Churner — Florescent Bondage

“Florescent Bondage” finds creative US noise project Churner creating some of his most conventional harmonic and at times approachable work to date. With the album offering up seven very different and inventive takes on noise with elements of distortion buried synth pop and sound tracking elements appearing along the way.

The album opens with “Tied In Knots/Princess” which starts off with doomed and discordant avant punk guitar thumbing, before it raisers briefly into reverberate guitar texturing. Then it jumps into jitter and bulldozing mixture of Power electronics, stuck helicopter blade noise and extreme roaring guitar scaping with weird electro textured voice over the top. Track two “ Graceful Abuser” is a mixture of throbbing lo-grade synth pop march and closely miked & ultra distorted vocals.  Track Four “Soul Fisting” is all about sustained and repeated bass piano hits being engulfed by roaring and tearing noise in quite a dramatic manner-  it feels like a low grade, slightly ham-fisted but rewarding mix of modern classical minimalism and noise.

Track Six “To Rape you” is the longest track here at just shy of the fourteen minute mark. It starts out quite spaced out, but distortion boiled keyboard harmonic patterns that are feed through a hell of a lot of feedback. By the eight minute mark he’s added in a jacknife beat to the proceedings and the sound all piles up around you in slow wavering, ultra distorted blocks of keyboard plod and feedback smarted pre-set beats.  The album exits with “Falling Asleep In Your Own Blood” which finds Churner at his most dramatic and wavering cinematic as he slowly un-weaves this deeply hurt and dusky paino/synth  melody, which he wonderfully glazers in processors sustain. The track brings to mind a slowed & damaged take on Angelo Badalamenti soundtrack work for David Lynch’s more dark and sleazed take on Americana  like Blue Velvet & Wild At Heart.

So “Florescent Bondage”  is another very brave and creative step in noise composition from churner, that mostly mangers to pull off what it’s trying to put across. Sure at times it’s slightly off-angle and bit too wonky for it’s own good as Churner sometime displays quite rudimentary programming and keyboard talents; but these can mostly be forgotten and forgiven as most of the time he mangers to pull off an rewarding mix of seared noise creativity and more felt/ dramatic mood making.