This album is a sonic masterpiece of slow heavy moody textural sound manipulation. If you’ve ever liked Godflesh, Head Of David, Scorn or even Lard, you will like this album. And if you don’t know or like those bands, you should still check GBT out, just to marvel at the sonic depth on offer.
Igloomag.com does underground, left-of-centre electronic music, so why am I telling you about the new Gaitor Bait Ten album, which is a wholly instrumental organic band setup? Well one reason is because they are just immensely good, but apart from that, I think we can take left-of-centre electronic music to be a state of mind as much as something defined by the tools used in its creation. The truth is, this album bows to no preconception of what a recording band should be or sound like, and has as much in common with the ideals of electronic sound creation and speaker destruction as anything you’ll hear.
But first, some background. I read somewhere once that a review should be well informed and provide this sort of stuff as reference for any reader who may not have infinite amounts of time and resources to allow for an in depth background knowledge of every obscure artist in existence. Well, fear not, I have done my homework on this one, and a good job too. Gator Bait Ten (henceforth in this text to be referred to as GBT, just because I’m lazy) made an obscure electronica album in its original manifestation, which was self released in 1999, and if you do a search on the internet you’ll find some references to this, along with some mythical snuff movie of the same name. That is not the GBT we have before us now however. The founder members are the same, Simon-John Smerdon and Mark Filip, and as they finally found themselves living in roughly the same area again after ten years, they decided to get together and make music, the name stuck just because it was theirs and they liked it, not because this is a continuation of the previous project. OK, we’re all clear on that. Same name, new project, kind of.
The band (who are spread over a few continents) consists of Simon-John Smerdon on mid range bass and Hammond organ, Mark Filip on guitar, analogue synths and field recordings (not really an instrument I know, but…), Ted Parsons on drums – that’s TED PARSONS! Legendary drummer from such bands as Prong, Godflesh, Swans and so on (if you don’t know, I urge you to look him up) – and Submerged on colossal low end bass guitar.
The sound these guys make is nothing short of absolutely body wrenchingly mind shatteringly bowel shakingly huge. There is enough low end on this recording to send your average filthy dubstep producer running in search of a dark corner in which to crouch trembling alone and frightened. Simon-John from the band describes the music as Doom-Gaze, it being somewhere between the genres of Shoegaze and Doom metal, and I reckon that’s as good a description as you’re likely to get. Put another way, avoiding obscure niche genre names, this music is slow and extremely heavy, made up of evolving textures, drums that sound like an army of hell’s minions marching into war and a low end deep enough to communicate with whales. It’s not what you would call friendly music! Scary at times, sometimes even physically disturbing, but sonically magnificent. The album was mixed (on analogue equipment) by Joel Hamilton, who undoubtedly helped to achieve this end result of audio fullness. Of course it goes without saying that you need a decent form of sound reproduction to really get the intent of this album, the little CD player I have in my kitchen for example is definitely not up to the job! A decent pair of headphones will do it justice, and although a big high-quality sound system would unarguably give amazing results, I think this is something of a personal listen more suited to headphones (not to mention if you live within a mile of any other houses, bad feelings will quickly build up between you). There is real feeling and emotion built into this music, something which is not as easy to do as you might think, and something that is all too often missing in musical contemporaries which use sound and noise as the main building blocks of music. Others may well disagree with me though, about the headphones, not the emotional content. Some may much prefer to have the concrete foundations of buildings weakened and to quickly make enemies of their neighbors, for me though this is music for a personal soundtrack rather then for chilling out with mates or getting ready to go out, although I did try it as breakfast accompaniment with my children before school, but I don’t think they really got it, probably due to the aforementioned kitchen stereo.
To summarize, this album is a sonic masterpiece of slow heavy moody textural sound manipulation. If you’ve ever liked Godflesh, Head Of David, Scorn or even Lard, you will like this album. And if you don’t know or like those bands, you should still check GBT out, just to marvel at the sonic depth on offer. It’s a bit like how I imagine it would feel to stand at the edge of the Grand Canyon, or Niagara Falls – staggering. Well worth having in your collection.
Harvester is out now on Ohm Resistance. [Listen | Purchase]
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