Torba — Armageddon Polaroid
It opens with the shortest of them all which gives an unstable, two minute blast of radio static sounding somewhere between the abrasions of an arctic wind and the unpredictable explosions of a suffering gastrointestinal system. It’s familiar squeals and roars end abruptly with the complaining hum of the lead yanked out of the amp and is followed by more vivid bodily bursts in the form of ‘Liz Vicious’. This track seems to be made accapella to a degree as Torba’s mouth overloads the mic with a series of random breaths, hisses and hums that build in and out of cacophonous dimensions contrasting with the smaller sounds of lips moving without a voice. Next, ‘Death? Metal?’ provides a curious illusion of noise imitating extreme metal as a loop of fast jazzy drumming underscores Torba’s distorted turbulence that stops and starts like the pummel and pause formula of thrash guitar. It would be interesting to discover whether this seemingly convincing imitation would come across so well without the benefit of the track title.
The penultimate track, Animalmorti, is even more fidgety as a bee-like drone flies through a tunnel of rumbling, textured noise, scraping and sputtering, occasionally stopping abruptly and briefly before returning the levels into the red. By comparison, the final piece, Just A Toy, feels like a different artist as a thickly distorted lo-fi sine wave provides the accompaniment to Torba’s whispering in typical malevolent style “I’m a toy, that’s what I am” over and over again. Apparently it’s a cover - a rare thing to find among noise releases - of an Atrax Morgue track from 2003.
This release is unusual in that it flits restlessly between peddling the same harsh wind sounds that thousands of similar artists release in abundance every day, but on the other reveals the odd glimmer of free-er experimentation (on ‘Liz Vicious’ and ‘Death? Metal?) taking it briefly away from the noise norm.