9 years on, Spectrum Spools presents a pristine vinyl cut with reimagined album art, physical copies including a download card and three rare tracks from the Tour EP of the same era. And whether or not it was about Katrina, the ’gaze-blazing album now comes out in a different context, offering other meaning potential, nuanced enough to transcend any conceptual authorial intention.
Spectrum Spools, the label that brought us the likes of Neel, Nuel and Dozzy, and a host of others grazing round the experimental electronic margins, is re-releasing the debut album by New Orleans duo, Belong, with ‘reimagined’ cover art. What’s all the fuzz about?
October Language first appeared back in 2006 on Carpark Records, following which it accrued something of a cult status. Its appeal? An arrestingly filthy yet nuanced processed guitar noise base that channeled The ’Gaze—not the one from the man like Lacan, but that old Shoe-magic (Shambient?). It brought comparisons with then-burgeoning post-digital ambient-electronic fuzzers, Tim Hecker and Fennesz, and forebears like MBV and JaMC (throw in some remote FSA echoes and lovesliescrushing veils while you’re at it). And other potential topical appeal from the time: recorded as (and when) it was—New Orleans 2005, and how it was, i.e. ravaged, it tempted tagging as ‘Disintegration Loops for Hurricane Katrina’ (pitchfork), the eponymous ‘October’ allusive to post-diluvian, with all the signifying power of the tonemass’s corrosive liquid semiosis, static-infused waves of rolling white noise sluicing through it–mounting, breaking, engulfing…
Back to back story: despite growing status as a lowlight noise ambient (Nambient?) cult classic, it wasn’t till three years later that it got to vinyl, a ltd. one-off pressing from Geographic North that vanished immediately. Now, 9 years on, Spectrum Spools presents a pristine vinyl cut with reimagined album art, physical copies including a download card and three rare tracks from the Tour EP of the same era. And whether or not it was about Katrina, the ’gaze-blazing album now comes out in a different context, offering other meaning potential, nuanced enough to transcend any conceptual authorial intention. Does October Language speak? Or do you speak it?
October Language is out in April on Spectrum Spools. [vinyl | digital]
