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Hal Hutchinson – Steelwork Fabrications
If the sweet sound of steel whanging steel gets yer motor good 'n whanging – and how could it not? - may I heartily recommend Wreckage Installations And Metalworks or Corrupted Scrap or any and all concomitant dedications to damage fielded in the celebrated Factory Of Metal Sound. As for the tape in question, whatever the title might suggest, expect due damages doled at some aesthetic remove from the prior preoccupations. Certainly, in its abrasively attentive steel-on-steel scrapings grindings 'n scourings, no the less industrious, but– with a notably reduced deference to the, er, whang.
For a better clue as to what's in store, check the dedication on the sleeve: to industrial development. Check too the looped industriousness of, um, Industrial Development (Locked Loops). Throw in some aesthetically averse fucked-up-beyond-all-recognition-esque facial-removal techniques, as scoured into the sometimes extended scrapings of Mangraft, and you are just about there. Industrial strength music through and through. Part of this is in the concentrated concatenation of frequencies distorted in the pile-up of metals roughly scraping against metals, exacerbated all the more in the decisive refusal to carefully separate component parts among the full-bodied stereoscopic iterations of the classic Factory Of Metal Sound. In other words, the shit's more raw, more immediate, more filthed in its dis-representation of the materials at hand, and also therefore quite decisively FUBAR'd in the intensely acerbic brutalities of each successive attack, the monochromatic densities converging en masse, convincingly driving an unambiguously HARSH disposition.
The tape kicks off in restrained fashion, heavy duty gears clacking in short-lived spurts, as though hand-cranked in wide-open acoustic space. Soon the proverbial pièce de résistance enters the frame, a genuinely confusing source, or combination of sources, that sounds at times like the dry chafing of steel on steel and at others like the po'd insinuations of badly shredded voice working itself up into quite the purple-faced fervor- and at still others like both, steel and voice, competing with one another for attention. The insinuations- steel, voice, both- grow more pronounced, coming in waves undercut with rumbling, bass-heavy, underbellows. At the amplified peaks, which just keep coming and coming, the results are so distorted and burnt to shit that it's impossible for the ears to reliably report their findings save to say: the shit, is quite unutterably vicious.
At about halfway through, hefty THUD-THUD of methodical, heavy-handed, percussion lends the scene distinctly ritual airs, thundering inexorably toward a climactic critical mass that trades off the harsh for the HEAVY. Suddenly, the whole thundering spectacle breaks away, allowing the clacking gears to dominate an uneasy stillness. And then--
whaaaaAAAANNNG!
Godsfuckingdamnit. I knew it, I just fucking knew it. Huge hefty-as-fuck slams of reverberant steel-on-steel go luddite on the hiney, bashing the living shit out of the few remaining scraps on hand. A sprinkling of half-hearted attempts to recapitulate the dry chafing voice-cum-scrapings, end.
The flipside starts out much as the first, but in more deliberate and dramatic fashion. Burnt shreds of voice-like chafe mark their re-entry in much reduced capacities, affording more space to breathe, more time to develop, the industrial development of crudely hulking steelworks grotesquery only gradually gaining weight in the decaying echoes of acerbic grind and scour. Meanwhile, the now-familiar clack of heavy duty gears continues to crank through the open-aired assemblage, augmented here with the clearly defined contour of rusted-through grate and iron-clad ker-plunk. Tension thickens to the point where you can just about taste it, bitter tangy textures of rust, of steel, stainless, stainful, acrid ozones heavy on the schnoz, heaving accumulations rich with densely saturated overtones.
Then, inevitably, the whang. More a thunk, really. A percussive thunk-thunk-thunk, to be precise. At this point the sharper leavenings of abrasive scrape duly het up. There's a palpable dis-ease here, a sense of frustrated ill humor on the cusp on boiling over, the thunkthunkthunk accentuating not so much a righteous indignation as agitation, agitating to do due damage and do it good. Against the hefty thunkthunkthunk an even heftier series of full-on BLAM comes smashing down, in its wake secreting genuinely intense slatherings of almost white-washed seethe, whangs well forgotten in the ensuing collapse.
Digest spew:
Factory Of Metal Sound it ain't. I mean, it could be. But there's too much bottled up aggression, too much commitment to raping 'hole, too much say it musical intent. The human element is there, and it is not a happy one. (Or maybe it is, what the fuck do I know?) The point is, the presumed human behind this dedication to industrial development is plainly committed to extracting from the materials at hand a maximal potential for earhole abrasion proper. The point is, the monochromatic densities converging en masse drive an unambiguously FUBAR'd disposition. The point is, whatever the point, the 'holes will burn. Say what you will for your developmental urgencies, industrial strength and otherwise: when steel meets steel, again and again and again, in and among the overtones, shit, unambiguously, happens.
