Ducks Battle Satan

I have a big white box at home which I call “the Special”. Within its confines are my most obnoxious experimental noise CD’s. Mouthus nestles next to Cherry Point, Yellow Swans next to Goslings, Double Leopards next to Dead Machines, Throbbing Gristle next to Aaron Dilloway, Cock E.S.P. next to Dead C. Obviously placing my CD’s in alphabetical order is not my strong point.

Fuck Pete Larsen is a CD reissue of a live Wolf Eyes CDR of a couple of years ago. Except it’s not. Both tracks had to be rerecorded as the original tapes were completely unsalvageable. It contains two tracks. The first clocks in at 28 minutes, the second at 22 minutes. Both are untitled.

Noise to me is a lot like modern art. I’m not sure if it is good but I know what I like. Wolf Eye’s Fuck Pete Larsen is one of those records I like (well at least the first track) but I can’t really explain why I like it. Those who’ve heard Wolf Eyes know what it’s all about, harsh, nay extreme, electronic skull-fuckery, piercing frequencies, droning analog thuds, hypnotic hiss and blast and every now and then some sound-fucked screaming … oh and don’t forget the distortion. On an old blog I described it as recording a road resurfacer at 3 am as it tears through some bitumen whilst the tape recorder is sitting in a bucket of warm sick. Tunes you ask? What do you think.

Those looking for a semblance of a “song” may need to seek out Village Oblivia from their Burned Mind CD. “Mr Boo” tells me it is the sixth most played song on my ipod. Now my ipod is not one of those nancy nano things. It’s a big fucker with 5000 tracks. So to be sixth in that company means that I must really like it. Village Oblivia nearly has form , it definitely has a beat and reminds me of a fellow on fire screaming at the sky whilst the bombs continue to fall. Cheery yet pretty.

Fuck Pete Larson has no form, beat, tune or otherwise. It is a massive slab of free noise, tape loops and all of those bits and pieces I’ve listed above. The first track is a cracker and comes in at nearly 28 minutes. The second, also untitled track, is a gormless thing which is too clever for its own good therefore making it not very good. It starts promisingly enough with a churning analog beat with added hiss before it meanders into a series of recorded false starts. The band can be heard talking over the top of it all. Sure it has a more ambient feel but the listener is being fucked with. By the twelve minute mark we’re back on steady ground. The hiss is back, the menace is back and then all of a sudden they stop the tape again just when the noise reaches that hypnotic harshness I like so much. Fuck it shits me. In it’s defence though, the last five minutes of the track are Wolf Eyes at their best. Sounds fight with each other, an air raid siren wails in the background and the music become a beautiful big slice of squelching chaos.

John Wiese gets this sort of thing right. His sounds never outstay their welcome. He doesn’t force his noise to merge with the incompatible. The man is a true artist. Check out the stuff he records as Sissy Spacek in particular. Even though I’m not too sure whether much of this experimental stuff is any good, I certainly know when I’m being had.

This entry was posted on July 7, 2007 at 10:43 am and is filed under Music, Wolf Eyes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.