Exhaustion: Phased Out 12″ EP (12XU, 2015)

November 25, 2015 at 8:32 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Exhaustion: Phased Out 12″ EP

Melbourne-based hypnotic repetitive noise-rock. Kind of reminds me of what HEALTH used to sound like. Mark Barrage, an incredible, unique experimental noise artist, is on this recording, so that grabs my attention immediately. “Phased Out” starts out fast and pounding and rhythmic, but then breaks down into formless feedback halfway through. “Colleague” starts out slow and low, with drilling guitars and moaning vocals, but eventually works up a frantic tempo without really changing much otherwise. The second side consists of remixes of the first side’s tracks, but they transform them so much that it’s hard to even hear the resemblance between the remixes and the originals. Mikey Young’s mix of “Phased Out” has a low-bit, thumping electronic beat and lets the lyrics shine, revealing a repeated chant of “crashing down”. A few hints of the original’s piercing guitars appear, as well as some new synth lines. It takes a little longer on this mix for the rhythm to dissolve, and even when that happens, there’s still some looped vocals left over. “Colleague” is remixed by Rites Wild, an incredible Australian darkwave artist who released a great album on Not Not Fun in 2012, and some more tapes as Regional Curse afterwards. Her mix is appropriately slow, minimal, and haunted, and ends with serrated guitar noise echoing in the background underneath the slow, dusty beats.

Leave a Comment »

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

The Answer Is In The Beat