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Prurient, "Shipwrecker's Diary"
Ground Fault
Newest addition to the most sparsely-populated of Ground Fault's threeseries headings (series III, the "harsh noise" category), Shipwrecker's Diarycertainly justifies its placement. Providence's Prurient (aka DominickFernow) is a learned student in the brutal school of power electronics,but one whose intentions lie more in the head-cleaning, catharticcorner of the genre than in the kind sensationalism practiced by othernotables like Deathpile, who has recorded for Fernow's own HospitalProductions. The noise on Shipwrecker's tends to occupy ahigh-frequency range with layers of crisp static making a thick cushionfor most of the other activity and keeping the whole from sinking intothe doom-y sludge that is a popular pitfall for others working in thismedium. No sounds reach truly cringe-inducing, spectrum-piercinglevels, making the disc highly listenable following a short adjustmentperiod. Once inside, there's enough nuance and careful construction tomake for a very rewarding noise record. It's clear that Fernow favorsnot the guttural thrash of people like Deathpile or the explicit,confrontational side of the genre, as embodied (still) by Whitehouse.Instead, he works with less-concentrated, incremental noise, usingspeed and a more gradual, swarming approach to achieve his desiredeffect, which is every bit as powerful as his peers' though less likelyto get bogged down in bad posturing. It's interesting to try and dividethe 33-minute Shipwrecker's into two conceptual halves. Thefirst eight tracks offer the disc's grittiest noise, crumbling staticwaves and washes that develop patiently enough to sound almost capableof being touched or traced with the hand. This is unrelenting, physicalnoise, and Fernow knows it, naming each track after a part of the body,starting with "Shin" and moving up to "Elbow." There is, despite thesheer mass of sound bombarding the ears, a level of comfort availablein the "material" quality of the noise during this half. However with"June 19," Prurient moves on, breaking the connection with the body andallowing the sound to bottom out considerably, leaving only a scorchedwhine and weighted hiss, allying him more with the current crop ofMidwestern homemade noisemakers than with the stoic "power" camp.Following the track's interlude, Fernow's familiar face returns for thedisc's most harrowing section, a 4-track blitzkrieg run through wildlypunctuated bursts, quickly modulated pitch shifts and blasted vocalyelps. For titles, the artist returns to the body, but is now localizedat the head ("Earlobe," "Jaw"), suggesting to me that, from the basephysicality of Shipwrecker's first half, Prurient has moved nowto a site of deeper mental anguish, hence the obsession with the headand the tortured quality of the music in the latter half. In myunderstanding, "June 19" arrives midway as bitter introduction to theworld of the mind, like a repressed memory, foregrounding the nakedemotion that arrives with the disc's closing tracks, two unalteredanswering machine messages left by a young girl. They are late-nightlove messages, innocent, tender, and certainly in contrast with thehellish vision that preceded them. And while some may find Fernow'sconclusion too "neat" or explicit as a thematic rendering, these tracksdo help establish what was suspected before, that Prurient is, atleast, one of the more introspective or "personal" noise artistsworking today, if not the kinder, gentler new face of powerelectronics.
Newest addition to the most sparsely-populated of Ground Fault's threeseries headings (series III, the "harsh noise" category), Shipwrecker's Diarycertainly justifies its placement. Providence's Prurient (aka DominickFernow) is a learned student in the brutal school of power electronics,but one whose intentions lie more in the head-cleaning, catharticcorner of the genre than in the kind sensationalism practiced by othernotables like Deathpile, who has recorded for Fernow's own HospitalProductions. The noise on Shipwrecker's tends to occupy ahigh-frequency range with layers of crisp static making a thick cushionfor most of the other activity and keeping the whole from sinking intothe doom-y sludge that is a popular pitfall for others working in thismedium. No sounds reach truly cringe-inducing, spectrum-piercinglevels, making the disc highly listenable following a short adjustmentperiod. Once inside, there's enough nuance and careful construction tomake for a very rewarding noise record. It's clear that Fernow favorsnot the guttural thrash of people like Deathpile or the explicit,confrontational side of the genre, as embodied (still) by Whitehouse.Instead, he works with less-concentrated, incremental noise, usingspeed and a more gradual, swarming approach to achieve his desiredeffect, which is every bit as powerful as his peers' though less likelyto get bogged down in bad posturing. It's interesting to try and dividethe 33-minute Shipwrecker's into two conceptual halves. Thefirst eight tracks offer the disc's grittiest noise, crumbling staticwaves and washes that develop patiently enough to sound almost capableof being touched or traced with the hand. This is unrelenting, physicalnoise, and Fernow knows it, naming each track after a part of the body,starting with "Shin" and moving up to "Elbow." There is, despite thesheer mass of sound bombarding the ears, a level of comfort availablein the "material" quality of the noise during this half. However with"June 19," Prurient moves on, breaking the connection with the body andallowing the sound to bottom out considerably, leaving only a scorchedwhine and weighted hiss, allying him more with the current crop ofMidwestern homemade noisemakers than with the stoic "power" camp.Following the track's interlude, Fernow's familiar face returns for thedisc's most harrowing section, a 4-track blitzkrieg run through wildlypunctuated bursts, quickly modulated pitch shifts and blasted vocalyelps. For titles, the artist returns to the body, but is now localizedat the head ("Earlobe," "Jaw"), suggesting to me that, from the basephysicality of Shipwrecker's first half, Prurient has moved nowto a site of deeper mental anguish, hence the obsession with the headand the tortured quality of the music in the latter half. In myunderstanding, "June 19" arrives midway as bitter introduction to theworld of the mind, like a repressed memory, foregrounding the nakedemotion that arrives with the disc's closing tracks, two unalteredanswering machine messages left by a young girl. They are late-nightlove messages, innocent, tender, and certainly in contrast with thehellish vision that preceded them. And while some may find Fernow'sconclusion too "neat" or explicit as a thematic rendering, these tracksdo help establish what was suspected before, that Prurient is, atleast, one of the more introspective or "personal" noise artistsworking today, if not the kinder, gentler new face of powerelectronics.
