GNAW – this face
(CD/LP/download – conspiracy)
One definition of art says,
that art is about destroying old things and creating new things. Progress in
art in this respect means the creation of something that is not seen / heard
/ experienced before. One strategy to reach this goal is extremism, another
is to mix or fuse things that hitherto had been understood to be separate
things. In this respect Willie Nelson’s reggea album is art just as much
as Gerhard Richter’s candle paintings. Or the establishment of power noise
frequencies as regular musical expression by Masami Akita, screaming and
growling as a regular vocal category by a million of death / trash / gore
metal bands, power electronics and distortion by a gazillion more musical
projects from Industrial to home destruction recording artists – and of
course the mixture of these in all these many ways that have flooded record
stores, mailorders, mp3 blogs and myspace.
So what is needed is more than
just extremism and mixing of styles to get an effect. What is missing is a
talent to mix the right things and to judge the effect. Very much like any
bartender is able to mix a Long Island Ice Tea to get you smashed quickly,
but it is a lot harder to mix a drink of the same strength that actually
tastes good and doesn’t make you nauseous. What is needed is experience
and a taste for what is to come to get to something new of the second order.
Listening to “this face” you quickly realize that those who have
gathered here to destroy acres and acres of musical landscape are not new to
this, have their own crafted taste in musical extremities and aren’t
afraid to go the whole way. Because this is probably the musically most
extreme record you will have heard in a long time that at the same time
keeps a small remnant of tradition within its scope. Power electronics and
noise is being mixed with heavy, trance drums, lots of evil noise, vocals
that scream their head off and a little square noodling at the same time,
and then probably some field recordings. Like Six Feet Under covering
Throbbing Gristle mixed with The Bug and having Merzbow play along all high on drugs that are
used to make dogs more aggressive. Read the label this way “Gnaw – this
face” and take it as an order to the music, because the music will bite
you at any chance it gets.
Looking at the line up it
really is no wonder at all – Alan Dubin from early sludge metallers
Khanate and also legendary drug freaks OLD (allegedly the worst selling band
to ever release albums on Earache!) invited old friends like Jamie Sykes
from just as early sludge metallers Burning Witch, then Thorr’s Hammer and
Atavist (not to be mistaken with Jesse Sykes who released folk music on
Southern Lord), Carter Thornton from Enos Slaughter, who you probably not
know but the name goes a long way, Jun Mizumachi from Ike Yard, who you
should know if you are able to grab something of this 80ies industrial
legend that was completely missed by the No Wave hysteria of two years ago,
now he is a sound designer and mixer, and finally Emmy Award winning sound
mixer Brian Beatrice. Well, if you get two sound designers with a background
in noise in your band, something twisted is bound to happen.
In spite of the high brow
introduction of this review, it is clear that this won’t find its way into
the high art scene any time soon. Too little theoretical framework and
conceptual jabbajabba and too high levels of intensity and insanity. It is
hard to describe and sometimes hard to stand, especially when listening on
headphones – which by the way I do recommend. For your own sake as for the
sake of your neighbours or people living in the same flat. There are moments
of silence and contemplation during the seven to nine tracks (the vinyl
version unfortunately has two tracks less) but those are used to build up
tension and to fall into another cesspool of relentless aggression,
desperation and animosity. When Dubin screams “I love you, I love you, I
love you” on “Backyard Frontier” your first reaction will be, by god;
I hope I will never hear this in real life. That kind of reaction is what
art is about. And then some.
