Black Beast of Arrrghhh — A Night at the Dollar Theatre

Black Beast of Arrrghhh is the noise project of Floridian Zachary Short. “A Night at the Dollar Theatre” (a play on Queen’s “A Night at the Opera”) is the follow up to last year’s Noise Doctrine. An indelible fixture on the Suncoast Florida noise scene, Mr. Short’s output runs the gamut from crushing noise walls to spoken word musings to his duo work with Mayan Apocalypse. Known for his range and wide palette of sounds, some of his recent work seem to explore the marriage of noise with classical music. “A Night...” is Mr. Short’s first widely available physical release (that I know of) intertwining these these two seemingly disparate musical genres.

As with all of the new Lava Church batch of tapes, the art is black and white and very minimalist. I actually really enjoy the clean aesthetic. The j-card simply has the artist name and title in clean script (Helvetica perhaps?) with a small, off-center circular photo of a movie theatre and the lava church logo at the bottom.
 

With “A Night at the Dollar Theatre,” Mr. Short set out to compose a classical noise album. To that he has succeeded and then some. Truth be told, I almost feel like I lack the vocabulary to adequately comment on this release, but here goes. Despite it’s relative brevity (a c20), “A Night...” is quite epic in composition and execution. Side A starts off with some xylophone playing which is shortly disrupted by static. Harsh noise elements come into play and commingles with further xylophonic sounds. Traveling further down the sonic corridor, guitars become revealed with almost wallish noise elements working their way in the backdrop. A further hazy airiness envelopes the piece adding another layer of texture. Well past the midway mark, sounds of a dilapidated accordion become present with some sci-fi-esque synths added for good measure. The overall tension between the symphonic instrumentation and the harsh noise elements really give this first part of the journey a devilishly unsettling feeling. Very Twilight Zone.
 

Side B, follows the same trajectory as the first part, however with much more emphasis on the symphonic elements. The track starts out with a majestic array of horns and percussion (with particular emphasis on the cymbals). The instrumentals are temporarily demolished by some harsh noise blasts, but shortly rejoin the mix. Melodic guitar plucking displaces the previous instrumental/noise further into the track. The calm doesn’t last long as ominous gongs become present and an eerie music box churns for chilling effect. The track’s zenith is punctuated by quickly played string instruments and angelic chanting, as if channeling Carl Orff. The journey ends one a quieter note, though backed by some thunderous percussive beats.
 

There’s a lot going on here. Someone lesser skilled might easily get lost in their own composition, but Mr. Short masterfully stays in control of his sounds. “A Night...” is a very unique entry in the noise genre. I can’t really think of any analogous contemporary doing “symphonic noise” to compare this to. For sure, some artists such as Nascitari, pair classical samples with wall noise, but what BBOA does is truly create an interplay to between the two genres.
 

To call the BBOA a musical alchemist is an understatement. To pair such disparate sounds into a cohesive composition is no small feat, but Mr. Short does so rather whimsically. I can’t recommend this more!