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The New Boyfriends – The New Boyfriends c40
Aprapat sure knows his way around his scrap metal. In January it was the textured junk-scrap epic of Ultimate Freedom. In March came the well-tempered steel and glass symphonics of Chamber Music. In May he teamed up with the latest boyfriend, Magao, to present this unstoppable exercise in harsh junk abuse & hot steam, not necessarily in that order. As long as I'm throwing dates around, it probably behooves me to mention the actual recording date, November 2019, quote in the grip of winter. (So that's what they're calling it now eh?) And just to round out the name dropping, a third partner in the name of Jaako Vanhala– aka His Royal Metal Whangedness– was commissioned to master the shit (no word on whether this too was "in the grip of winter").
As for the shit, or should I say the scrap, well, there's a lot of it, never for the moment stopping: whanging on, whanging hard, whanging, Whanging, WHANGING. All right, simmer down there. if you'll bear with me as I crib from comments elsewhere slobbered I confess that, back in May, I actually hesitated in copping this, mainly because I was then only familiar with Aprapat. Duly sample via bandcamp and– once that first metal-on-metal whang whangs home– instant wood. As to whether such supreme force can be maintained for the full forty-minute course, well. I don't think I can emphasize enough how much wood that initial whanging stirred up. Even during the intervals where interest might otherwise be inclined to flag, there's still that constant suspense that further wood-bestirring whangs are round the corner. Any moment now, any fucking moment. By the second or third time through it dawns on me I am a total, whanged-to-death, convert.
I suppose I've whanged on enough about the proper whanging in store for the righteous. Truth be told, it's not just about the metal-on-metal er crash-bash-gash-kersmash. There's all this other analog spittle and slobber steaming up the scene. Four scenes actually, seemingly culled direct from live-to-recording-device sessions. There's lots of space here, plenty of opportunity to feel things out, their contours and edges gleaming in the steamy backdrop. And no one seems terribly keen to ensure that the whangs drop in earnest. Drop they will, of that there can be no doubt, but meanwhile, stick around a while, grab a towel and an ice-covered chair– or whatever else grabs you– stretch out and bask in the languid sensuality of whang after whang after...
well, you get the picture.
Erotic Tundra is, of course, the one to light the passions. Bone-dry whittle-drone lead-in duly WHANGED into oblivion. A single solid whang, but it is a full flavored doozy, drawing with it an unsteady series of ker-blams and slams. Whittle-drone ups its amplifications, starting to sound as though some asshole is driving a motorbike through the fucking sauna, edged rubbers burning and squealing with the intense friction. At this point the junk scraps enter into unbalanced dialog with their analog piddle partner. Snatches of silence slip between the cracks before hefty whang-loads forcefully plow through the gaping spaces. Harsher washes of abbreviated scathe cut through the center, undercutting a now jerkily buckling junk dis-semblage, banging haphazard about a steady motoring of midrange flatulence. The final raspberry snorts out at around seven minutes, cueing up a scrappily manhandled orgy of purely acoustic, raw-razored, junk abuse, tastefully rusted screech-bleeds spicing steely-spiked percussive traumas in a way that could only be called SEXY AS FUCK.
Motor Yoga seems at first a more laid back affair, drawn out drone harmonics holding steady against pinprick stabs of piercing feedback and more physically intrusive acoustics of chirp, crackle, fart. Meanwhile at the perimeter the farts start to dissolve among wider-panned rust-scrapes, working in concert with some rudely overbearing duck-honking to set teeth on edge. Soon the rust-scrapes are chafing with renewed aggression, keen to drive proceedings from hard to harsh. It appears that someone finally got that motor running- or at least revving- fat flatulent chunks blowing out the tailpipe in meaty blurt clusters, ultimately spinning out of control, jerking around on the saddle, funneled into the filthiest fucking mess you may soon wish were not quite so easy to imagine.
Field Mirage is a decidedly atmospheric affair, exercising some caution in threading a path through dangerously sharp pieces of jagged metal and glass. This time the motor is content to rumble away in the background, not really getting in on the action. And frankly this is no place to be pulling donuts. The floor is iced, slick, one wrong step and, well it doesn't bear thinking. The raw acoustic materials seem to have been selected with some care for their non-elasticity, slender brittle lengths grinding, buckling and splintering under the firm but gentle pressure of sauna-sized trash compactor. Occasional slides of simmering white give it a cool glassy sheen, hooking up with some rumbly motor action in a suggestive push for hefty boy brutalities. Frankly, however, this is a field of almost purely acoustic hell, the tightly narrowed bands stabbing with deceptively piercing excruciations, sharp edges twisting snapping thwacking, to yield quite possibly the harshest cut of the set.
Analog Sauna dials the aggression right back up, delivering, as it say on the tin, raging purple-crowned beef injections of red-hot analog sphinct-rupture. At moments, motorheaded belching flatulescence rumbles through the thick, but more often than not loses its shit to the tune of rabid, white-flecked, slathering salivations. So shrill are moments of said salivations that one might wonder whether they are in fact junk-scrap driven, the result of a furious metal-on-metal thwack attack, savage testing of the metal via maximal impact pressures. Needless to say, the steely-spiked whangs are out in force, thrashing and bashing from every which wherever. But. The competition with the convulsed electronics is fierce. Here drops an angular mass of scrap, full-bodied full-spectrum L-R iterations submerged in deluge of brownest butt chunder. There swings hefty-armed hacking epilepsy of razor-sharp gleaming screech, whitewalled clusters swirling through the flaking, butchered, rust-flaps. For the most part, the gestures toward coherence are lost in the harsh moment, whitewashed feedback-flecked shriek-fits duly shredded raw in the pile-on of disparate convoluted rumple-blurt, rust-scrape, scathe-gristle. In the final minute or so, the acoustic scraps exact their vengeance, dynamic screeches and shrieks grinding through wide-panned moments of perfectly shattered gristle, in-delicate dances of unadorned junk-abuse reprized in the celebratory stench of rotted-through rust.
Digest spew
There's metal-on-metal whang and there's metal-on-metal whang. With Aprapat the metal-on-metal whang is the sort that just...whangs. It's epic, massive, screeching, grinding. A perfection of collapsible scrap-thwack whanging that you'd think by this stage would be de rigueur but in fact seldom is. At least, when it comes to this level of perv-vected junk abuse, the rivals are few and far between. On this occasion, Aprapat commissions the latest boyfriend, one Magao, to spice up the scraps with motorized clusters of analog rug-burn. It is acoustic, it is electronic, it is raw and it is brutal. It is, frankly, hot, raw acoustic materials screeching, grinding, plowing through the gaping spaces left in the wake of collapsible metal-on-metal dis-semblage. The contours and edges of the ruptured thwack-attack gleam bright in the steamy backdrop, their scrappily manhandled orgies of raw-razored junk abuse tastefully spicing steely-spiked percussive traumas in a way that could only be called SEXY AS FUCK.
