Dead Machines, "Dead End at Olson Street"

Inside this inverse carcass sleeve art comes a slice of fresh white vinyl, a very un-Dead Machines like piece of plastic; most Wolf Eyes side projects look like they’ve been scraped from the walls of a suicide watch art workshop. This is Mr and Mrs John Olson’s most straight and soundtrack-like work to date, managing to upset the neighbourhood’s canine contingent while retaining that trademark low tech malignant sound.

Ypsilanti

Varispeed croaks turn into clockwork splashes as the slow start-up of gruff Steam trains usher in this latest Dead Machines sticklebrick sludge. The spirit of Lee Perry’s chicken bone voodoo parasitically lives on in the edge of a survival knife dub found on both sides of this disc. Everything here (well, everything but the horn on side B) is shakily plumbed through the band’s handmade operating aesthetic. Standing Kraftwerk style behind battered suitcases of open backed reverb boxes, reused elements are birthing tiny tunes amid the space and clank.

A detour through a summer storm of hi-frequencies eventually bails out with some weird hookah / party horn work. The edges of these sounds are feedback blips, chips of notes blown across foggy battlegrounds days after steel has finished cleaving guts from bellies. Birthday kazoo blasts slashed bedding of spinning greys, only to peculiarly morph into the sound of a fatally wounded llama. Dead Machines really are an odd pair.

Another element in their homespun charm is hearing someone moving over creaking floorboards to get to a new instrument or add another cracked box into the mix. This apparent air of ‘now’ just helps to demonstrate the instinctive chemistry between these two.

Dub trailed chimes of single plucked string (piano, guitar: it’s hard to tell) create a befuddling but beautifully clear landscape in sections of this release. The A Side hits its finale to the sound of a fly disintegrating on a windscreen, mics picking up torn insect flesh at infinitesimal levels.

The flip is a little more focused and sedate, avoiding the space and intangible fuzzy edges of the other side. Mr. Olson’s horn might be wedged in-between the spokes of a clang and clank radiator grill but still he still manages to persuade delicate lines from it. As Mrs Olson tries to sharpen a mallet between the crank of pistons and wrecking yard pus, he sails on a spare air of inquisitive horn parts. Colliding streams swim with the kind of grace normally found in genres other than noise improvised from detritus / junk. This almost traditional musicality is brought to earth with the levity of call and response kazoo / percussion and a succinct tiny one note beat box part. This mixing of elements continues to build the band into a formidable and expansive minded pairing.

samples:

• Side A
• Side B