Dissecting Table — Chaos Attractor(full lenght)
The cd starts with some nice queasy electronics, with reverberating synths squalling and groaning against one another; this initial surge slowly picks itself apart until it’s reduced to an eerie, breathing soundscape. Its a very compelling beginning, with small elements and small gestures combining to make a very dark, organic and, yes, breathing bed of sound. After just over two minutes, this passage ends; and at that point, alas, you may as well take the cd back to the beginning of the track and listen to those two minutes again: the rest of “Chaos Attractor” really isn’t a lot of fun…
The opening passage is very clean, very digital; and with its sombre sound, this all works to its advantage. The rest of the piece, heralded by a blast of noise at two minutes twelve seconds, is a mass of garish, effects-ridden, digital noise - with any qualities it may have had negated by this garish, digital quality. If it had been pushed further, it might well have become a very demented piece of furious psychedelia - like some of Masonna’s work, or, from a different direction, Shitmat’s; but instead it comes across as shallow and rather ill-judged. The cleanliness of the sound, with no scuzz or rust, leaves the lack of imagination that has gone into the sound construction nowhere to hide - putting some dirt into the recording would have worked wonders on “Chaos Attractor”. A more measured approach to effects would also have improved things; computers and effects give us incredible options for sound-mangling, so its a bit disheartening to listen to Dissecting Table and go, “Ooh, its a phaser; oh, its some chorus” etc. The effects used are heavily signposted - I can’t remember any moments where I was intrigued as to how Dissecting Table was making his sounds.
I’m wondering if I’m being too critical of the cd, but to be fair I haven’t got to the worst yet… About thirteen minutes in, a very odd doom metal section appears. I suspect that shorn of its processing it would be dismal, but in its full glory it’s practically comical. It couples a mundane guitar riff with a drum machine, and then layers some electronics over the top along with a frankly staggering vocal. It’s all distorted and processed to ill avail, but its the vocal that most confuses my ears - really the worst kind of vocal distortion, all muffled and undefined. Put together, it all sounds like a comedy tribute to Toadliquor - but I suspect it isn’t.
It’s not all doom and gloom - there are a few nice sounds buried in the album. Halfway through there are some very resonant tones in the background, obscured by synthesizer blather and bleat; and around the twenty-seven minute mark there are some processed vocals which sound suitably “wrong” - but these are meagre pickings from a forty-eight minute long track. It shows that Dissecting Table had the tools at his disposal to construct something interesting; but, basically, he didn’t.
Computers, effects and heavy processing give great scope for sounds and noise; but they remain tools, which need to be used with imagination and thought. “Chaos Attractor”, unfortunately, really does sound devoid of either. If a friend gave me this cd as their first release, I think I’d recognise it as a start but wait for them to dig deeper. But, of course, this isn’t a first release for Dissecting Table, who has been going for over twenty-five years and has a somewhat mammoth discography; so…
The cd ends with one more metal guitar “chug”, which raises the hope, somewhat forlornly, that the album might be some kind of joke…