Here we have yet another collection of gentle ditties from the highly prolific, and somewhat warped mind of Dave Brenner. This album features analogue and digital percussion, acoustic and electric guitars, bass, ukulele, many types of keyboards and synths, accordion, trumpet, theremin, power electronics, harmonica, didgeridoo, field recordings, and more, some of which were recorded outdoors including in extreme weather events. There are also a great many vocals on this album, but needless to say they are totally indecipherable, being distorted and used as yet another instrument among the layers. This is one of those albums where he has brought in additional musicians to assist him in fulfilling his nightmares, and this time around collaborators include – Benjamin Levitt (Megalophobe), Greg Meisenberg (Maid Myriad, A Fucking Elephant), and Richard Muller (The Third Kind, Vise Massacre, Great Planes), Mac Gollehon (David Bowie, Miles Davis, Onyx, Madonna, Blondie), Liz Ciavarella-Brenner, Faith Ciavarella, Pete Tsakiris, Leila Abdul-Rauf (Vastum, Fyrhtu), Nathan Verrill (Fyrhtu, Cardinal Wyrm), No One (T.O.M.B., Dreadlords), Clayton Batholomew (Mountaineer, ex-Secrets Of The Sky), Dave Small (Cutworm), Christian Molenaar (Those Darn Gnomes), Lane Oliver (Feel Happiness, Yatsu), Christopher Henry (Fuck Your Birthday, Humans Etcetera), Jeff Wilson (Chrome Waves), Matt Bacon, Andrew Hess, and Chuck Schaaf (Deadbird, ex-Rwake) and his family Star, Izzie, and Mason Schaaf. Anyone following this style of music will have come across many of these before, while Levitt, Meisenberg and Molenaar in particular have been working with Brenner in the past.

It is the same post-apocalyptic world which we have become accustomed to within his work, but this time around Brenner does not completely obliterate the original instruments, so at the beginning of “Sabotaging Panacea” there is gently picked acoustic guitar, as the world falls into chaos and power fails, strip lights spark as they hang down from the ceiling, wires fall into the pooled water which has collected on the floor (at least that is what I think of when I hear this). In some ways the instrumentation is often more distinct, and in many ways this is quite different from his other albums although there is always that menace and destruction all around. Brenner states this particular series embodies the unravelling of society, with murder, outbreak, dystopian governments, warfare, depletion of resources, and survival by any means necessary. Given that Dave lives in NYC I would say he is seeing a great deal of that first hand at present, as America appears to be ripping itself to pieces and pulling itself apart in hatred and fear, and this appears to be the perfect soundtrack. Maybe Trump should consider using this album at rallies instead of consistently being threatened with legal action by one band after another, as this would definitely get his audience in the right frame of mind.

Brenner continues to push musical boundaries, not least in the definition of what should be considered music at all. This is industrial, extreme noise, and quite disturbing yet as with all his releases I have heard, it is also strangely compelling.

Rating: 7/10

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