Ducks Battle Satan

Oh baby this is good.

Now as anyone who has read this shitty little blog knows (and I’m fucking surprised at how many of you are out there), I’m quite fond of this whole current noise scene. I don’t for a minute pretend to know my avant garde/ experimental music history. I know my Throbbing Gristle, I know my no-wave, I know my Glen Branca, I’ve dabbled with some Zorn but that’s about as far as my historical knowledge goes. I’m not an expert, and I’m sure as shit not going to put myself out there as someone who can wax lyrical in an essay about the importance of the Dead C in the context of the current noise/experimental scene. All I can do is listen and try to somehow put into words my experience of the music. I am alone on a sea of noise.

What I can tell you is that this is fucking great. Five tracks of noise that have made me a very happy man indeed. If you read my post on Vain, Euridite ….. you will know that I didn’t really get the whole Dead C – Yellow Swans connection. If you go a step further and read the comments you’ll see that Mr Pete Swanson himself calls me out. Which is kind of cool but I’ve revisited that compilation and tried to hear the influence and well ….. call me a fucking luddite … but I struggle. Mr Swanson tells me that the four Siltbreeze releases are essential so I bought them. They haven’t arrived in Brisbane yet but hey I’ll let you know what I think at a later date. What I’m trying to get at I suppose, is that I finally get the connection when I listen to the first track on Future Artists and by the way thank you Dead C for actually having the fucking time to give these tracks titles. The AMM of Punk Rock is great. Apparently it is some sort of in joke but I don’t know who AMM are so it’s all a bit lost on me. It’s a nice warm pool of drone electronics, with drums and the odd glitch. Experimental ambient heaven. The second track The Magicians is a fucking cracker and reminds me of their previous output. Its an indie punk track with someone interrupting proceedings by doing something very cruel to a guitar which I don’t think is entirely legal. Its the last time you hear vocals on Future Artists before we’re back in experimental composition land with the third track Macoute. If you like your Mouthus, Double Leopards and Yellow Swans albums then you’re really going to like this. It’s less fierce than those other bands’ respective records and sometimes that’s not an entirely bad thing. The final two tracks have a great improv feel to them. Eternity has a great rock vibe and there are some tiny shard of guitar noise on it that make me think of Sonic Youth’s Sister. The final track Garage is a lengthy beast and sounds the most improvised thing here. It sounds to me like a twenty minute experimental jam session. There a bit of blues guitar, electronic fuckery and a big fat mellow vibe.

I know I have not done this record justice and I’m not in the position to tell you how it compares to their previous output and let’s face it if you liked those records you’ve bought Future Artists already. I know this though, Future Artists is one of the best, most original records you’ll hear all year.

This entry was posted on August 23, 2007 at 12:23 pm and is filed under Music, noise, The Dead C, yellow swans. 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.