The Answer Is In The Beat

Blood Rhythms: Assembly LP (No Part Of It/RRRecords, 2015) + Blood Rhythms: Skin Flint CDr (Ka-Rye-Eye Tapes, 2015)

May 15, 2016 at 9:42 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

A couple months ago, I got an unexpected package in the mail from Chicago. Attached to it was an ’80s issue of Rolling Stone with Huey Lewis on the cover, which is too darn awesome. I didn’t keep it, because really what am I going to do with it, but I should’ve at least snapped a photo, but I don’t remember to do things like that. But anyway, there were a bunch of cool CD-r’s in it, and a tape I haven’t gotten around to listening to yet, and this LP. The record doesn’t have a cover, but it was packaged in this custom cardboard sleeve (and I didn’t realize there was a record in it at first and almost threw it out, I just thought it was weird that it was so heavy). The record was apparently recorded in an inactive meat locker with 3 mini disc recorders (a dead format recording in a dead space which used to hold dead animals). The record is “playable at all speeds”, but the A-side is 45 and the B-side is 33. “Coarse Land” on the A-side is a dirty, gray drone made of rusty horns, and it sounds even more like death at 33. The second side, “Cutter Magnolias”, is disturbing in a different way. Really abrasive horns which sound like they’re covered in gunpowder and the musicians are blowing their brains out. Then eventually these horns get cut into samples, and are looped into repetitive, ever-building patterns, until they’re all squonking in unison. Then it just keeps getting heavier and more punishing. At some points it feels like the record’s skipping, but then it changes and you realized how hard your head’s just been played. And then I think it actually does end in a locked groove. Definitely the most hypnotic free jazz/noise record I’ve ever heard.

The other Blood Rhythms release was the Skin Flint CDr, which features project founder Arvo Zylo (who sent me the package) along with Wyatt Howland, aka Skin Graft. The opening title track is a 22-mintue excerpt of an hour-long improv session, and it’s constant in-the-red bleeding-ears harsh noise, but it feels like there’s some really blown out melodies buried underneath. Am I just imagining things? It sounds like there’s something trying to break out from all the nullifying static. Is there any escape from noise? “Melt Compartment” starts with a fast pattering rhythm which turns into wet splattering which then somehow turns into an even faster, pulled-apart rhythm. Eventually this all gets swallowed by a pulsating vessel of noise. “Zippers With Eyes” (the unedited version of a track which appeared in shortened form on a split tape) starts with another static-y rhythm, the type Alec Empire might’ve started a track with back in the day. The rhythm splashes with echo between the speakers, and of course it gets built up with distortion, eventually being fashioned into some sort of mutating audio fireball. And then later the beat picks up and gets even more DHR-sounding, turning into some sort of hell-dungeon gabber. Finally it all falls dead on the floor and it takes a good minute or so for my consciousness to re-adjust.