
Koobaatoo Asparagus - Distrust [No Skinny Jeans - 2024]Distrust takes in two twenty-five minute slices of bleak and battering HNW from this long-running/ highly prolific California project. With each track being as unrelenting, unforgiving, and hope-bludgeoning as the next. This release is a self-released digital affair. Cover artwork-wise wise we have a rather 1970s vibe - featuring a picture of woman running up a staircase in her nightdress- maybe it’s a still from a home invasion/ roughie from the period?. The release can be found here
Both tracks featured here come in dead on the twenty-minute mark, and each is self-titled. The first track is built around a rapid mix of constantly rolling bass drone and skittering grain flow. These two elements are tightly bound together to create a densely rushing & grim mass of sound- which pins the listener down, not letting them up until twenty-some minutes later.
The second track finds a slightly cluttering bass rush, meeting a seared rattling gallop. This ‘wall’ is very nasty & intense in its flow- at points the elements nicely sear & grind into each other in a numbing maelstrom of sound.
While neither ‘wall’ here will win any awards for the most complex, detailed, or layered example of the form- what they do is create a truly head drilling & hope-numbing fifty-minute ride. For those who like their ‘walls’ old school, brutal, and nasty Distrust hits the spot.      Roger Batty
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