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Padla Bear Outfit (apparently): "Sonic Death" (2011)
Yesterday five new songs appeared on the counter-productively minimal website that hosts audio from Padla Bear Outfit - plus the projects that have evolved since the band's alleged demise. Audio files are typically uploaded with a single image to this venue, yet rarely accompanied by anything resembling context, expressions of authorial intent, or audience response. And so, for some fleeting period, we have before us five lo-fi garage tracks, originating in St. Petersburg and titled (in translation) as "Ghost," "Snake," "Backdrop," "Drone," and "Shadow." That thematic tendency will only increase in importance as we continue: dark stories will slowly grow darker still.
These slapdash, impressively resonant, and sometimes incomprehensible recordings label themselves en masse as "Sonic Death." They come with nothing more than the B&W image we see above, showing a slender figure dressed in a halloween costume. The luminous outlines of that bony shape are, at least facially, perhaps inspired by Lon Chaney's 1925 "Phantom of the Opera." Horror moves quickly in the direction of kitsch, so any talk of "sonic death" is unlikely to be that serious. These five songs, in fact, will no doubt be accepted by fans of Padla Bear Outfit as further proof of the band's renaissance, rather than of any noisy demise.
If we were looking for genuinely worrying discord, it could be found elsewhere. In realms where purple-faced audiences show few signs of enjoyment.
Let's start this search for clamor in Novosibirsk, with the tiny outfit known as IAMF. The meaning of those four letters is perhaps connected to the opening track of IAMF's debut recording, released last July: "I Am F***ing Love." Whatever the case, at least some secondary information can be mapped out with greater confidence and objectivity. IAMF is a solo endeavor attributed to a young Siberian artist, known only as Sanya. "He creates very dirty-sounding, loud music with catchy melodies and minimalist lyrics." Harmony slips away into remarkable levels of discord, whilst lyricism is handed over to "different robotic voices." Sentiment and subjectivity clearly have a hard time being heard.
Very dirty-sounding and loud music with catchy melodies and minimalist lyrics
Percussion comes to us courtesy of "fuzzy, semi-electronic drums and cymbals (used in real time). The guitars are played with little distortion[!], but at maximum volume." Which only brings distortion back again at fantastically high levels. Many listeners will no doubt be prompted to check (or protect) their speakers.
Although "Sanya" does a very good job of hiding from the public eye, a related admin site - linked to one of the Russian IAMF venues - apparently belongs to a more sociable Anya Rolibek, who supposedly lives in Osaka. (This seems extremely unlikely, just as the project's artwork shows only the vaguest of human outlines; that individual is no doubt a figment of IAMF's imagination). The same "Japanese" colleague - or alter-ego / imaginary friend - mirrors the desire of Padla Bear Outfit to orchestrate songs of ghosts and spirits with ear-piercing bluster. Rolibek offers us the sketch for her own forthcoming noise experiment:
IAMF: "The Classic" (2011)
"I want to write a song about a ghost that has never drunk water. It falls into the sea... and then into a residential plumbing system. Eventually the ghost ends up in the bathtub of a lonely young man. That guy, however, doesn't notice the ghost at first, 'cos he doesn't like to wash. And then, one day, when he eventually does take a shower, he accidentally washes the ghost back into the ocean..."
I want to write a song about a ghost that has never drunk water
How does the narrative end or resolve itself with anything resembling logic? "In order to get back to that same young man, the ghost summons all its strength... and swallows the sea! Unfortunately, though, the ghost also swallows the guy [taking a shower]..." The mysterious Anya then turns to her readers: "What d'you think of the idea? I'll take any suggestions regarding a musical accompaniment, and you can send your lyrics to me, also." A nonsensical world requires a distorted soundtrack and preposterous storyline.
A look at IAMF's Twitter feed provides no greater sense of reason, not to mention divine reason. A couple of the more recent Tweets read: "Lots of things [in life] never work out"; "Mozzarella is one of the tastiest - and most tasteless cheeses. That's why it is so hard to spoil it with anything!" Facts and contradictory facts are equally true.
Karaoke Vomit / Roomdark (Minsk)
These disconnected, ear-splitting expressions of daily life are not a recent phenomenon. We could turn to the Minsk project known as Karaoke Vomit, overseen by Belarus sound artist Vladimir Banker. He is familiar to local audiences (on most occasions) as Roomdark, in other words as an exponent of discord who has, in fact, been toying with raspy field recordings for the last seventeen years. Across that long career, he discerns his fundamental trajectory as having moved "from harsh noise to rhythmic electro-industrial sounds with melodic, ambient elements."
Rhythmic electro-industrial sounds with melodic, ambient elements
The last time we looked at Roomdark's output, we suggested that his compositions are designed to highlight some social failings of the present, rather than to advocate forthcoming improvements (or any pre-modern, rural alternative to modernity, say). They give voice to a myriad of problems or worries - and look forward with scant hope. It frequently appears that Mr. Banker is striving to express some form of universality - albeit a rather sad version thereof: his soundscapes map an all-encompassing lack of sanity.
On our first visit to his catalog, we pondered an EP entitled "Tree" that was itself built around a long, fourteen-minute composition called "Cholotrope." Here Roomdark was toying with notions encapsulated in the English equivalent noun "holotrope," itself a play upon the Greek terms for (a linear) path and (ubiquitous) plentitude simultaneously. According to that same compound term, progress or unidirectional movement soon vanish into a disorienting multiplicity. Singular goals evanesce.
Karaoke Vomit: "The First" (2011)
In other words, an empirical passage - that of the music itself, even - hopes through its breakdown to reveal some surrounding, enduring state of overwhelming disorder that simply is. Hence the reason why IAMF's Japanese colleague "Anya" is so happy to invite and employ the lyrics or music of others: harsh, surreal noises - and the nonsensical stories thereof - reflect an irrational existence of which everybody has experience. Anybody can tell the story.
This sonic expression of biographies and/or history is wonderfully captured by the Moscow outfit lo-fi futu:Re, once again an anonymous solo exercise, explained as follows. "A lo-fi future stands before us all; not as any kind of [level-headed or sage] evaluation of life as '+' or '-' or even '=" ... That future is better understood as a concrete location. It'll be the kind of place where, if you suddenly found yourself there, you'd not remember where you'd come from. You'd forget the transport [in which you'd arrived... and] in which you'd just slept through half your life."
A lo-fi future stands before us...
This depiction of our common destiny merely darkens along with increasingly browbeaten sounds: "The [spatiotemporal] location [towards which we're heading] is called a 'hole,' or - if your prefer 'an underground dwelling.' Better still, you might call it a 'kitchen.' The kind of kitchen that's feebly decorated in something yellow, though it's also somewhat grey from the constant clouds of steam. The future is a kitchen that does nothing more than endure through its own stories, illnesses, and - of course - people. Welcome to this place." Whether you like it or not.
The future is perceived as meaningless repetition - a state also evoked with dishertening accuracy by a recording project in the city of Perm known as Dull Product. Once more the imagery of some immaterial, nameless spirit or apparition comes swiftly to the fore: Dull Product refers to itself as a "non-existent publishing venture. This is a ghost label." Metaphors of homeless immateriality support those of disorder and disharmony: both lack any kind of structure whatsoever. Backbones and timelines are absent.
Sloi Records, publishers of lo-fi futu:Re (Moscow)
Overseeing these discordant judgments on modernity is local resident Alexey Lavrentyevich, who fashions the sounds on display in our audio player with his brother and, when more volume is needed, a few friends. Each of those combinations is given a different stage-name or moniker; together they grant Dull Product the impression of a very busy label.
We're told on one typical occasion to expect "ritual drumming and - from time to time - there will even be some words. This is the music of torpor." Other related sounds are offered to us by Dull Product "as a kind of inexplicable rock music. Everything was recorded on an old tape recorder in 2011 - in the middle of a really hot summer... The cover [below] shows an equine astronaut, saving [with a yellow tube] one of several women who are drowning in the depths of the ocean...." Such, apparently, are the workings of the world. They make no sense - especially to those poor souls who are drowning.
Noise, noise, and even more noise. This is not for everyone
One of the alter-egos adopted by Lavrentyevich in producing this unreasonable racket is "Lo-Fi Woman." Just as with IAMF's Osaka "colleague," new identities are created to order to define and then categorize modern experience in a (slightly) more satisfying manner. If one's biography or philosophy fails to please, we need only imagine a new name or face - in order to start again.
A 2011 concert advertisement warned the local public that "Lo-Fi Woman is one of the most interesting and underrated projects ever seen in Perm. They play noise, noise, and even more noise. This is not for everyone." Based upon the observations we hear from other cacophonous artists in various Russian towns, the most unnerving aspect of any such discord is that its very lack of appeal arises from its relevance. These aimless and rowdy instrumentals remind many people of that which simply is: both with distortion and a lack of harmony they suggest meaningless patterns. Including our common lifeline. Hence the grim purple faces shown above.
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Reki (Rivers) by Kitovy Us, published by Dull Product (2011)
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