of acoustic depth, the squealing scorch-array pretty much full on the full way through. Full, then, to the brim, and at the eight-or-so-minute-mark the massive shriekwad runs rampant, frenzied full-in-body hyper-smasmation entering the puritanical scorchzone, unloading two solid minutes of near solid state oblivion, noise nightmare first order bar none. 2, Developer fondling Ahlzagail, rages out the gate with the same breakneck breathlessness, the same commitment to full field saturation. This time the bare smidgens of acoustic depth are slathered over with scorchwads of never-to-relent scathe-squeal, very little space for even the teeniest of gasp for air, treading the twilit spaces in between two and three dimensions. There is, perhaps, at the ninth minute a slight slowing as the harsh notches are turned progressively upward, going out with fully saturated pressures tweaked to the highest, scorchingest, order.
Tracks 3 & 4, fifteen minutes each, courtesy Collapsed Hole, August 2015. A good amount more space accorded the individual hackings and slashings. Good intervals in which to catch a moment's breath, try to regain bearings. With 3, Ahlzagail (mangling Developer) seems to be working through a series of very short tracks, aiming at that most severe of extremities onto which to pitch a battered junkpile of gritted scrunch-seethe. Sputtering midrange electronic dribblings set off much more robust streakings of high-end shriek. At the five-minute mark movement hurtles onto more experimental, exploratory terrain, live-in-yr-holes working through of pinpoint split n chisel, focused on degraded dips into unsubtle nuance and tension. In the closing minutes, momentum picks up via ever-more-thinly sliced layers in continuous shift and shuffle, but with nothing to latch onto, attention is left in a precarious non-balance of floundering dis-array, careening ass-first toward one false jerk-hook after another. 4, Developer (mangling Ahlzagail is even more open to the exploratory urge. And silence. Acoustic junk-sources eat up a good chunk of the field, tripping headlong into empty trashcans, shot through with reams of white-hot blasting rippage. Less the tension-building study in nuance more herked and jerked stagger from one uneven strip-mined source to the next. There are even a few very Developer-esque moments where one feels as though attention is to be held suspended in cruel and listless punishment before freak-out fits of cascading turbulence set up the scene of the grand freaking-out finale.
Track 5, another Ahlz diddles Developer ditty, comparatively brief, finds full-up r-l scorchage hard panned to the brink. Unstoppable, unsettled jerked-out mess of smash slash bash crash. High-end scorchlery the whole way through, jittery, panicky, nail-biting neck-jerk epilepsy twitching in froth-mouthed sympathies, maxed out on flatulent percussive assault textures, even without the fragmented splicings of machinegun drumkit bopping about. No breaks here, or one continuous string of tightly regulated percussive breaks, I am spastic gibbering mess see me spew, if the Developer diddled ditty gonna compete here gonna hafta be good.
Track 6, Developer diddling Ahlz, opts for all-out, densely saturated, scorch-bliss. Going out, in other words, with one hell of a bang. The shortest track of the set and perhaps best suited to this style of sound smithying. Dense, harsh, in constant motion, never once devolving into breaks for exploration, just ramming severely pitched masses of metal-tinged saturation, repeatedly, on through. Seeming stops for breath are merely excuses to up the harsh ante. In the field, of hyper-spasmic spine-jerking neck-twisting bung-ripping... the case for so much potential is quite convincingly made. Of relent, we will be having none today. And yes, good.
