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DDDD could be called LA’s premiere noise supergroup. Comprised of Steve Davis from +DOG+, Endometrium Cuntplow‘s David Lucien Matheke and Edward Nervo (formerly of Queens power electronics group Final Solution, currently of Destroy Date), the trio first assembled last year for the powerful Frustration Music. Here, they pick up where Frustration Music left off, continuing the saga of lost, forlorn emotion channeled through electronics and distortion.
Sameness is essentially three drastically different mixes of the same 15+ minute track, though each mix is unique, each track more brazen than the one before it, allowing the intensity to build from track to track rather than within each individual soundscape.
“Sameness (Take 1)” opens with a calm, removed female voice on a meditation tape instructing us on how to relax before segueing into a dark wall of constant static that subtly fluctuates and changes while retaining its initial drone. “Sameness (Take 2)” uses the same raw materials to create the same droning distortion, but it’s sparser, the levels pushed a bit further into the red, adding to the uneasiness and negative feelings prevalent throughout the album. The final “Sameness (Density Mix)” seems to be a combination of the two, only super-modulated into a field of static intensity, upping the ante even further to where everything becomes a nightmarish haze of negativity.
Where Frustration Music embodied the sound of one spurned by their love interest, Samenesss is the continuing story of that “one” where nothing has changed – he remains the empty cavity of emotional pain that yearns for the adoration of the lost love, each day more unbearable/each track more intense. It’s the “sameness” of being alone captured on tape and amplified so we all can hear it and identify with it, because we’ve all felt it too.
It figures that such a talented trio as Davis, Matheke and Nervo would come together with a constant theme and a focused sound to explore the darker emotions of humanity. They’ve weaved the “sturm und drang” of living into their tapestry of sound.
If only all noise were as good.
