Wince – Bullets For Germany
Another day another study in texture. Par excellence. This one kinda jumped the gun on the listening pile after the Treriksroset s/t, that other recent texture study par excellence, decisively rocked the sphinct. It's always refreshing to be reminded how much I dig this kinda shizzle, when done right, and in the wake of such fond recollection-cum-sphinct-rupture I find myself obligingly forced, by never forgiving dint of the noisedonkey, to dig in. Way in. One thing about these texture studies is their tendency to invite studied-if-ill-advised plunges off and into the deepest of deep ends. (Hey, don't look at me. Just ask the chap on the cover. Plunger discretion advised.)
Bloated Slutbag to reader. I'm speaking to you now from deep within the endzone, tightly clenched, on the edge of terminal strangulation. Frozen in endless time, very little space, dare I draw breath, gravitational constant to render transmission little more than incoherent blurt. Will I or won't I. Claw. Myself. Out. The knotted puckerhole. Thank mercy for the "stop" button. <flush>
"Deader Than Kelsey's Balls". Well I guess he'd know. Slow creeping ragged brittle crumble, walled static fizzle churn, bristly knifings of electrified unease. Pure audio massage, for the harshhead in you. This is one of those studies whose harsher properties are gradually served over the inclination of the volume knob. At the lower curve a warm and immersive acid bath, soft and pliant intercourse with but the subtlest hint of skin abrasion, long pointy fingernails electric but starting to burn as the curve inclines, nine inches is a monstrous size, the cavity tightens, winking endzones increasingly red, bloody, angry, blistered. At the upper end, speakers threaten to rip clean apart as crumbling walls close in, tight, choking, for the inevitable suffocation, distorting space, time, trapped in deadzones of aural paralysis.
"Deader Than Kelsey's Balls". An initial synthetic molestation, ripped wide open to admit quality assortment of discolor, discord. From the twenty second mark what sounds to be redacted flanged vocal swallowed up, whole, in bilge-encrusted crunch. Spitting sputtering pressures. A feeling of variegated temperament straining to push through the tightly regulated overarch. I wanted to use a word like "pissing" or "piddling" but that simply with not do. There is such a range of competing elements, or streams, seemingly liquid in shape but bristling with solid-waste-level wretch and scrape. I am speaking to you now from deep within an avalanche of collapsing ice-shards, turbulent underbellies undercutting, overarching, how to square the circle, the depth, the heft. Gaze drawn again and again to that poor chap on the cover, it all seems so unfair, I'm telling you there's still life in them bones. In fact, the shifting strands of decay apparent positively burst with energy with life with constant continuous extrapolation of one level then the other, and the other.
"Deader Than Kelsey's-"And the... truth be told, it is difficult to say where one tail ends and the next begins, and that is, frankly, a fine thing. Grit-layers, one overcoming the other, and the other, and... hefty, ground-down, brittle, clenched, filthed to core, and suddenly a sense of movement, het up, surging, pushing toward some greater harsh, or unearthed sense of dis-ease. Three minutes left and the texture full bore, deeply saturated, flapping out to wide-panned glitter-edges, curdling in, again, giving up the faintest shade of drama, human, not machine, this is physical, fleshly, elemental, brutal, skin, decayed, de-fleshed, burnt off, dis-eased, lovin it-
"Antibiotic Hip" an almost anticlimatic denouement to the above. First a rather soft-padded bulge of bass-bilged flatulence. Then a range of reduced elements come to play. None of them, however, seems ready to breach the composed, considered bulge-ence. At four minutes, a brief stab at cutting through the monolithic outer wall, channel-edged hacking jabs seeming to signal a fresh attempt at bestilling the calm. By the seventh minute it is clear that nothing is getting through. Resolved then to bluntly rage at an all-blotting, unyielding, mass. A mass nevertheless with palpable shape, shifting by degree, hinting at hidden dimensions, as though to tempt more ill-judged attacks on the perimeter:
hint of flanged vocal, crunched feedback bleeds, wracked sobbing bleat, overdriven belt sanders, jackhammers on concrete blocks, choruses of donkeys slowly sawed in half, wet wafts of torn tissues ground down and splattering out in chunky mangled tufts, caught in the gears jamming the shit draping the whole stinking scene with rivers of fecal putrescence. The competition, for attention, is fierce as it is fruitless, shot through with woozy electrified smothers of dry, saturated, shred. So not texture but textures, plural, grit granules caught up in petite maelstroms of controlled, de-spaticized, violence.
Whether any of this, including the Trerik aforementioned, actually qualifies in the department indicated- "texture study" - is academic. Fortunately school is out harsh is in and the 'holes... <flush>