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The Damned wrote a song that proclaimed, “Noise, noise, noise is for heroes!” If only they knew…
Here, Last Rape from Texas and the UK’s Pollutive Static join forces to unleash their individual wall-of-static sounds on ears that appreciate pain. Richard Ramirez and Sean E. Matzus are Last Rape, i.e., two people with extensive catalogs and projects whose collaboration on this disc sounds a lot like AM radio static crossed perhaps with Merbow‘s Electric Salad or Pulse Demon and delivered with the monotony of The Haters. The two tracks presented here clock in at over 15 minutes each and they are similar in their rhythmic pulsing harsh static. As someone who sleeps with a noise machine at night, I actually find these recordings to be quite soothing – hypnotic, even.
Pollutive Static, aka Hal Hutchinson, on the other hand, offers three tracks that keep static at the forefront while playing with sounds in the background. It’s almost like the background static of a “typical” noise track has been mixed in the forefront, with the leading sounds mixed very low so that they are only hints of sonic nuances. If you’re looking for variety, you’ll find it here, especially in “Perpetrator,” where high and low signals interrupt the constant flow of static. Again, while the average person would find these recordings to be extremely grating, I find them calming, and they help me relax after a hard day.
Admittedly, noise, and particularly this brand of harsh static, won’t appeal to most members of the music-buying public. But for those of us who appreciate this sort of thing, this is a worthy addition to our collections.
