For this release, Californian sound artist Gendreau has modified old record-players and souped them up like custom cars - what we're hearing is a slowly rotating vinyl disk with a heavy old tonearm, to produce a monstrous grind. He has no interest whatsoever in the content of the records. All he wants is the 'dead' part of the pressing, resulting in a kind of pure inertness. The equipment sometimes howls in protest at this maltreatment, but what can be done about it? Nothing! It's a simple process art that totally transcends its methods of production, and offers a glimpse of something beyond, something bizarrely affecting. It may not be an entirely heart-warming vision. When I first saw the cover photo of this 'blackly' packaged release, I assumed immediately that it depicted an awful abyss of doom.. and endless culvert running underneath the very bowels of Hades. I couldn't wait to hear the abysmal sonic message that might accompany this despatch from such a darkened, Saturnine realm.
Of course, the cover photo is nothing of the sort - merely a close-up of the micro-grooves of distressed old 78 RPM records, one of the artefacts abused by Gendreau in pursuit of his diabolical aims. But nothing dispels the oppressive feeling generated by this relentless sound-art... of the two long tracks, "Two Worlds For Now" is certainly aligned with the school of thought that desires to bury the listener alive in smothering layers of oppressive, heavy sound. A claustrophobia-inducing sensation begins in the ears and quickly spreads to the entire body. Don't play this on a winter's night when you're snowed in at home, or cabin fever will set in immediately. The title work, which combines a sense of ruthless mathematical precision and somehow suggests an ultra-efficient railroad engineer measuring damage to his tracks, comprises at least two or more of these turntable experiments running simultaneously, or overdubbed in the studio, and thus produces a slightly more sonically varied effect. Powerful stuff - the single idea is squeezed for everything it's got. (label info)
