Labels: Hydra Head
Review by: Alex Deller
So I get this cd in the post early one morning and I’m all excited. Didn’t know whether I’d actually get it or not, seeing as the thing is pretty darn rare. Packaging is torn asunder, and I groan a groan of the ancients. Smirking up at me is my CD, vacuum-packed in a neat little black wallet, the logo spray-painted on in gold. Very nice I’m sure, but the opening of which requires permanent violation. I have a premonition of myself in eight years time, now done and dusted with my childish punk emo ways, settled down in a soul-crushing 9-5 job, content to listen to Dire Straits with my ugly wife and even uglier children. I happen to look on eBay one fine day, and see this selling for a fortune in its virgin state, whilst its mangled brethren raise nothing but sniggers. In a parallel universe my doppelganger is laughing heartily, sitting on a sun-drenched beach, quaffing expensive drinks from coconut halves and celebrating his entrepreneurial prowess, having left the beast caged and sold it for a small fortune.
I ponder these two possible outcomes for a good few minutes, standing in my kitchen, scissors in one hand.
I cut.
And somewhere out there the 9-5 self kicks away a chair and falls, last years gaudy Christmas tie a makeshift noose, the bland Ikea light fitting a suitable anchor for self-destruction.
So onward, I’m sure that after all that bilge you’re all positively slavering to hear what the music is like, after all, that’s what reviews are for. The music is like nothing, such is its gargantuan sloth.A guitar chord is struck and held for fifteen seconds. Pitch is changed and the process is repeated. No vocals are present, though sometimes odd noises flit in and out, like dolphins rubbing together. There are three songs in fifty-five minutes, and to try and pay attention to this, to listen to it as if it were a proper album would need patience akin to that needed to watch a glacier form.
Truly, this is an insomniac’s wet dream. Drones and feedback, no proper rhythms, no catchy hooks, just an ambient soundscape to drown to. You can’t read to it, can’t have a decent conversation with it in the background and please, in the name of god don’t try to operate heavy machinery to it. Just submit, feel those eyes grow heavy and curl up into the foetal position. Nothing else matters when this is playing. Nothing at all.