My main reason for posting again in here is for the opportunity to spew more shit about IOS. But ostensibly, since people seem to be kinda sorta asking for recommendations, especially if they dig Fifteen – Finite Material Context...
Quote from: acsenger on July 17, 2016, 05:05:59 AMRegardless, there are some releases (More Violence and Geography, Historical, Probe, Cancer) I'd be curious to hear
And I had to laugh since those are probably the first four I would recommend, almost in that order. (Maybe put Cancer before Historical and you're set.) I'd chime in that More Violence and Geography would very probably be up your alley. Very consistent in tone while delivering a range of mostly grim texture. None of those "parts that just ruin the albums" as to be heard on Bad Karma and Inside Agitator.
Bad Karma I've always been fine with, but Inside Agitator is definitely the prime non-candidate. I first heard it on the radio and of course it had to be one of the damn beat-oriented tracks... I literally almost cried. When I broke down (much) later and bought the damn thing I was forced again to break down and cry. "Good lord, what were they thinking?" I was definitely agitatin' on the inside. But no, speaking of probe, that was just me-with-pickle-up-butt being unfair. The album was "ruined", yes, but there were enough moments of the desired dread atmos to bring it back for me. Not until quite recently did I ever feel inclined return to anything but the favored moments- of dread atmos. Now, having retrieved the pickle from the butt (and jammed it down my throat), I rather enjoy the strain of trying to "get" the whole damn thing (er..), warts, wtfs n' all (an approach that now strains all my listening. I suppose I once saw myself as an "active listener", but perhaps "reactive listener" would be a better descriptor, I digress...)
On the subject of pickles, warts 'n wtfs, I think I've always regarded IOS as coming, broadly, from the field of what's sometimes called "radio sound art". I'm thinking endless warped and wonky collages as you would often hear on college radio... as practically
defined college radio (for me, in Toronto, at the time). Amid dense and disorienting clusters of fuckedupshit, long streaks of better-forgotten plunderphonics, loops, fragments of music, beats, ceremonial tribal shite, etc. Warped and wacked juxtoposition that as often works as does not. But also potentially huge and all-consuming abyss of experimentation. Darkness and dread. (Black) humor and (public) disturbance. Music and non-music. So on and so forth. This type of thing does not seem designed to "grab" you (and drag you, kicking and screaming, into the abyss), but more to just take a (bad) trip and just... see what happens. The earlier-mentioned Heathen Harvest reviewer appears to want themes, context, story. (Just to add a bit of tar to the brush, I often feel that people coming at this field via the metal side of things tend to want a bit more story.. a bit more dungeons n dragons or something, I digress...) Themes, context, story. They are there, if you want them, but they are also not there, if you don't. IOS, then, as a huge and burly abyss of ideas, bubbling and percolating, D. Burke as wacky chemist tinkering about in the soundlab... or possibly that weird uncle or "friend of the family" you see from time to time- y'know, the one who disappeared just before Y2K... seeking new and dis-shevelled re-combinations and discombobulations. I confess I often imagine the man cackling evilly to himself while he records the shit, though if Mixmaster Burke was ever coming from the field of radio sound art, he was coming at it in the right direction, streaks of better-forgotten shite kept to the bare minimum (even if they might be sufficient to ruin whole albums for some listeners).
I guess where I'm going with all the above is: IOS belongs in my brain to the field of experimentation proper, with all the warts pickles n wtfs that is to entail. It may be hard for this shit to "grab" you on first go, so maybe the grabbing has to start the other way around. But that of course it helps plenty if the sound perv-veyor is genuinely good at what they do (I've often felt this way about Thomas Dimuzio, just to throw in another name on these lines. Does Dimuzio have his own thread?)
Okay, so let's review the list of immediate recommendations.
More Violence And Geography. Then
Cancer... though there might be the (very) barest smidgen of "parts that ruin" it, overall a very convincing piece of pure, and occasionally encouragingly rough, atmosphere.
Historical starts us off with a bit of looped/plundered "parts that ruin" it, but then gets down to the nitty gritty, some genuinely disturbing moments. Then
Probe to kind of round things out in a quiet and understated way, where the tension creeps up on you, slow-like, then makes a good hard effort at wringing a bit of jitter out of the placid calm occupying the space between the holes... and shoving a big fat pickle back in.
RVE is also very consistent overall- has this been reissued?- a good piece of deep-pitted, extended, roughed-up, atmos to go with your Cancer. I'd again throw in the
Holeist split, with the caveat that just as Holeist side starts with pure genius it then ends with a "part that ruins" it- some damn beat shit (the IOS side is plain great, if not textured in the way that someone enjoying the rougher elements of Fifteen might like).
More Altitutude Than Attitude is probably worth picking up for a sense of how loud IOS could get in a live setting, including a very nice cover of TG's "Discipline". Finally, if NO PART OF IT will not directly say so, if you're at all curious about the more recent material,
Surrender has some moments of true greatness. Just a huge amount of material/ideas crammed into the massed and messy spectacle, not at all afraid to get plenty full-on the way those with peculiarly special interests like
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