Review: Black Hat - Spectral Disorder EP

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(CD, Debacle Records, 2012)

Damn that Debacle Records, do these guys ever stop? Every now and then I keep coming back to this Seattle label, who keep to blow my mind every few months with a release completely different in style than one another (few labels have the guts to release a minimal techno album next to a primitive folk one, and that’s just a small selection of head-spinning list of genres and styles Debacle have dabbled in). Either Debacle Records is some sort of “trend radar” that picks up musicians that push the envelope in order to analyze the next coming sensation or the guys (or gals) there have some sort of a sixth sense that allows them to choose the winning formula - the selection of finest out-of-the-box new sounds that land on the psychedelic scene.

Seattle’s resident Nelson Bean makes yet another addition to the noise-infused “mutant techno” movement with his interesting debut “Spectral Disorder” EP. Introduced by the cold and minimalistic over-oscillating glacial beats by the opening track, “#00000”, Black Hat welcomes us into the world of haunted ambient reverb, very economical, technoid beats and melodies reduced to a bare minimum, meant to keep some absolutely basic level of structure. Allusions to Andy Stott and the catalog of Modern Love label keep getting thrown around, and for a good reason: the music of Black Hat is similarly deep and spiritual in nature, with deep, spacious atmosphere of “Northwest Passage” augumented with sounds small bells moved by arctic wind and eched synth noise reflecting the sounds reverberating in caverns and between the barren rocks.

“Spectral Disorder” may be pigeonholed as ambient techno, but it’s definitely more ambient than techno: cold, heavily textural drones and an almost suffocating atmosphere worthy of dark ambient and industrial champions is in front, with the beatless parts often taking majority of the tracks, the beats, when they finally come are austere and unwelcoming, not for prompting any sort of a dance, but to divide the endless noisescapes into fragments, to put the amorphous mass of sound into time frames in an attempt to civlize the beast of abrasive patches and fried oscillations. There is a sense of familar melody once in a while, but radically processed and deconstructed to the point where it sounds like a radical remix of something you know, but the source of what has been lost in translation - this is especially evident in the brutal digital ping-pong of the title track. The debut EP by Black Hat is torn between the formless noise territory and the experimental techno proving grounds. Nelson Bean stands at the crossroads, and his future releases will show which direction he takes.

Review: Particle Being Trio - Post Terrestial Volume One (Debacle Records, 2012)

Somehow I got used to the fact that when an album begins with lazily rolling eastern drones I should prepare myself for a hell of a psychedelic journey. Such was the case with Moon Unit’s “New Sky Dragon” (which I finally purchased on vinyl minutes before writing this review, but I digress) or Tetragrammaton’s “Elegy for Native Toungues”. Not surprisingly, this is no different with the Seattle free-psych ensemble Particle Being Trio. Add this to the fact that this is being released on Debacle Records, quite possibly the most exciting underground label these days, which constantly reinvents itself and offers an incredibly eclectic range of releases, refusing to be ascribed to any narrow-minded musical “scene” of today, and we might be dealing with some bomb material.

The opening “Free Energy” unfolds slowly, almost lethargically - endlessly stretching synthesizer drones blend with low-key sitars and sparse free jazz drumming. A reverbed trombone emerges from the dronescape, accompanied by twisted supersonic ascent of analog synthesizer, which snakes its way along the now-rhytmical drumming and blissful electronic ambience. The synths sound cosmic and oriental at the same time, crazy noodlings pacified by pastoral trombone. Comparisons to Moon Unit’s monumental “Internal Future” might be made, but Particle Being Trio seems to exist in the more jazz-oriented “academic” areas of experimental music – as indicated by the name and the minimalist, humble cover.

The following pieces, “Action and Orbital Horn” and “Aggregate Resilience”, follow a more dynamic path. The first piece is a near 3-minute krautrock jam, with sequencer-heavy electronics competing with the trombone, which tries to keep up the pace and the melody in some sort of “human-vs-machine” duel, while the tribal-like drumming paves the way for the contestants. The second track is heavier - one drum breakdown after another, heavy drones rise and fall, occasionally bursting into a brief far-out solo before succumbing to obliterating, intense drum workouts.

The closing jam “Relative to Light” follows the same path as the opening track, down to the slow sitars opening. Here, however, musicians get it on from the very first seconds, becoming (slightly) more dynamic, with drums weaving an almost math rock pattern, while the synthesizers get into some glitch bleep & bloop mania and the trombone kicks in with sparse, occasional notes that create some sort of recognizable melody. While the jam sounds heavily deconstructed and abstract, there is a sense of peace to the whole piece, despite the chaotic bursts of electronic madness, which seemingly can’t win with the human element of the whole piece. I find that reassuring – that despite the whole obsession with electronic gadgetry in the modern world, we have still not yet succumbed. It’s far-fetched, yes, but it works.