THE TRUST RIOTS

Dead heaven / ampland

3“CD, scarcelight

Even if free improvised bass/guitar-noise is all the rage among certain types – or so the people running my favourite recordstore tell me – I am afraid this little gem will remain unearthed (no pun intended). One of the things I like most about noise of any kind is the way how it is constantly changing shapes because half of what you hear is construed inside your head and the other half is from somewhere out there, but you may never know which is which and what is what. Except for that the basic sounds is noise. At the moment there is a certain amassing of noise that comes from guitars or other amplified instruments. Before it was electronic equipment using chips like laptops. Before that it was mainly just plain distortion types of electronic equipment on a much more basic level. There is a point on this CD where The Trust Riots are about to answer the question of what will be next. I am referring to that minutelong simmering of low-level bass-drone that comes from leaving your amplifier on while doing (almost) nothing. So the answer might be a newfound focus on the surroundings and the acoustics of the room you are in right now. (If in need for a reference to this please check out “thumb” –CD on grob by Oren Ambarchi, Keith Rowe together with Otomo Yoshihide, Sachiko M and one more fellow whose name I forgot). But this moment is resolved in some frizzling noise that is more like raining outside.

The trust riots is Mike Karadimos and Chris Jeely (founder of Scarcelight, Accelera Deck, Your favourite horse) who have worked together last on Jeely’s surprising and surprisingly good lo-fi-pop excursion Skulllike, whereas these pieces on here seem more like them letting it go loose and unrestricted in the rehearsal room, using their guitars, laptop and tapes while the recording machine is still running. So it is more in the vein of what you might expect from Scarcelight. I have praised the fine sense for noise that Jeely possesses at another, probably less fitting place (check here) so this free and straight to the tape approach is a cool variation to that. As a contrasting picture to the restricted and formulaic approach of Skulllike, these two longish pieces on one wee disc is more than a relieving or interesting gesture. It is a pleasure to behold. Since these two discs arrived here in one package I am suggesting to give them away only as a double-pack.

Maybe I am wrong (I realize I tend to say that a lot in the last weeks) and these two pieces are carefully constructed and structured pieces of noise turning into drone turning into field recordings turning into something completely else and then turning around and going back where it came from with the care to take some sidepaths and excursions on the way, but it sure doesn’t sound like it. Both tracks are freely running and loose in more than one way. There is a lot of guitar scraping and feedbacks, of amp-drone and mutilated screeching, and some nice explosions of noise as well. What is more important is that throughout all the sombre and serious neckbending control of the noise emitted from their instruments, Karadimos and Jeely nevertheless seem to have had a lot of fun doing these.