Behind the TBC project is Thomas Beck, a sound-activist/ sound artists from Hamburg, Germany, who has been involved in the experimental/ sound-explorer scene since the early 1980’s. He started off his sonic life in the early 1980’s with the H64- a sound/ noise project that was based around Dada/ Futrurism ideas.  He was active in  experimental Cassette music scene with two Labels (DDT-Tapes and EX). In 1991 he formed the "Hör-Bar" with Y-Ton-G and Malte Steiner, a music club for the advancement of experimental music with monthly concerts.  In 1992 he formed the Wachsender Prozess record label, which is still active today. “Insecta: The Birth Of Gods” is Beck’s first proper solo album.

The CD album offers up four tracks which fall between just shy of the six minute mark to just under the thirty five minute mark. The tracks are named part one through to part four, which I guess indicates this is meant to be played as one long suite of tracks. The album is seemingly themed around freaks of nature; how their birth was often seen as a sign from the gods in ancient Greece, but today there seen as victims of modern society. The monochrome cover features a rather disturbing picture of deformed child who has just one eye in the centre of it’s head.

As M[m] regular readers will know we often review some of the most extreme sounds/ sonics around, taking in genres such as: Harsh noise wall, Harsh noise, field recordings,  avant & improv jazz, extreme metal & beyond.  And it’s fair to say “Insecta: The Birth Of Gods” is one of the most bleack, stark & uncomfortable releases I’ve heard or reviewed in sometime. 

The four tracks shift from: grey & airless drone expanses, through to stark & hopeless mechanical rhythmic dwells that are fed with enclosing grey static loops and searing high pitched tone smarts. Onto slow churning mass of white static that flits with unpleasant & eerier electronic elements, through to bird/insect field recordings that are fed though various effects to create this grey & searing mass of hissing sound. Onto throbbing grey banks of purring noise & roasting grey drone matter, which are often pin-pricked with swirling ‘n’ tolling electronic textures & stark textural noise elements.

The whole album has a  very strange alien & unbalancing vibe to it , and there really is zero hope or emotion here. I can certainly respected Mr Beck for creating such a truly chilling & unsettling piece of work with “Insecta: The Birth Of Gods”, but I can’t say it’s something I return to often as it truly is a very bone chilling & uncomfortable ride- though I can certainty recommend it to those after challenging & hopeless music that really defies any one genre classification.