I’ve been thinking about monster music recently, sort of an extension
of the idea that Larvae presented with his Monster Music EP (Ad Noiseam) and have
been casting around for music that would qualify as soundtrack
material for a modern re-dubbing of classic Godzilla films. In a
moment of synchronicity, my hand falls on Duncan Avoid’s Metaphysics,
Hive Record’s latest offering of noisy, broken rhythms and deep
landscapes of heavy sound. An industrial collision between Undacova
(from Dyslexic Response records) and Kaebin Yield, Duncan Avoid’s
Metaphysics is an avalanche of breakcore, power noise, skewed vocal
samples and metallic experimentalism.
“Attention Deficit Disorder” lives up to its name by burying itself in
this avalanche of sound, leaping from genre to genre with complete
abandon, hovering for a moment in noisy breakcore territory, skewing
itself across the boundaries in a smear of white noise, pausing for a
microsecond in blissful ambience before diving into a gaseous contrail
of solar noise and ice particles. Its eventual impact cracks reality
hard enough that a string quartet from a more refined European era
falls through the floor of their salon and into this calamitous space
where the members are immediately devoured.
The rest of Metaphysics isn’t as chaotic as this track. In most
cases, Undacova and Yield fix one element in their sights and bash
away at it, leveraging equal parts white noise and power rhythms
against the core idea. Twin Peaks samples get chewed up, ambient
breathes of watery melodies get heat-flashed into steam, and
software-driven drum programming is savaged by extended processor
cycles. They manage to avoid many of the pitfalls of the genres they
skate through, picking and chosing their elements with care.
“S.H.I.F.I.” never quite falls off into the endless river of white
noise and never quite vanishes across the event horizon of the BPM
black hole. It sparks somewhere in between, lines of super-charged
electrical fire arcing off a core of early Autechre-style DSP.
“Convergence” hums with an air of menace and violence as a noisy beat
sequence with glass-encrusted fists fights a warped organ straight out
of a slasher flick. The beats win and organ bleeds chattering notes
all over the floor. “Lucid (down the rabbit hole)” is a Hammer
soundtrack strapped to Oliver Moreau’s back (he used to record under
the name Imminent Starvation) and pushed down into the basement for
a duel to the death.
Metaphysics, ah, Metaphysics. How I wish monster movies sounded like
this: shit breaking, hundred-foot monsters bellowing, the
concentrated effort of the War Machine to detonate millions of kilos
of high explosives, and thousands of people shrieking and running in a
futile cacophony. Duncan Avoid’s experimental contribution to the
Hive Records discography is a solid contender in the rhythmic noise
category. Standard safety precautions apply.
Metaphysics is out now on Hive Records.
