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Davey Harms – World War

It’s not fun unless you’re pounded with a psychosis-inducing amount of rhythm, right? That’s the Davey Harms way, and after one listen to “World War,” you, like me, will have an in-the-red attitude and outlook that’s only forward-moving, perpetual in its progress, and dangerous in its implementation. How else would something called “World War” be perceived by the populace? As a harbinger of unity? As a sign of utopia? As a cuddly kitten of comfort?

Let’s pump it into the water table and see what happens.

Actually, Davey Harms has recorded under the moniker World War (as well as Mincemeat or Tenspeed), so none of this is actually a surprise – we’ve been subjected to this digital mayhem before, and on Hausu Mountain no less. Here Harms’s mechanistic techno thud is fully realized into a glowing electronic nightmare, garbled circuits leaking neon fluids and shorting itself at regular intervals and in time with the beat. Harms repurposes the sizzling corrosion into abject tunefulness, each rancid banger rippling with electricity and life as it creaks and clanks to its feet like a badly damaged terminator getting its lights turned back on. Then it dances like it’s in the “Thriller” video. That’s where all this is going.

Once this thing peters out, all you’re left with is that psychosis, the stinging aftereffects of multiple ordeals, the blurred vision and cloudiness of having your bell rung. You can shake your head to clear it, but it’s altered you now, it’s inside you, that mechanical futuristic crunch. Your own circuits have leaked their neon fluids … and since when did you have circuits? Have you been mutating this whole time, listening to “World War”? Have you somehow been linked to an impending cataclysmic evolutionary anomaly that hasn’t happened yet? Or have you already lived through it and this is your present now?

So many hard questions to answer. Too hard. Just listen.

“World War” is out on Hausu Mountain.

Tabs Out | Espen Lund – The Speaking Hand

Espen Lund – The Speaking Hand

2.20.20 by Ryan Masteller

Espen Lund makes music that fills me with utter, overwhelming joy. It may be par for the course here – the idea for “The Speaking Hand” was for Espen to amplify his trumpet and play it in a room where the reverberations became overwhelming to the point where his playing was completely reactive. “How the heck am I gonna keep up with all this sound pinging around me in here?” Espen likely wondered. I know if it was me, a single farted note would likely have caused a feedback loop that would have made me piss my pants before the engineer could unlock the studio door I was so desperately banging on. But hey, that’s me, not Espen Lund, so we’ll pretend none of that ever happened and get back to “The Speaking Hand.”

Is Espen Lund the Thurston Moore of trumpet players? It has to be asked. Thurston basically does the same thing with his guitar – sometimes anyway – where he lets it feed the hell back until he has to do something about it or be overwhelmed completely. Espen tries out several different approaches, like the variations over a single-chord drone (courtesy of Bjørn Ognøy on harmonium) on “Rejoicing Collectively to the Spirits,” which is immediately followed by the breakneck “I Mørket. Med Lyset,” allowing Lund to chase Jard Hole’s drumming around the studio while trying not to knock the walls down. “Speak the Blood” is a jazz ensemble playing at a smoky club through a haze of LSD, while “That’s the Night I See a Ghost” and “Darker Glow” tap into the utter reverberations of feedback that have cracked boundaries between the spiritual and physical worlds. And if that sounds spooky, it is – Lund let’s the atmosphere bubble and boil until your heart palpitates with dread. Or is that just with the tension Lund’s wringing out of every note on “The Speaking Hand”? Well … why can’t it be both?

It is both.

“The Speaking Hand” is available from Flag Day Recordings. Don’t let another day elapse without it!