Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Numbers Stations and The New Blockaders - Whitehouse's "Erector" - The Dreaming




The Conet Project - Numbers Stations

Secret agencies transmitting indecipherable messages to small groups of men for reasons we do not know and may not want to. I think I have heard it all and then I hear this. I am left strangely moved. Encouraged to leave my room and take a walk through the streets (an option instantly strangled by my feelings about death and its probability of occurring at night time). Opting for the front porch I stare into the mid distance and continue to digest small segments of scratchy music (sometimes old time radio, sometimes melodic bleeps in some sort of pattern, sometimes electrical wash). This music/pattern/electricity, you soon find out, is a form of introduction and signal of leave for the enclosed "message" that we're supposed to assume is directed towards shifty parties maybe responsible for death but probably responsible for secret games of chess. Dangerous chess. Chess with death in it. These encoded messages for devastating chess piece directions come in the form of human speech. The speech is heavily doctored to sound like the most untrustworthy of computerised companions (think 2001 or some of the instances within the Asimov gem "I, Robot") with each appearing in either another language or spoken by an alternate sex (male/female/swamp demon). The time spanned for each message is fairly irrelevant considering the entire collection (The Conet Project) spans 4 discs and the variations in some cases are fairly negligible. All together however they do contribute to a listening experience not unlike some experimental music I have been exposed to in the past. I am of the opinion it works best listened to in such a way. In some cases it can actually become quite a beautiful experience. In particular the "magnetic fields" tracks which include synth like openers that, more than anywhere else on the collection, evict a strong emotion from the listener (aside from the paralysing dread and general foreboding and a general sense that radio waves are watching you from a bush while you undress). These short wave receptions are still occurring on radios around the planet, which adds to the feeling of experiencing something you're maybe not supposed to be. I can hear people denigrating this as pure novelty. It is true that this will make no sense to some people and possibly drive others into a conspiracy inspired suspicion based psychosis. However it more than works for me as an accompaniment to days that feel extraordinary, or to make the mundane feel so.

The New Blockaders - Out of Print Collection

Another somewhat adventurous "musical endeavour" was taken mid last week. I'd probably had some sort of average day and concluded it needed to end with a bang. Hell, I’d wasted this day pandering to controlling emotions and possibly vile man folk, let's squeeze this sponge and rid of it its pungent man stench. Let's download Anti-music. I'm ready for this. What could possibly go wrong? I'm feeling pretty 'anti'. Fuck everything, yeah? So I start to download the first part of a collection from the anti-band "The New Blockaders". I've read a bio from these guys and it sounds pretty fucking exciting. Lots of "pioneering" and actual mention of the TNB creation of a WHOLE NEW MUSICAL SCALE. Based on emotion. Fuck yeah. Applying this to what I have heard I am pretty sure that whatever out of print recording I got of these guys is either extremely minimal or just during their infatuation with office/school furniture and windows/doors. If this is so, great, count me in for further exploration. If this is not the case, I am fairly certain this is the only collection of songs I need that express the emotional scale of office/school furniture and windows/doors. The first track sounds as though a miserable school in Chernobyl just realised someone fucked up pretty bad and now has to stack all the chairs and desks neatly against the walls while the teachers mercy kill the students. All the deaths occur in complete resigned silence so you're left with this ominous scraping of chair legs, desk legs and tiny feet upon the slightly sooted grey floor of a school that is totally fucked. This scenario lasted for around 20 minutes in total and to be honest it was not a terrible listening experience, definitely unique, and I was fairly eager to hear what track 2 had to offer in ways of changing things up. Turns out the next track could have just been called "Exactly what is happening in the next classroom in the school that just found out it got fucked". It's terribly similar. I'd halted further acquisition of the discs related to this first in realisation that the entire collection probably went through each of the classes in this 16 roomed learning institute that just got fucked. I've not lost faith in The New Blockaders. I'm still interested. Maybe I’ll just try and locate a "best of..." and hope no children have to die.

Whitehouse - Erector

Introduced with a low rumble that indicates this is going to kick ass, I get excited. I'm starting to think it's going on a bit, this low rumble, and my excitement recedes a tiny amount. All of a sudden I am crying in a corner with my face bloated. Efforts to reach the speakers in order to just turn it down a smidge are refused by this invisible wall of matter pushing against me, encouraging me to expel more tears. It probably called me a pussy too but I couldn’t hear him over the explosively high pitched ringing of Whitehouse’s first song off of the album "Erector" titled "Erector". Not sure how the rest goes but I woke up hours later completely dehydrated because I’d shat myself empty of everything inside my body.

The Dreaming

I woke up in a sweat a fair total of 4 times last night. I am not sure who to blame but I am fairly sure my imagination raped me. Car crashes. Almost sex. Lost wallet. Fish and chips. Actual sex. Suicide from a bridge. Long talks with friends. Lost beer. Bus destroying a man running in front of it. Telling people to cover their ears. The crushing sound getting through. Lost keys. One argument. Confusing room relocations. Newly acquired love. The female "V" pressing me from behind. A conspired beheading. A brother’s death. Woman unrelenting on an alarm causing intense panic.

Tonight, if it be fair Mind. Lay off.




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