DECAYCAST Reviews: SHADOWS “KnightsEnd” Cassette (Polar Envy / SKSK, 2018)

DECAYCAST Reviews: SHADOWS “KnightsEnd” Cassette (Polar Envy / SKSK, 2018)

SHADOWS “Knight’s End” (photo: Polar Envy / ASR)

Cleveland, OH mainstays SHADOWS is David Russell and Wyatt Howland (and at least for this release are assisted via the sonics of Roman J. Leyva) crafting their  dark, horrific, take on the legacy/story of Batman  through mastered techniques of harsh noise, drone, percussion and dynamic  mixing and editing techniques. The sound of SHADOWS seems go evolve with every release and “Knight’s End” is no different. Beginning with a murky, distorted rhythm we are  quickly whisked away into a harsh symphony of ringing, clanging, scraping; attack on  the ear and the “fearless”? The sound of shadows is physically manifested through the  black clad, pointed eared upside down man of the night. “KnightsEnd” fuses longer drone sections, which contain a rather cinematic arch to their presentation, slowly beginning as a low, slow sine wave and over the course of a few minutes, escalate into a cavernous,  yet detailed sonic explosion of harsh noise, voice, and percussion, a masterfully blended evil sonic stew leaving the listener with a tense, uneasy feeling, which for my ear canal is just perfect.

.The B side “KnightQuest”  follows a similar compositional format, beginning with stark, alienating percussion, resembling the swaying of an old, cursed sinking ship with hundreds of  piezos placed within it’s weakest structural support system and signing a hum of the  druid through mangled cassette tape, as it creaks and rips apart all whilst bombs fall from an unknown sky above.  We hear a parade of  dissonant sounds slowly dragging themselves closer and farther away to the ear canal, like a slow, pulsing infectious disease spreading through an unknown human cavity, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. The blending of all of the different sonic elements that compose the sound of SHADOWS is perhaps one of their strongest elements as the  tension seems to build throughout in a subtle, yet  important way, dragging us down and down into the sea of sonic mayhem until the  last air bubble pops at the  surface, the ship has sank, their are no survivors, only the harsh, alienating tortured sounds of Shadows “Knight’s End” As of the time of this review, according to the label’s bandcamp page there’s just, ONE copy left and you should GO HERE AND BUY IT.

POLAR ENVY 

SHADOWS 

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DECAY CAST Interviews : STATIC AND SOUND; An Interview with DEREK PIOTR

Sound artist Derek Piotr is releasing a new  record coming out in late September on the DSPR imprint, titled “Grunt”, so we decided to have a short conversation about Piotr’s work as “Grunt”, specifically on their new record.

“A grunt. That most primal and animalistic of utterances. The new project by Derek Piotr, his eighth solo record and a set of short-form brutalist shards of human-digital noise, is

named for this sound. Had Xenakis bought a laptop in 1999, he may have produced something comparable to Grunt and its post-human #voicenoise aesthetic. Yet this is a wholly unique piece of work. As with Xenakis, Piotr takes recognisably analogue sounds – particularly the voice, but also drawing on acoustic instrumentation and found-sounds from nature – and reconstructs them into 21 intricate ‘electroacoustic’ miniatures. Yet

Piotr is less interested in dissolving these boundaries between electric and acoustic than he is in hybridising the organic and the digital. Grunt is subversively queer in its post-human composition”

 

Dr. Decaycast:  “A grunt. That most primal and animalistic of utterances” would you say that this  quote sums up the Ethos of the Grunt project perfectly?

Derek Piotr: Grunt has a separate meaning in Polish which is “earth” or “ground”. In general this project is trying to remind people of awareness of the physical body and reconnecting with nature in a really direct, almost clumsy way. I feel society has totally gone ethereal with apps and phones and I wanted to hit listeners lightly over the head with this project.

DD:   Can you talk a little bit about the strategies of creating the sounds on this new record?

Piotr: Granular synthesis and heavy edits. In my earlier work i did a lot of very klobig cut and pastes, just lines and lines of small repeated glitches, then got further and further away from that idea as I moved on in my work. I wanted to return to some of the earliest ideas I had about sound, but in a way that is closer to my own vision than it was before…it always takes many tries circling around something before you reach the center.

DD: Would you consider yourself a concept based artist? If so, How does this record differ in concept from your previous seven full length albums, if at all?

Piotr: I think every record does fit into a concept. Drono was about drone music, Forest People Pop was of course more of a Pop record. I think I need a fence to work in or I would just be utterly lost. It would be interesting to me to create an album with no borders, every track a different flavour or feeling, but I feel ultimately that may result in a very uneven album. Something close to this happened with my fourth record Tempatempat. I tried many different sonic environments and, to me, that effort is my weakest. Consistency is important. I think grunt may be my most thematically consistent record. Most of the tracks are within the same parameters of length, and very similar processing is applied to the sounds across the entirety.

DD: Xenakis was mentioned in reference to this album. Can  you talk a little bit  about the impact his work has had on your  process and  aesthetics, if any?

Piotr: Xenakis is amazing, the press release was not written by me, but I definitely suggested that visual “if Xenakis had a laptop” to the PhD who wrote the liner notes. I think a lot of Xenakis’ work is very rough and direct in a way I tried to be on this album. I was not thinking of Xenakis when writing, more after I had the record done I tried to tie touchstones to it. Some of the work on this record sounds like Xenakis chamber music. Some of it sounds like Stockhausen. Some of it sounds like Pita. Some of it sounds like Kit Clayton. But I only drew those threads together after.

DD: The last track on this record is a reworking of a Kevin Drumm track. Can you talk a little bit about that collaboration and how that came about?

Piotr: I’ve known Kevin for years and we’ve emailed back and forth. We’re on the same label with some of our stuff. As I did with Drono (where I collaborated with Thomas Brinkmann for the last track), I invited Kevin to edit some of the material I was working on for this noise album. I sent him a bunch of demos and he chose Redirect to work with.

DD: Any collaborations planned for the  future?  Did you learn anything from that particular collaboration with Drumm?

Piotr: Didn’t really learn anything from Kevin, we work pretty similarly…that said I do have more collaborations coming in the next few months…

DD: What is some of the best new music (noise or other that you have heard)

Piotr: AGF – Dissidentova

Dirty Projectors – Lamp-Lit Prose

anything from Don’t DJ

but i am bad to talk about “new” music, I mostly lately listen to Jean Ritchie and old Thai music on youtube.

DD: Do you think queerness plays a  big enough role in noise?

Piotr: No. It’s very much a boys club still. I wanna wag my finger a bit: many successful noise artists feed into boys club energy; use guitar and have kind of a postrock shoegaze situation going on. I think it pulls in people and feels like stretched out major power chord business, just made slightly weirder or dilute. Then you have harsh noise which is almost mosh-state sometimes. Definitely macho-ness going on, at least with some of the noise scene figureheads. I wish for more alertness sonically, use of differing tonal systems, general freakiness, softness and sensuality.

DD: What are the next plans for your project?

Piotr: Tour and remixes and videos…

 

You can Pre order  Piotr’s new  album, Grunt, here:

 

DECAYCAST REVIEWS: Attilio Novellino & Collin McKelvey – “Metaphysiques Cannibales” LP/ Digital (Weird Ear, 2018)

DECAYCAST REVIEWS: Attilio Novellino & Collin McKelvey – “Metaphysiques Cannibales” LP/ Digital (Weird Ear, 2018)

 

by Diego Aguilar-Canabal

My first instrument was not a guitar, piano, or computer—it was a space heater. I crawled up to it on my feeble haunches (so my parents recall), eyeing with skepticism the plastic cage holding its inner circuitry, and scraped a toy truck against its indifferent grooves. It was music, but not art; in a word, it was sound, yet without form.

Humans entertain themselves by forming patterns out of meaningless garbage, and the venerable Weird Ear imprint is almost religiously devoted to stripping those patterns back down to the garbage whence they came. No less ambitious is their latest platter of sonic sacrilege, Colin McKelvey & Attilio Novellino’s Metaphysiques Cannibales.

The anti-conceptual hodgepodge of musique concrete motifs is named after and perhaps inspired by a book of the same name by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, a poststructural anthropologist who sought to reimagine the study as a revolutionary “decolonization of thought.” That’s a tall order, and no single record will get the job done, but McKelvey & Novellino’s mystical ballet of bleeps and bloops certainly gets the ball rolling.

As you may remember from your earliest toys—particularly from your realization that anything in your hands could be a toy—no melody is inherently happy or sad. No ritual carries inherent reward. It seems like only the Pavlovian training by authority figures can teach you, fragile caged pigeon that you are, can pair a major-key waltz with a sweet refreshing ice cream, or the somber diminished chord with a demonic possession. But is that really how it works?

Side A of this mindfuckery starts with the buzzing whiplash of factory-like rhythms, swirls into the void of a cosmic dentist’s drill, and fades into the spacious echoes of a zombie-ridden hospital morgue. Sources are obscured, and the arbitrary distinction between impact and intent implodes in a serene chaos.

Side B creeps into your consciousness with the whispers of a long-lost French interrogation recording, swallowed by the tinkering and thudding of a conch shell sceance. A molten fax machine emerges from the sludge of a forgotten video game organ dirge, and a scintillating synthesizer drone evokes Laurie Spiegel and Roedelius before sinking into a lonely abyss. The urgency of a broken dial-up connection is tempered by the ebb and flow of a chilling piano loop.

While the grating hiss of granular synthesis is typically the domain of futuristic computer music—you know, all those sweaty nerds coding in Max/MSP—here it gives the music a sense of being unimaginably ancient, like a mad scientist’s vision of the future whispered into a phonograph to pass the time while waiting for the brine to embalm a dead monarch.

“By always seeing the Same in the Other,” writes Castro, “by thinking that under the mask of the other it is always just ‘us’ contemplating ourselves, we end up complacently accepting a shortcut and an interest only in what is ‘of interest to us’—ourselves.”

Indeed, the image we see of ourselves in this record is a terrifying one, and not seeing yourself reflected is a “don’t think of an elephant”-esque impossibility. We’re tragically vain, capricious, greedy yet wasteful, hungry to build something meaningful out of heaps of trash we never wanted in the first place.

If you’re ready to sweat through your nightmares and wake up more confused than ever, this is a record worth adding to your trash-heap.

DECAYCAST Reviews : TODD ANDERSON – KUNERT “A Good Time To Go” (This Is Non Linear,2018)

DECAYCAST Reviews : TODD ANDERSON – KUNERT “A Good Time To Go” (This Is Non Linear,2018)

This little unassuming tape arrived in our mailbox all the way from NZ, where the artist Todd Anderson – Kunert is based. This work titled “A Good Time To Go” boasts the sonic equivalent of finding that perfect moment to ditch out on the show or event or interaction that you’re probably enjoying (or maybe not ) but are suddenly met with that harsh and disorienting wave of uncertain feelings, emotions and sense of space or lack thereof. This album is very much that. the albums opener “No” starts with a slow quiet drone which ascends into a loud, shuttering thud, and steadily breaks up into a more distorted, disorienting, confusing version of itself until the listener is left with their own feelings of confusion about confusion. Dark, crumbling noise swashes give way to more rhythmic patterns which oscillate moments between disappearance and uncertainty while bathing the listener in a sharp bath of loud and overwhelming sounds all to build to a climax and erase themselves to the point where only the distant hum of a sharp bell remains, a single alienating tone tuning and ringing inside the brain of the unsuspecting listener. The overall vibe is dark , disorienting , haunting with spurts of beautiful articulate decay.

The albums strongest track “It’s Taking Forever” is an honest, heavy take on what could be best described as digital power drone. Lots of dark and articulate textures exist throughout, crawling and wringing out dark, alienating slime into the ear, especially on this second stand out track which really carves out a lonely and confusing sonic space, oscillating between traditional takes on drone, ambient noise, “power ambient” some might say.  Overall a solid release with a wide interpretation on what could be considered psychoacoustic drone music.

TODD ANDERSON-KUNERT

TONIGHT: NOISE SHOW IN SF w/ DEMONSLEEPER / THOABATH / NEHA SPELLFISH / MALOCCULSION

TONIGHT  4/20 IN THE  CITY OF  SAN FRANPSYCHO

SECOND ACT. 1727 HAIGHT STREET, SF, CA 7:45-10PM SHARP

 

“Four twenny in the Haight Ashbury? Yup. If smoke makes the best sunsets, the banks of Golden Gate Park will be blowin’ up as Neha Spellfish, Malocculsion, play the final show with Demonsleeper and Thoabath before they hang ten off a dank ring blowing out toward San Juan, Puerto Rico where they’ll opena new venue for experimental live sound. Come see them off with…

NEHA SPELLFISH (Oakland/Madrid)
With low frequency waves washing up on a beach of dark noise ambience, Spellfish delves into the shared space of interspecies communication and paramnesia, invoking the spectral measure of waking consciousness and noospheric cognition. Neha invokes themes of macro psychology, xeno feminism, dynamically modeled weather enclosures, and instinctual variance, employing audio programming platforms and algorithmic granular synthesis.
https://soundcloud.com/spellfish

Demonsleeper
Deathrattle lullabys and inescapable lucid dreamscapes wrought by somnambulist maestra, Alexandra Bushman. In 1999, she formed the electro-acoustic group, Synethesia, tegether with Angélica Negrón. After scaring the daylights out of everyone at the Conservatory of Music in Puerto Rico, she matriculated to Mills College before committing to advanced studies with ancient dark forces whose names must never be spoken.
https://soundcloud.com/demonsleeper

Thoabath
There’s a perceptible gravity to Andy Way that somehow vanishes once you draw near, the material world floats adrift. His solo project, Thoabath, might just be that massless Euclidean point where noise, dub, power electronics, horror, and ambient all emanate, an entelechy without clear precedent, of no laws. Prepare your ear, first study his collaborations with luminaries like Bruce Anderson (MX-80) & Petit Mal in the project, French Radio, sink yourself in the occult cacophony of Sutekh Hexen, and then, approach Thoabath, inescapable dark quasar.
https://soundcloud.com/acway/

Malocculsion
Watch concrete turn to quicksand and glass return to sand as this sonic juggernaut storms the Haight Ashbury. His inaugural solo album released last year, “Psychosis Industrial Complex”, melds blown out distorted beats, arpeggiated synths, tape manipulation, voice, field recordings and homemade oscillators to belt forth a dark, unique offering of post industrial, prison music.
https://ratskinrecords.bandcamp.com/album/malocculsion-psychosis-industrial-complex

 

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DECAYCAST REVIEWS : K2/ CONSTRAIN / FENIAN CD (Oxen label, 2015)

DECAYCAST REVIEWS : K2/ CONSTRAIN / FENIAN CD (Oxen label, 2015)

Here we have another  harsh, tasty treat from the always  harsh, loud  and  on fire label OXEN RECORDS  from LA  run by Matt and  Leah Purse. This album comes in beautifully artworked jewel  case, and the  sounds live up to the  artwork./ The  disc opens up with a harsh, but  fun offering from noise legend, K2 (Kimihide Kusafuka)  who  swiftly and masterfully carves through fifteen minutes of classic,  chaotic, phased out  harsh noise blasts. Oscillators and  opportunities shudder open and closed as Kusafuka melts, blends, breaks, and blasts his  way to a masterfully brutal harsh noise assault. k2 has been terrorizing both sides of the  brain/globe  with his  harsh noise  presentations of  aural hell for years and this brand  new offering is no exception. Dynamic, loud, abrasive, and unapologetic  doesn’t even begin to sum up the  work of  K2  on this release, or any of his extensive and  sought after  back catalog, though it’s a brave and noble start.

 

Kevin M. is up next with an equally brutal and  chopped up track from his elusive  yet prolific Constrain project (who also offers up  the album  artwork to boot) The Constrain track has a few  more  rhythmic elements that tease and  tug on the listener somewhere  in  the  background, but  they never remain for more  than a  few  seconds before they  are  swept  away with choppy, arrhythmic feedback blasts, chaotic, unstable  circuits and belching, smelly walls  of  distortion and speaker popping.  Constrain’s style is a bit  more choppy overall than K2, but it’s  no doubt working in the  same  schematic of  compositionally aware, yet angry and  disjointed noise music.  The Constrain track has  some nice  stereo  effects  and is  fairly dynamic, in terms of some of the other projects from this artist, though it  slowly builds to a  chaotic climax  somewhere about halfway through the  track and begins subtracting from itself  and  erasing  its own heads and tails.

 

Last and not least of the  three  artists,  we have the Fenian track, which is perhaps my favorite and the most dynamic and movement based  piece on the  disk. Also a bit  shorter than the k2 offering, fenian carves, warped, warbley  blown out  harsh noise which seems to have more  of an analog tape machine feel (even though i know thats not  whats  being  used – or  maybe i don’t, or maybe nobody  does, and nothing does,  including the machines ) Fenian navigates the  harsh to minimal transitions rather smoothly and  always riding the line between blown out and microtonal harsh noise, in a  swift and compelling way. Some  faint  field recordings of  voice/ old  song can be heard, however  before the listener can claw at a point of reference, the  sound is GONE, SQUASHED, MANIPULATED, into a harsh hellhole of  auditory terror.

 

The fourth track is a collaboration, by mail it  seems between the  three  artists  and is mixed and compiled by K2 according to the liner notes. This track offers  some really fun manipulation of  source material from Constrain and possibly Fenian as well but  it’s  undoubtably  processed through the K2  sound  engine!  Overall a great  offering for all the  harsh heads out there  who want something with a bit more sonic density  and  with more  variance than most contemporary harsh noise, these  three are  keeping the bar  high and  dangerous.

 

OXEN LABEL 

DECAYCAST REVIEWS: COCK ESP & GINGER CORTES Split Cassette (Forever Escaping Boredom Records, 2014)

DECAYCAST REVIEWS: COCK ESP & GINGER CORTES  Split  Cassette (Forever Escaping Boredom Records, 2014)

I’ve been a Cock E.S.P. fan for a lonnnnnnng  time  but i have  never  written about, or  attempted to write about their music/noise/destruction, etc but  with this tape, i’m going to, The  side  starts out  with  an insane bass  blast low -end wall of noise  and  a woman’s  voice, twisted, demonic, screaming and  howling as  it’s being  choked with blood and laughter. The  voice is a constant but a  hellish wall of  squelching noise  ensues and  swallows the voice into despair and hatred.  The transmission is broken, and high frequency walls of nauseating   piercing feedback give a bloody birth, to, what , a thumping beat, a beat???? Yes  folks, thats tight, Cock E.S.P. brings the booty bass on this one. The  distraught voice chugs and howls on,  grabbing onto and biting through the beat until the  skilled vocalist spits it out into a superhero’s afterbirth of a noise  menacing, dark noise  wall,  screaming at and  attacking  the listener  with unrelenting precision and terror. I do  NOT want to know what was going on in the  studio when this was  being recorded, or maybe  i do, but  either way something hilarious, dark, and nauseating was the influence, oh I dunno this  filth of a planet? COCK E.S.P.  does what most harsh bands cant  do, EVERYTHING. they bring the ultimate  package of visual and  aural insanity.Here’s the thing though, this is noise, but it’s done with a  jazz like attention to detail, all whilst embracing the  murky guts of the  chaotic element of bodily fluids, chicken masks, and flying objects.

They literally NEVER  let me down, even when when they’re  trying to let  you down, they don’t, and  that’ll hopefully piss them off 🙂  and this recording, like many I’ve heard are a testament to their hard work in the  studio, in the gutter,  and their  blatant infatuation with  and  disgust with humanity… What a  fucking  good  band, seriously, see them live, but  don’t blink because it’ll be over.  Like this  shit  inspires me. Thank you Emil Hagstrom, Jason Wade, Julia Rau, Paige Flesh, and John Vance for  releasing this blatant harsh assault on my ears and mind, it was much needed.

Despite COCK E.S.P.  being  a very tough, and messy act to follow on the  stage  and on a  recording, The  Ginger Cortes  side holds it’s  own on the B side of this harsh  brain jammer.  GC opens up with a dark, heavy, grinding, repulsive wall of harsh decaying belt  sander  style harsh noise. The  dark, brooding  sound continues on, slaughtering the  listener  with an unrelenting sledgehammer of a  scraping mid  range  springed out static  attack.  Ginger  Cortes grinds and  grinds and  grinds  away until the cochlear begins to flake  and shred off, bleed  and disappear, and  then they stop. They stop for a few  seconds of unknown scraping and  fumbling  around, and then a few  sharp  cuts  and blasts and we’re  right back into the harsh noise anus of Ginger Cortes. Quick,  cutting, bloody  cuts of high range  feedback give splinters of disease Ridden mid-range  feedback clusters, and  atomic blasts of  distortion,…and then ‘be  a good  little girl”……….??????????????   wow, what a tape, what a wild  tape, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED,.

FOREVER  ESCAPING BOREDOM RECORDS

COCK E.S.P.

GINGER  CORTES

ESOTERIC MAGNETS : Interview / Label Spotlight with Out Of Body Records

Recently, Malo of Decaycast sits down with Rob Buttrum, a key figure in the TX noise / experimental music scene to talk about his label , OUT OF BODY RECORDS, the future of experimental music and tapes .
.

Malo : Hello there , we have a bunch of great tapes from this label , OUT OF BODY RECORDS , what can you tell about this endeavor ?

Rob Buttrum : OUT-OF-BODY RECORDS started out of the ashes of AFTER DEATH RECORDS, A label I co-ran with a friend. We disbanded because of scheduling issues and the fact we were both so busy, it was hard to find time to work together. So we both started our own independent labels. OUT-OF-BODY was mine. The label stared in summer of 2011 with the a tagline of OUT-OF-BODY RECORDS – “ESOTERIC SOUNDS & EXTRATERRESTRIAL SIGHTINGS” I decided, right off the bat that I wanted to run a label not only focusing on music but also video. Focusing on Cassettes and VHS (first VHS batch out this summer) and hopefully eventually vinyl. Also focusing on releasing material that was not only harsh noise but esoteric music in general / non genre specific. I run the label out of my house/ex-venue HOUSE OF TINNITUS here in Denton TX.

Malo : So considering the label isn’t totally genre specific , can you talk a little bit about the curatorial process for selecting releases for the OOBR catalog?

RB : Basically any artist I want to work with,or respect/dig, i reach out to, to see if they are interested or available for doing a release.
I like to work with artists or bands that i feel are doing something a little different. Even the artists that I already am really into their material, I will ask to step outside the box or their comfort zone and try to come up with something a little different than they would normally do for a release with me. In addition when contacting artists, if I know or find out that an artist or band also works in video, I ask them if they would like to release a VHS, as opposed to a Cassette. I do receive requests / demos / submissions from artists and bands hoping to put something out on the label, and i listen to everything anyone sends me, if it grabs my attention or blows me away I will totally release it, it has happened. I Also like to work with as many artists I can that are in my local scene.
I feel there is a huge amount of talent in the DFW / North TX area, that never gets surfaced, so I like to make sure they get heard if possible. There are some really killer acts going on here right now. My musical taste ranges in everything from noise / industrial / cut up/ abstract, to sludge metal / thrash / black metal, to cold wave / darkwave / electro, to 70’s/80’s pop/funk/soul. and i could go on. I love music period. Though I do release a lot of noise I don’t consider OUT-OF-BODY solely a noise label , I am however trying to focus on pushing the limits on modern music, and trying to stay in the esoteric / abstract zone, when picking releases. Though not to say any of the genres i listed could not fit in there somewhere, if it really grabs me, ill go with it!!

Malo : Most of my favorite labels often dont stick to one genre , yet one can often still draw links between the releases , one link between all of the OOBR is the layout, Can you talk a little bit about the layout/design process for your tapes, and what if an artist decided they didn’t like the format?

RB : Well, So far i have done 98% of all the art / design on all the releases, with the exception of a photo or two used in inserts, in which I credit the artist / photographer. But all the covers have been done by me. As far as the layout goes, I do try to keep a few things the same for every release, for instance I keep the same font for every spine, and the color font is lifted from a color from the cover. also i use the O-O-B R logo on the back hook of the j-card. The covers and inserts are made based on the mood or themes the music gives me. Or in some cases based on the themes the artist / bands want me to work with. Most of the art is done by hand where some is done digitally, its a mix of both. I tend to work better without computers but use them as a helping tool when needed. I also make about 4-5 different B&W xerox collages for each release that i use for the backs of the J-cards. Though so far i have done all the art myself, I am not against the artist / band designing the art if they want to, but so far most people are cool we me doing it. I will however be using the artist’s design for an upcoming release. I do try to make the artist happy with the art i come up with and always approve it with the artist / band as I’m working on it, and if they don’t like something or want something changed i alter the art to their liking. Iv drafted dozens of covers for single releases until we both find one we really like. When I start working with a new artist i discuss the art and tell them how I keep the spine and the back hook, consistent and uniform, on each release so when on a shelf they are all uniform and have a common theme. No one has really had a problem with that yet.

Malo : So, what are some other labels / artists / etc that have inspired you to start a locally focused label ? And in the digital age , why is it still important to release physical media?

RB : Anyone that has ever ran an independent label and/or released music has influenced me.
I appreciate anyone’s ability and urge to keep underground music, culture and scenes alive. Its something iv always been interested in and doing my part in… I remember being a young teen and ordering music through a catalog or zine, before the internet. Ordering things that you
have never heard based on a description. waiting and getting it in the mail. Then looking at it and listening to it, feeling as if you found something special. you were part of it. It was an amazing feeling. I still do this with music I buy today. I have always been a fan of physical
releases, the holding of the actual media and looking at the art and reading the linear notes,
the packaging, the feeling of ownership. I have never been a fan of digital music. I just cant get behind it.It seems too empty and disconnected from the actual art in my opinion, and I don’t feel like I’m the only one that feels this way, so this is a reason i feel its important still today to release physical music. As well as it being a physical documentation of media that you can actually collect and create a library with. The same reason the Library of Congress still stores everything on cassettes. Its a way of preserving a work of art. I feel music releases are forms of art the same way a painting or photo can be, especially considering the fact that actual artwork is created for the releases. This art is just as important in my opinion as the music in cases.Thus the physical cassette becomes a piece of art and can be collected.
A relic of art.Thus, collectors are preserving the art / music, and in most cases the releases are limited so they then become collectible. Then eventually become worth more money then they were worth when they were originally released, as is the case for any limited collectors item.
Its an awesome feeling when you find or stumble across something that is 5/10/20/ 30 years old and know you found one of the few copies made or
possible left in circulation ever, and that’s a cool feeling. where a digital file has no feeling of rarity, its limitless and anyone can own it of find it. Computers are fragile and non permanent. Owning a digital file does not feel the same as owning the actual artifact to me. I also enjoy actually looking at a physical collection, as opposed to owning millions of albums on a computer that you can not actually see. I do not own any MP3 players or have a computer with quality speakers. I don’t associate music with computers in the sense of it being a playback medium… however as a lover of music i do have an adequate setup to listen to tapes, records, VHS, CDs, 8-tracks etc. on my home stereo. I pretty much only buy and listen to music on tape and Vinyl these days. I know some people that do have their computer set up through a good system and that’s totally cool but i feel personally i need more. And i think there are many others like me. Yet I do not want to alienate anyone that wants to purchase a release and become part of a scene who are not into the physical necessarily, and would rather have the digital version, so i do have digital downloads available in addition to the physical version.
As far as releasing local artist. its about 50 / 50 at this point. All areas have their local scenes and within that are micro scenes and little pockets of scenes. Some of these scenes have some killer shit going on but most of the time only that small scene has access to it, or perhaps if a touring act comes through that scene and sees it first hand. I enjoy experiencing other peoples scenes and seeing what other peoples music communities are like. I enjoy knowing where the newest pocket of killer shit is going on at a given time and scene. So I also like people to be able to experience the north TX scene. I make a point to try and release as much local stuff as I can, as I feel the TX scene is very strong and i like being an outlet for lesser know artist that i feel are doing things just as amazing as some of the more well known artist. I like being in a position where i can help people be heard.

malo : do you feel that digital technology specifically social networking has made it easier or more difficult for experimental acts to tour and pull decent gigs ?

RB: This is a good question. I’ve actually been talking to friends about this lately. It’s really a double edged sword. I definitely think
that social networking has made it way easier for bands and acts to tour and set up shows. Before the internet you had to already be involved with the right people and know contacts personally and call people on the phone and send demos and press kits venues and booking agents in order to set up tours. That’s why there were more people doing that as a job because they worked in the business and already know people. Eventually if you’ve toured constantly you had contacts. But a first time tour, or a smaller act… that was hard for most. Now just about anyone can book a tour without hardly knowing anyone anywhere, you can just put the word out on social media and someone will get you in contact with someone somewhere that can help. It still makes it easier the more you tour and the more personal connections you make. Like at this point I’v toured quite a bit and seem to at least know someone in almost every city, and within different scenes. It also helps that i used to run a DIY venue so i had hundreds of people come through my place that will return favors when your in their neck of the woods. But for booking tours, especially places you have never played, social media come in very handy. Even if you don’t know someone in a certain city or town you prob know someone who does, and with the internet its as easy as just sending some messages around. You don’t even have to have ever met someone or even have known them previously and they might be able to set you up a gig. In addition, as in the past you had to send press kits and demos if you wanted a club or promoter to hear / see what your band is about but now it is all online as well.. all you have to do is hey so and so – my band wants to play your city, I hear you book shows, can you help? Here are some links to our music and some videos and reviews… and its all done in a matter of minutes. Now a days you can book a tour in a matter of weeks when in the past it
could take half a year to really set some good gigs up, if you were doing it yourself. HOWEVER social media / networking in my opinion is also hurting the scene. Again on one hand it makes promotion easy, but its too easy. I feel like the youth in general is loosing the need for live shows. I feel they are not as into seeing live music. Its like they get invited to a show online, say their going, hear and see all the hype, then end up staying home to be on their computer cause they constantly plugged in and they can still feel like they went. Like in a virtual world, they know who went, they can watch videos of the show after it happened and its like they still experienced it virtually without actually having to go to the show. and still feel like there part of the scene, and they experienced the show.. its really weird, but its def. something iv been noticing. Sure you’r die hard music lovers still go to shows, but i feel were part of a dying breed. Everyone is so connected to their computers and smart phones that life is passing them by and they don’t care, they feel content and connected to everything in a different way. For example someone books a show and and makes a facebook event for it, say 100 people say there “going”and there is a bunch of internet hype around the show, but when the show come time to happen there are like 20 people there. Someone later posts a video or posts online how awesome it was then you run into someone that was not at the show and when asked if they were there or saw the set, the response was na, i could not make it but i saw the video and saw people talking about it. It was awesome!! and that’s enough for them. they know if they miss a show. they can still experience it in another way. This is what i think is destroying modern music scenes in some ways. people are not connected with real life. They get all the entertainment / art / music they need from a little screen. They don’t need to experience things in real life anymore. its scary shit man.

Malo :Ok, lastly what does the future hold for experimental music in the US? has it peaked? is it just beginning?

RB: Its hard to say what the future holds, but i have high hopes that it will continue to be relevant. Really hard to say if it will become more popular or less. Its always been an underground scene, and will most likely stay fairly so, yet I do notice that experimental music / noise is absolutely creeping / entering into more mainstream ideas and arts. Noise is not as weird and shocking as it once was when it was a newer idea. Most people who are at least into some form of music or art, at least know about noise. Its not weird to hear dissonant / noisy sounds in current pop, rap or rock music. However there as still crops of young people getting turned on to and discover noise that did not know about before and are falling totally in love with it and therefore research the history of the genera. It takes a certain person to have a passion for experimental music, i don’t think it will become a fad or mainstream by any means but it will be less underground, but i still think it will be relevant. And perhaps more so than in the past. There have been many great artists that it will be very hard to surpass, yet i still have no doubt that there is still plenty of room for people to continue to push music to insane levels and continue to create music that is next level and crazier then
anything ever created. which in my mind is very exciting and am looking forward to the future of experimental music!!

malo : LASTLY, anything u want to get off your chest, future releases, death threats. etc?

RB: I’d like to thank anyone that has supported my label or music / art in the past / future. I have a huge passion for the things i do and i invest a lot of time and effort into my art, and it makes it all worth the it when its appreciate and understood. I’m super stoked to announce the new batch of VHS on OUT-OF-BODY RECORDS. This marks the first Batch of VHS on the label thus far, and its been something iv wanted to do since i started the label 4 years ago. The new batch consists of audio and video work from artists Regosphere and Somnaphon. They are now available for mail order through outofbodyrecords.blogspot.com .
I’m completely back lined with many many more cassette and VHS releases for the future. Many exciting things to come. Next in line on the roster are cassettes
from Arvo Zylo, Ghost Miner, Bottomed, CBN/Satanic Abortion and VHS from NITE SHADEZ , Future Blondes , and Styrofoam Sanchez, all hopefully will be out in 2015… and beyond that more releases from artists such as Plack Blague, Redrot, Prisons, Sobering, Violator x, S. English, Alberich, FILTH, Private Archives, Profligate, Compactor and many more… looks like I’ve got some work to do…..and fuck anyone that gets in my way.

Here’s a few reviews of two of the stellar tapes from the Out Of Body Catalog

EN NIHIL / FILTH split

This tape brings together two of the hardest hitters working under the dark / industrial umbrella in the US today . EN NIHIL possesses the A side with a dark journey through a decrepit sonic landscape. The intro track is slow, minimal and haunting but halfway through dense, crunchy blown out beats creep in, and before you know it, the listener is submerged in a black lake of ringing and pounding. EN NIHIL creates distorted, slow churning rhythmic compositions, devoid of any light and hope . With each track the listener descends into a Lower level of thick , industrial soundscapes . Old shaky machines have gone awry and are slowly chopping and churning all of the metallic waste that humans have left behind into a fever pitched
Synth explosion of chaos .Adam Fritz EN NIHIL project proves to be one of the most articulate and consistent dark industrial / death – drone projects going currently.

On the B side, FILTH creates a slightly more chaotic, frantic , yet equally heavy and articulate version of the genre, sputtering out all analog based walls of industrial mayhem. FILTH is no stranger to decaycast review section , but this is one of his strongest efforts to date. Slow , tundra calving like rumblings cascade into high pitched screeching vocals, pushing through the dense, dark pillars of electronic sandstorms, all but shredding the speakers through magnetic madness. FILTH records with an all analog signal path, and it shows. FILTH is a master at blending the cacophonous array of his sound sources of electronic chaos Into a well defined, tension filled musical composition. This isn’t just noise, folks, not that there’s anything wrong with noise, but in the traditional sense, this just isn’t it . Theres a level of compositional
Awareness that just doesn’t exist on this level , often in these genres. And because of that, this tape, and the work of FILTH in general , is quite refreshing.

MATTHEW AKERS “A History of Arson”

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With this cassette, Matthew Akers takes the listener on a ride through the mind of an arsonist. “A History Of Arson” is a concept album delving into the mind of an arsonist on all the levels of experience that the arsonist goes through, the anticipation, the act , the aftermath, and it’s done with a barrage of digital and analog synthesizers. “A History of Arson” takes the listener on a dreamy, dark , arpeggio ridden ride through cinematic repetition of well crafted synth riffage and highly thought out compositions. Akers music is cinematic and composed, yet visceral and natural at the same time. Tension is created for scenes in a film that doesn’t exist, but yet somehow the sounds still
Substantiate the narrative. The riffs are visceral, yet ephemeral, dark and beautiful , all while creating an emotional intangibility that takes the listener outside of their own mind and into the mind of a criminal, an arsonist , a psychopath hell bent on the inherent beauty implicit in nature’s destruction. light the match and let the elements do the rest of the work ! This is top notch synthesizer music, for fans of early Tangerine Dream , Radio People . Alan Howarth and John Carpenter and the alike . beautiful, cinematic and intentional. A Great release

DecayCAST reviews : VOMIR / CRUCIFIX EYE split C40 (Forever Escaping Boredom Records)

Another swell release up from Forever Escaping Boredom
Records . A bright “psychedelic” data esque  is sliced my analog decay graces the cover with a thin black outline of a cassette shell, but pop this sucker in and its not quite as “bright” at all.  Layered images turn into a multi layered and structured WALL OF NOISE . VOMIR side is classic “VOMIR style”harsh noise wall- from France,  VOMIR is one of the best in the  game  currently. MILITANT, blown out, unnerving, a black analog  mass of  – the wall is information transmission failures -and meditative at the same time; hypnotic,  throbbing, yet unrelenting – a shuttering attack bouncing back on itself / again,again,again,again. VOMIR uses static for large sections of the lengthy track, as the oscillator for the wall
Of sound- static information- feeding back
On itself.; An endless breath from a tugboat at 100 decibel black sandstorm. Choke, choke , choke . subtle modulations occur underneath a wall of undulating fuzz. These subtle manipulations are in fact audible at different relationships to the speakers, but they actually become clearer at LOWER volumes – as the distortion cleans up a bit – shudder ur ears as the cassette stops.

Flip to side two and CRUCIFIX EYE blasts the listener with another huge wall – this one just as subtle yet monotonous as the last – brain lapse / OF CURSE that’s the point – the listener actually really needs to listen acutely at the RIGHT? Volume and an entire buZZINg orchestra of flatlined fans pulses the  air  with  an  unchanging static barrage of non information NOISE WALL. . STATIC into the ear canal
For what seems like an eternity. If anything, the Crucifix Eye side is just as dizzying yet it’s slightly quieter in volume which allows for slightly more clarity at the GUESS!? of the origin of the sound ? IMPOSSIBLE . An assembly line stuck
In a loop between a spiral caughtin the wrong direction -yes its true HNW has NO DYNAMICS and its meant that way/ unrelenting fuzzed out distorted audio assault of static hymn. This is the sound of an idea being sucked into an endless vortex of static entropy – THE sound pukes itself out for eternity – the militarism of the harsh noise wall is undeniable in this blast – for what it is / it’s done quite well. A great grab for HNW and static noise “fans” ? Two of the harsh noise wall masters on one cassette – a Blastermaster of sonic monotony wall ! Bow down .

Written by: Malo

VOMIR

CRUCIFIX EYE

FOREVER ESCAPING BOREDOM RECORDS

decayREVIEWS: Zone Tripper “War Radio” Cs (Forever Escaping Boredom Records)

Zone Tripper. This IS  W A R R A D I O. Distant  sonic transmissions from ancient wars  passed,  the recordings of  dead  soldiers calling out  for a hault. Haunting,  nauseous  throbbing delayed  bleeps and  bopping morse code  tones  transmit a message of  failure.  The  sounds  themselves are somewhat interesting, somewhat  generic  sounding in their  recordings style of  blown  out electronics but the  samples, artwork, and  titles, “Transmission 1 and  Transmission 2”  take the  cassette  out of the  realm of “just noise”m and  frame  this  as  “lost recordings  from abattle  gone  awry,  they give more information  to  a  toxic landscape of  radio  stuttering onto itself and  caught in a  dark, nauseating loop. The  quality is pretty low  for the recording, but  again this  supports  the  title  and project  name, to a  degree, so  it  doesn’t  bother me in the  slightest, in fact it has a nice  effect.

Two eyes  in the  target of a machine that  reads brains and  sends drones on tracking  devices  into a  sonic caucophany of  buzzing   confused machines reverberating low  fi  information, layers and  layers of  squalching,  distorted  synthesizers  bleeping,  bleeding, and  peeping, until there is a  response.  “Code Red” style broadcast harsh undulating  electronics. A  beeping  pulse  is a theme  throughout as it  gives way to  other ascending and  falling  tones, one hundred mechanisms  all  failing, at the  same  time, and  then  crash.

Side B opens up  right in the same place, after some  swift samples, the  droning chaos has  flaired back up and is  painting  a picture of  harsh sounds, lost in the  fog, screaming, bleeping, and pounding to  find their  way out, but they   get  sucked back into themselves. Radar has  zoned in, and a black glove  reaches through time and  space and  takes the  last breath. Nice  artwork, and  color  labels on both sides of the cassette. WIll be  checking out more  from this label  soon, stay tuned for  more  reviews/

written by: malo

Forever Escaping Boredom Records

Zone Tripper