Reaching / Wolverine Carcass — Collaboration
The opener, Reaching's lone solo piece is actually only 2 minutes long, despite being divided into 21 tracks. The rhythm of the gaps between tracks makes the piece. Each track is a slight variation on the same sound texture. It sounds like a rusty old metal gate dragging across the pavement, mixed with some harsh, trebley lo-fi feedback. It's low budget to the point where it could have been recorded with a built-in laptop microphone. Reaching does a nice job of exploring sonic possibilities while actually building a bit of momentum by accentuated the feedback elements and dragging out track lengths a little as the piece progresses. This is probably the most creative thing on the album and it's very satisfying, but due to its short running time, it's only a small part of the larger experience of the album. I wish Reaching had been given more time here!
Following this are two lengthy collaborative tracks. The 11 minute "Echoplex" opens with slowly two repeating, alternating notes played on the electric guitar. It's the warm, resonant and haunting guitar tone of post rock, but the vibe of the piece is more in the vein of funeral doom. A dissonant harmony enters around the 2 minute mark, followed by a shrieking, distorted voice run through heavy delay, which continues to rant through the remainder of the piece. It is repetitive, but in a way that is quite entrancing. The perfect sonic description of inner pain and anxiety that will not relent and leaves you hung in a stasis of agony. This track is easily the best thing on the disk, and the only track to really garner a lot of enthusiasm from me.
"The Stench of a Rotting Wolverine Cub in the Wild" is 12 minutes of harsh noise that is for some reason mastered at a volume far below the rest of the disk. I've tried listening to it without turning the volume up, and found it impossible... all of the track's textural depth is lost. If I do turn it up, it's a good listen that nearly becomes wall-like through consistent use of a muted, mid-heavy frequency palette, but there is no excuse for a defect like this in a product!
Wolverine Carcass' 24 tracks, which end the disk, are around 18 minutes in total. His music is muddled power electronics reflecting sociopathic, depressive nihilism. Structurally, these tracks are total impulsive chaos, but ultimately they're a lot more sad than violent (like "Echoplex" was), meaning they provide little catharsis. Since it sounds like all the tracks come from one marathon session, the 2 second gaps between tracks really take me out of the experience and are incredibly distracting, as if they were put in by accident. The same music really could have accumulated more rage and momentum if presented as a long form work.
The feedback and static textures are lovely, bringing to mind water in rolling boil, but I must unfortunately note that Logan, the person responsible for Wolverine Carcass, has the throaty, familiar, youthful howl of the singer of an up-and-coming hardcore band. I do not doubt his sincerity, but his passion is must less interesting to me for not fully separating itself from that overcrowded scene. There isn't near as much variation in his voice as in the other sound in the mix, either. His vocals permeate nearly every track of his, so this is a significant flaw. I realized after a few listens that it's probably Logan doing the screaming in "Echoplex", too, but there we had enough processing and EQ to make his performance texturally interesting. I do somewhat enjoy these tracks, though honestly I don't have much use for the blatant, nihilistic pessimism expressed in the track titles and the performances themselves... not to mention that WC's music is still definitely in its early, prototypical stages. Perhaps he will improve, but I doubt his music will become my cup of tea unless his malevolence assumes a more charismatic and distinctive face.
There's some intermittent good material on this disk, like "Echoplex", but the disk seems sloppily conceived and executed, the most obvious evidence being unintentional sounding gaps between tracks and clear differences in track volumes. Such glaring errors in the process of compiling and releasing this material cannot easily be forgiven, as their true consequence is that any potential listener will likely have to rip the tracks to their computer and perform a few edits to get maximum enjoyment out of the music. I do enjoy Reaching's material, but gets so little time on this disk that I can't recommend this album on that alone. It is my opinion that this disk deserves to be forgotten in the massive deluge of modern noise releases.