Tabs Out

A Whole Mess Of Andrew
7.21.14 by Mike Haley

I’m not banging out mix tapes today like I was in my roaring 20’s. Those were some wild times, man. Staying up past 9:00, listening to records, drinking alcoholic refreshments by the several. I was like the James St. James of dubbing. Shit was super intense. One thing I’d love to do while making said mixes was to give them a theme. Fancying it to be a bona fide genius concept, I (on more than one occasion) put together cassettes called “Black & Blue” with a touch of Sabbath, Dice, and Flag on one side and some stuff like Cheer, Öyster Cult, and Ridge Rangers on the other. In retrospect not the most creative undertaking, but it definitely yielded me three or four extremely similar C60s. I recently rediscovered the cover, sans cassette, for a 40-artist burner I made on 1/31/03 called “Party Animals” with The Jesus Lizard, Bunny Brains, Pig Destroyer, Wolf Eyes, and, for whatever reason, White Lion. The point here is me gusta a good theme.

It would seem Rainbow Bridge is in the same camp, or at least was last month when they released the hour and a half comp “Potpourri Of Andrew”; A collection of 20 experimental-heads all of which had parents who chose the name Andrew or Andy for them. The misfit group of weirdo musicians include Tiger Hatchery’s Andrew Scott Young, Evil Moisture (Andy Bolus), Andrew Chadwick (aka Ironing), Andy Borsz of Slasher Risk, Gaybomb (Andrew Barranca), noise mainstay, and the man behind Panicsville, Andy Ortmann, Andrew Weathers, DumpsterScore CEO Andrew Quitter, and(y) more.

The comp opens up decently chill with the laid-back clank, jangle, and scrape of Andrew Scott Young’s fingers and bow on upright bass and finishes out with three minutes of Andy O’Sullivan’s patented harsh-as-fuck Goat material. The 18 jams between them  moon-bounce from Andrew Weathers’ acoustic guitar clarity to Andrew James MacKelvie’s berserk electronic splatter, but unarguably reside in a total noise zone. Possibly the definitive guide to Andrew and Andys in the world of experimental sounds, at least until Volume Two drops with Dr Dre’s power electronics debut (he’s an Andre but it counts).

“Potpourri Of Andrew” is limited to 50 copies, with some classic 8th grade notebook artwork, from the Rainbow Bridge bandcamp. Nosh up the entire serving of A-bones below.

Fresh from the Gutter: The “Rotten Contingent” Comp
7.17.14 by Ian Franklin

I enjoy a good compilation.  Throw some cheese over some chips, add in a little lettuce, tomato, beans, and guacamole and you got yourself a nice compilation.  Bolognese has got to be one of the tightest comps ever put together.  Big fan of the comp.

And lucky for us, compilations come in all shapes and flavors.  On New York based Fieldwork’s first comp, the label’s 5th release, they showcase a filthy smorgasbord of some of NYC’s finest in the noise/industrial/PE department.  “Rotten Contingent” is a C40 of disgustingly brutal and unforgiving concrete fantasies and decrepit attitude, scooped fresh from the gutter.

Arbiter’s “Inimical Temptations” leads Side A off with a fury of squealed and restrained wails, drifting uneasily like a drunk down a crowded street.  Dizzying and unsettling, Arbiter weaves a dense image of a dark, urban landscape, aptly setting the mood from the get go. Leading straight into the second track begins “The Courage as a species To Die” from :M:.  Hissing static mixed with old found sounds conjures a disjointed memory of distant pain.  Dreamlike and terrifying is about all I can say. Mixed with death squeals and mid-level contact static, Swollen Organs delivers aggressive and painful lyrics for distorted voice.  Not only are the vocals executed with amazing force and hate, Swollen Organs has a perfect awareness for spatial placement and crafts a fantastically complex creation of inner turmoil spread out across a harsh temporal wasteland. On “Suicide Barge”, Penchant takes billowing static blow out and layers it on top of a fragmented bed of bass synth.  Never becoming the focal point nor completely fading away, it drifts with the thick static and flows over everything like dirt through rainy street gutters.

The B side begins with H.C.O.D.‘s “Zealous Specula” featuring a dizzying cascade of gritty distortion and grime.  Furious electronic currents spew in all directions and spiral out of control.  Stifled chokes are audible briefly before sinking back below the blistering ash. Venerence’s “Death March” begins with a brisk bpm of pulsating synth drone adding swells of rising fuzzy synth current around the edges.  Metallic swashes overflow and rise until suddenly giving out to nothing and silence.  Flowing in slowly behind it is Aischrolatreia with “Persecution Apparatus”, a grey melodic drone with flashes of warbled percussion, moving in a circulatory reverie.  The only time on the comp that a major melodic interval is present and it’s a nice end cap to a demonstration of the disgusting and miserable environment the other tracks of the compilation portray.  However, this also eventually shifts into a darker, and sinister minor chord drone before fading into nothing, conjuring images of the unending suffering yet to come.

Housed in a black shell with labels for both sides, the 4 panel double j-card folds out nicely into a poster with artist and track titles displayed alongside cut up collages of mysterious doorways and claustrophobic industrial spaces.  “Rotten Contingent” is a fantastically dark compilation of some insanely good NYC artists doing amazing things with distortion, static, and darkness.  One of my favorite releases of the year so far and a good sign of things to come from Fieldwork.

Stream cuts from all the tracks below and hit up the label’s website to grip a copy.