I’ve lost track of how many of Dave Brenner’s releases I have reviewed, but it must be most of them (at least in recent years) yet I still find myself stupidly excited when there is a new one to delve into. This 7-track release (currently available on Bandcamp for just $3 USD) is 35 minutes long and finds Dave back in the studio on his own, with no external collaborators whatsoever, even finding time to do the artwork and undertaking every aspect except the final mastering which was completed by the wonderful Dan Emery whose work on the ‘Magnolia Sessions’ series of releases has placed him very highly indeed in my opinion when it comes to capturing the true essence of music.
Ah, music, such a loaded word in so many ways. Dave describes his own music as “a cinematic, tension/paranoia-driven form of harsh experimentation fusing dark ambient and harsh sub-hardcore mutations with endless other genres including jazz, world music, folk, electronic, and beyond.” Me? I like to keep it more basic and describe this as a black and white vision of the end of the world when the nuclear war is over and we are all scavenging in the ruins (or at least you lot will be, I think we’ll be safe down here in NZ). He makes music which is frightening, pushing the very boundaries of what could be considered as such, and if one could imagine the mentality of Agoraphobic Nosebleed combined with the avant-garde sensibility of Can when they included Damo Suzuki then you might get close to what this sounds like. Or not.
The PR company describes this as being “fuelled by post-industrial beats and unconventional percussion, tense and grating layers of synth, keys, bass, guitars, and more smoulder in harsh noise and drone tinted in mournful horror score persuasion, while deconstructive power electronics and elements of nature swirl in the ether.” It is horrible, it is nasty, it is the stuff of nightmares, it is bordering on the psychotic and most music lovers would hate it, the target audience is not Swifties. But there are plenty of places for those who like their music to be vanilla or non-threatening, but for those of us who enjoy the darker and more imaginative places then this is yet another release totally worth investigating.
Rating: 8/10
