I know this is backwards, but it’s odd to name a project of music so media-heavy as Noise-anything after a central, sound-making component of that field, without being wholly constituted by that medium. It’s comparable to bands like the Drums or the Microphones, neither of which hold these tools anywhere near central to their manifestation. It would be very plausible to find a Noise project which is entirely made of melted cassettes – I think Lucas Crane has this angle pretty well hammered-down – yet Melted Cassettes are far more than that. In fact, if there are melted cassettes anywhere to be found here, I’m at a loss to hear it. Anyhow: no slight to Crane, and probably no slight to anyone else who makes a living recording the sound of melted tapes, but thank goodness these guys don’t because that seems like it would be real shitty. Instead, ‘The Real Sounds From Hell Recordings’, the duo’s first full-length after a spate of (presumably intact) tapes, is a punchy, bent-over noise grind of 13 tracks in just over half an hour. Think Twodeadsluts with clothes and a beat. Comfortable with their own sense of rhythm, the pair of Warden and Turner borrow much from early Industrial music before the arrows marking the lane of the Noise fork were dried. Electing for the bright colors of SPK sprayed atop the bray and clatter of Test Dept, they edit (and dress) like the Locust into an overly-mediated blast of hi-definition distortion, electronic confetti, and ennui. The sounds are bold so the edges quaver, sharp that they blind, sizzling so the skin cracks. Titles – “Retro Puppet Master,” “Shining Figures,” “Lor,” “Xzrzrz” – are merely placeholders and don’t mean a thing, despite the verbosity of the tracks and nearly decipherable lyrics. The fact that they are so intent on singing provides just another layer of stress to these tantrums, which pretend to want to say something but refuse the civility to do it. It’s an electrical fire, but a controlled burn.
Mind Flare Media CD
$10
HERE