Flesh Puppets — Medusa
On offer here are three tracks which in all have a total running time of just over thirty four minutes. And for the most part "Medusa" is a lot more subdued, brooding and creepy than a lot of Ramirez’s more seared and nasty walled noise and juddering static attacks. Each of the three tracks is built around a mixture of S&M tinged & brooding drone matter, looped & creepy layers of breathing, grim dark ambient dwells, sudden and often very jarring cut-up elements and brutally noise seers.
My favourite of the three tracks here has to be the first and longest track which is entitled “Breathe Deeply”. The track starts out with very grim and creepy mixture of layered male breathing tones and shadowy drone textures. As the track goes on it becomes a lot more brooding, chilling and quite intense as the sound layers are added to and deepened- it just has such a uneasy, sleazy and creeped out air about it. The track very much brings to mind a musty & sweat high dark and dingy torture dungeon with various bodies trussed and painfully wrapped in bondage gear and leather masks awaiting there fate. Around the eight minute mark the tension is briefly eased off by an 80’s light and airy synth texture and a male voice saying “make love to me” ( I guess this sample must be from a 80’s gay porno flick). Pretty soon the deep breathing textures and brooding drones are back once more, but with a much more noisy and seared edge to the proceedings which really amps the tension up even more. Around the thirteen minute mark Ramirez suddenly drops in a really loud rolling boil of noise texture which literal makes you jump out of your seat. The rest of the near on seventeen minute track finds Ramirez returning to a more brooding and quite eerier rumbling wall of tone. The other two tracks are rewarding in their own right, but “Breathe Deeply” had shuch a chilling, truly disturbing and compelling edge to it.
The cd reissue comes in a simply, but highly effective black and white fold out paper sleeve which features a single picture on each of it three outer side: there's a bleak and grim picture of someone with their head against the wall & tied in bondage gear, an out of focus and blurry picture of what looks like three upside down voodoo dolls and lastly a close up of a sinister looking male face- all of which fits nicely the broody, to sleazy and violent air of the album.
So in finishing off a very worthwhile and very much needed reissue of this sleazy, creepy and sometimes perverse and noisy album. Lets hope someone else puts out some more work by this excellent project, or maybe even a Flesh Puppet's box set( if there's enough un-released stuff), now that would be really great.