Worth - Blinder
Worth – Neanderthal Camera (Lead Lozenges)
Worth – Blood Possessed
Digest commentary viewable at the end of this post
Worth - Blinder
Yes, it's good. Add one more voice to the rapidly accumulating heap according Mr VanGorder all praises due. Don't believe the hype: listen to it. (Then flip the hype over and listen to the B side.)
Hype or not, I was frankly surprised at the sheer, earhole-ripping, ferocity. The all-out, balls-out, no-holes-barred, HARSH. More recent offerings, such as Neanderthal Camera and Blood Possessed, evince some interest in the more subtle perforations of hefty-weighted crunch and smother. Blinder, by contrast, is about as subtle as a... very unsubtle thing. This is not to say there aren't subtleties. Detail. Texture. There is plenty in the way of fissures, or cracks, as to invite deeper, studied, exploration. It's just that about forty-two seconds in all that is UTTERLY BLASTED TO KINGDOM SCORCH via hyper-spastic, stylized, rapid-panned blisterment. First impressions. Evidently they count. Run the transcript-
The very first impression, if I may backtrack slightly, is of ugly-voiced neanderthal-cum-industrial drudge, built by degrees. Then- BLAM! Sudden incursion of exceedingly harsh, pointed, spasticity. The attack is neither sustained nor shy of brief twitchings of relent. But it is very convincing. In the spaces served in between subsequent attacks, of which there are plenty, the 'holes enjoy the opportunity to acclimate. Like basking in hot flashes of reverberant scorch- a harsh bath, so to speak. Not that the sound is noticeably reverb-tinged; that's more reflective of the heart palpitations incurred in your faithful spastic. The spastic congress of layers in neck-jerked, stop-motion, dip, dunk, 'n shuffle. A kerfluffle of disparate de-stabilized, or heart de-stabilizing, digression. All so very nicely bashed together- if occasionally rather rude 'n crude in their splicings- and in the process to point to another deep and abiding... abrading... hallmark of the project:
Texture. Texture born not of dense grit-flavors, crunchy cheeked overbilge and the like, but of clear willingness to countenance source materials occasionally ventured as anathema to certain of the cognoscenti. (See the New Forces tape for the most revealing deferral to the more heretical sourcings, but there abound many such heresies left right 'n off-center.) So texture in the layers, plenty of 'em, among which a suitably wide array of disparate materials are deployed. Texture born also of the spastic dispersal of crudely dynamic variation: fat chunky blurts punch in and out with wild, frazzle-edged, abandon. "Frazzled-edged" my attempt to describe the determined refusal to de-filth the materials in play. Sources far from crystalline, more roughly stripped of essence, edges unceremoniously hacked off, broken away, seeming acoustic shards spread wide and ragged, spiced with momentary shrieking vocal intrusions, ripped distorted bilgings. All to net the sense of something very raw, despite the intensely focused, on point, attention to detail. A kind of perfect, schizo-frenetic, RAW.
The above may apply, in differing measure, to the lp on whole. "All Color" from the Purple Facing is both most and least representative, indulging more bestial oomphings toward experimental, rough-tumbled, grunt-snuffled, gutter bilge... just about as ugly as one could hope. "In Moat Duplication" ups the pace, and the ante, sputtered junk bustlings choked, filthed, scuppered into cantankerous mess of near live-in-you-face-type non-relent. And "Manacled", Orange Facing, well, that's pretty much sure rrrrip to the smile off any lingering progressive urging, sufficient in its severely pitched, all-out, redzoned oblivia to blast the badly abused 'holes into char-burnt fetal coma. Hearing lost, nothing gained. What more to ask.
Worth – Neanderthal Camera (Lead Lozenges)
Easily the most diverse range of perversions I've heard from the project. So quite a contrast with, say, the straight-up Blinder previously served under the ever worthy initiative of Mr VanGorder.
Source materials include "Internal Feedback, Bass Guitar, Barbed Wire, Movies". No reference whatever to the sorts of materials apparent on The Steps (New Forces). It's the Barbed Wire that first seems to dominate. Buckling metal wires funneled through crumple-mouthed casing, frenetic, straight-ahead, cascading mess of clunked collapse. This sounds acoustic, but could be pure- if rather chunky- electronics fed through airy room amplification. Not terribly exploratory, but at four minutes or so adequate to establish credentials. Then the exploratory. "Horehound Tongue", a creeping downward brood, skulking about the moldy crevices of high-ceilinged atrium, lots of space to feel things out, to elongate, to lap and linger in the corners and cracks, occasional breaks of daylight accentuating brief intrusions of high-powered screech. A welcome refreshment over almost before it starts. What I then take for Track 03 moves quickly through fat slobbering bass tones to meet more of that cascading clunked collapse. This time it- the clunked collapse- comes in waves, downright percussive slammering-down as bottom-heavy undercurrent slowly bulges upward, stealing air, fighting a hacking wheezing shriek development. Then mock formality of Movies uglifies Bass Guitar, undercurrent dropping out amid a bubbling percolation of dribblies to admit measured clonking of proper, acoustic, metal junk. Perhaps it's in the amplification, or the Internal Feedback, but this sounds a fair bit heavier-handed than to be envisaged in Barbed Wire. The elements start to loop, get distorted out of perspective, the first real hint of harsh beginning to stake a claim, frazzled in static buzz, end.
-Hey man, like, what's yer fave Worth track?"
-Dunno my dude, like, it's all pretty worth-y, ur-hur. Maybe "Manacled".
-From Blinder? Yeah, "Manacled" is, like, some straight up brutal shit. Personally, I'm more an "As Digital Clocks Chose A Cave Graveyard, It's Harder To Play Tricks, Whereas Before It Was Simple To Shake Hands With The Clock To Make A Deal To Illusion" kinda guy.
-Oh, snap! Completely forgot about "As Digital Clocks Chose A Cave Graveyard, It's Harder To Play Tricks, Whereas Before It Was Simple To Shake Hands With The Clock To Make A Deal To Illusion"! Dunno if "As Digital Clocks Chose A Cave Graveyard, It's Harder To Play Tricks, Whereas Before It Was Simple To Shake Hands With The Clock To Make A Deal To Illusion" is, like, favorite or nothin, but "As Digital Clocks Chose A Cave Graveyard, It's Harder To Play Tricks, Whereas Before It Was Simple To Shake Hands With The Clock To Make A Deal To Illusion" is seriously... uh, dude? Dude?
Just telling em as I hear em. Side B is also a bit of a divergence from what I've previously encountered. Heavy duty thunder punch, dense, punishing, almost approaching a certain crunchy consistency, more classic in its textural unfolding. Perhaps as demanded in the title but who am I to parse? Corrugated rumble sheets establish a solid base through which harsher inclinations attempt to drive. And with some limited success. At a bit over halfway through the heavier sheets are torn clean asunder, savage rendings clearing the air, opening proceedings to a few decisive cuts and chisels. A broadening of stereo scope, distant waterlogged shearings retch across the field, throwing up fat clods of dirt, filth, bits of withered viscera, brought back to earth in fits of strangulated bird twitter.
Worth – Blood Possessed
I'm not sure this is my favorite from the project responsible for the singular fury of Blinder but it is almost certainly the most accomplished. Accomplished in that it ticks all the boxes demanded of the would be Noise Classic(tm). Full-flavored indulgence of select sourcings- scrap-metal junked, electronic, digitariate, physical, primal, Neanderthal- all carefully arrayed, layered, deployed for maximal earhole penetration. So full marks in the areas of How and What. As for Why, I cede the floor to Master Kong :
Confucius says "shit happens."
Yes, well, thanks for that. In fairness, in "Confucius Says (Lineage Lessons)" quite a lot of righteous fecal matter does, in fact, occur. VanGorder throws himself, body and soul, into deeply penetrating scrunch-bristlings, plunging the depths of studiously strangulated self-defilement before sudden release onto the upturned face of enraptured, glaze-eyed, psychedelia. Shimmers, delicious shivers, severe tongue-lashed trembling buzz-drone. Explosive multi-pronged ejaculations sluice across salaciously spread junk-array, swallowed up in storms of surging rumble-pumpsy, overworked sphincters struggling to accommodate the sheer mess of blood-spattered fecal occurrence.
"Fecal Intimidator" battens down some of outlying hatches, trading on shreds of het up vocal ejaculate choking the closing minutes of its confucian predecessor. Tense down-trodden atmosphere of grimy go-nowhere plod. Filthed blurts and flatulents fail to crack the interior of cruelly constrictive sludge-tunneled embrace, subdued retchings consigned to oscillate slowly in sewage drizzled containment fields.
"American Blend" is similarly filtered, percolating with some deliberation into much more arid drainage chambers housing hollow-mouthed bass-huffings half obscured in grainy distortion. Up close and personal, constraint is less apparent, more live-in-the-flesh, sharpened stabs poking and prodding with a gusto that may be metal junk-driven but may again be the slightly murked ones and zeroes of mildly blown out, amplified, chunks.
"User's Bodily Temple" differs only insofar as the garbled chunks have at last blown their way clear to fresh-faced vistas of breezy, murk-free, scorch-blaze. But what a way to blow. This feels ecstatic, exuberant, harsher metal-tinged screechings surging in dynamic shriek-laden self-defilement, a small handful of fapscraps, unlayered, unleavened, going straight for jugular. And never not once to get quite out of hand. A yank on the reins, a tightening of the clamps, decisive THWACK to accentuate the purple-cheeked verdict.
"Stained County Raw Bio-Chemistry" seems an appropriate title to announce the reprisal of all them fecal matters first posited. Master Kong, I presume. Gritty investiture in painfully scrunched filth rippage, hunkering deep in low-end bilge-pits. Slight cracks in the facade are soon exploited to admit a potential avalanche of schizo dis-possession. Dah-dahdahdaah. Wait, is that, like, a Dissecting Table sample or self-generated? Would certainly fit the very DT-esque title. Mad science experiment gone horribly wrong. Dah-dahdahdaah. Quickly runs the gamut. Screeching scorchfits. Sizzling psych-erectronics. Quick-spliced hack-fapping. Meaty rumble-bulge. Errantly dropped concrete blocks. Disembodied voice, screaming simians. Straight rawkin beat stuck on the end for good measure... was this all done live? Perfected perv-vision partially glimpsed through bleary eye of tortured animal due for morning incinerator. Horribly wrong.
Worth – Blinder digest commentary
Surprisingly harsh, spastic, attack. Range of deranged, unhinged, elements layered in seeming haphazard fashion to achieve their own textural dis-harmony. Interesting use of dynamics, meaty chunks punching into already densely-saturated fields to as though designed to destabilize the attentions, sending them careening first into one passage then the next, leaving the studious perv scratching the head wondering how he got there. Option two is to sit back at some remove, allow the mass of disparate derangement to solidify into massive, impenetrable, wall. All win.
Worth – Neanderthal Camera (Lead Lozenges) digest commentary
Fine proving ground of divergent capabilities. You get yer semi-acoustic junk splurgings, your sickly industrial-grade murk pools, and your flat-headed crunch vectors. I'm not sure if a story is being told- the titles, here, as elsewhere, are about as enigmatic as you can get- but there is certainly a sense of progression from start to finish. Quite craftily honed sense of harshcraft, flopping it all out, laying it on the line, then ten minutes of face-in-the-dirt, thunder-bludgened, grit.
Worth – Blood Possessed digestible commentary
Fine and full-flavored working through of all the preferred perversions. Diverse, dynamic, dense if not too dense. One moment a veritable shizer-load of material is running through the mill, the next a choice selection of tightly regulated delectables traps attention in tense pockets of furious focus. Good and clean separation of elements if not too clean, occasionally choked through overloaded masses of pure rumble bilge. Excited to hear where the project will go next.
