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Kites, "Hallucination Guillotine/Final Worship"
This one-man noise project opts to not lean on the more "rock" elements of some of his contemporaries such as Wolf Eyes and instead goes for an early industrial and vaguely krautrock vibe that sets this disc apart from others in the genre.
Chris Forgues does love making noise, and that comes across quite obviously on most of these tracks. However, instead of just blowing out speakers, he is also interested in using his array of home built oscillators and effects to create a more moody, atmospheric backing to the destruction. "Glitter Raider in the Hall of Triumph" exemplifies this, the home made gear used to create the 1960s sci-fi tones that open the track and the spoken word vocals belie the noise explosion that sets in just a few minutes later. The vaguely musical sounds of the home made gear also appear on "Poison Blur" in the form of a cheesy 1970s Eurotrash art flick, but the mix stays tamer on a backing of subbass oscillator swells and other ambient effects.
Some of the other tracks are more than happy to satiate the need for full on noise abuse, such as the unsubtle microphone abuse and feedback loops of "Pink Shadows" and the distorted siren squeals of "Army Corpse/Supermen 2," both of which call to mind the more conventional noise assaults of projects like Prurient.
There are also elements of the purely bizarre that are here as well, including the album's high point, "Nice Garden/Lady's Compact," which somehow manage to mesh the bleeps and buzzes of a 1983 video arcade with deep percussion sounds, the spastic squeaks of electronic mice, and the spoken word absurdist narrative of a guest female vocalist with some extremely harsh noise. It is as weird and wonderful as it sounds. The use of an answering machine message on "Cool People" may be reminiscent of Throbbing Gristle's classic "Death Threats" but is much less sinister, and augmented with a metric ton of noise.
Throughout Hallucination Guillotine/Final Worship, Forgues manages to not only lean into the world of heavy hitting violent noise, but into artful bizarreness as well. Balancing pummeling electronics and the absurd is a tough call, but he does it, and for that reason, this album may have appeal outside of the circle of folks that make orgasmic moans at the thought of the Merzbox.
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