Destroy Date - Inner Dialogue (Love Earth Music)

Edward Giles, aka Ed Nervo, has made noise in Final Solution, Eckankore, Caveat Emptor, DDDD, +DOG+ and Home Audience, to name a few. With Destroy Date, Giles uses his twisted sense of humor to comment on life’s banalities through sound manipulation.

“Los Angeles Music Test” serves as a perfect introduction to Inner Dialogue. A robotic voice intones “One,” and we’re treated to ten seconds of generic classic rock, then “Two,” ten seconds of another song, “Three,” and on and on up to “Ninety-four.” There’s no other sound, just the voice and the snippet of music: a cold representation of classic rock radio, where songs become emotionless numbers in playlists. “Run Through” follows, an audience recording of a child beauty pageant that is disturbing as it sounds. Then “Verbal to Your Name” hits, an assemblage of various telemarketing phone calls made by the same caller where vocational routine becomes a nightmarish cycle of repetition. By the time the noise wafts in, our work lives have been reduced to inane conversations, which makes sense as the following title track, where people discuss the conspiratorial meanings of crop circles to pulsing noise and subtle squelch, was recorded while Giles was on duty at work. “Conjunctive” furthers the asinine conversational motif with a series of on-site interviews where art students pretentiously compare The Arts Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA to CalArts to the north in Valencia. “Dublin Core” and “(I Am Your) Bastinado” sound like John Carpenter‘s demos for his early ’80s soundtracks until “Glasgow Coma Scale” finishes the journey with droning, pulsing, dancing tones that are more musical than noise.

It’s difficult to discern whether Edward Giles revels in these vacuous moments in life or is attacking them for their mindless assertions, and that’s precisely what makes Destroy Date so compelling. Through Inner Dialogue we get a glimpse of modern life as we have made it, and whether we accept it or not is up to us. If you’re happy where you are, great, but if you’re not, it’s your life to change. Let Destroy Date inspire the way.