V/A :: Insects (Dustopian Frequencies)

These musical works are a good antidote to the all too prevalent use of insecticide in our world. Even science fiction books, where the thinking one could hope, would be expansive and kindly towards other forms of life, has alien enemies represented as “buggers” like in Ender’s Game or all the invasion of bugs happening across the galaxy in Starship Troopers.

A collections that chitters, clicks and chirps

The insecta class of hexapod invertebrates with their chitinous exoskeletons and compound eyes are a perfect focal point for the brooding musical investigation conjured up on this comp. The album was curated by Owls of the Oracle. This mysterious group of occult sleeper agents seems to be associated with the Dustopian Frequencies label, though by applying the fourth virtue of silence I cannot ascertain much more about the Owls of the Oracle. I only hope they continue, from time to time, to cast divinations such as these and bring out such collections that chitter, click and chirp.

All of the artists on this comp are new to me, but the insects they are making music in homage to are far older than us, and will be around long after we are gone. So we must pay our respects to the beetles, for they are our future. Collected here are the sounds of carnivorous synthesizers and bloodsucking electronics. This is metamorphic music that crawls out of the dung heap to emerge resplendent and victorious. Gnarly sounds, freakish bio-evolutionary speculation, mesmerizing swarms of esoteric electronica… what’s not to like?

Ana en Pecado starts the album off with “The Hunter” whose eldritch rumblings gives off a mercurial whiff of a furtive and clandestine ritual opening. BMH or Black Magick Holiday takes the listener into chthonic realms on the dark poetic invocation that is “Anopheles Genus Takeover” with its proclamatory formula and transient noise burst along a bitter distortion. It is seriously harrowing. On “Praying Mantis” Max Schreiber gives a bit of sweet relief with languid and lazy synth chords that slowly resonate, something to nap to, while digesting the prey of a large meal. Dave Clarkson takes things in a more collective direction than the solitary perambulations of the mantis on his “Hive Mind.” Intense insect buzzing sounds swarm around a buoyant rhythm pinging envelopes and filters before the sound of bicycle chains and the splatter of hand percussion.

The old school VHS horror flick organ grinding covered in the static of broken transmissions shines through the blue screen light on “Dar Daol” from The Holocene. The insect in question also known as the Devil’s coach horse beetle. If that name isn’t enough to conjure up something at the crossroads at midnight, then listening to this should do the trick. An incipient hauntology is strong on this piece.

Ancient horned aliens await in the crypts and catacombs of the otherwise peaceful countrycide. You don’t always have to go to the crypt however. Sometimes you can enter the spirit vision just by Scrying Off Screens. That’s a great name for a music project by the way. On “Æmete,” an old word for the humble but mighty ant, discursive noise in a hex of patterns provides a doorway into the worker colonies that lie beneath the earth. Insects are part of the steady diet of birds. With larvae in the beak they get many a meal. Lots of talk about insects as part of the human diet these days. On “Scurry” by Magpie Vectors, you can hear the insects trying to get away from their avian predators.

Embrace the crawling chaos ::

Perhaps another reason of our fear of insects comes from the times when a swarm could come in and destroy all the work put in by human hands, on growing crops. Laura Mars gives a contemplative piece to the proceedings with “Hour of the Cicada.” It unfolds like a reverberant meditation in an ancient monastery, where it turns out the monks are not giving reverence to the Christian god, but something much more ancient and primeval. Linear North makes music that could have been by an artist called Aphid Twin or Bugs of Canada. It has that detuned microtonality coupled with disorienting samples, but is all held together by tripped out beat work. Samples talking about a “Kafka high” that “make you feel like a bug” are part of the biology holding “Brains No Backbone” together. This part of the album shifts into a gentle phase that continues “Butterfly Lands” by Phexioenesystems. The work here remind me of Future Sounds of Lepidoptera. The way the wings are gentle and mysterious, crafting a world of sounds full of dew and moss and flowers. Lifeforms certainly swirl through the song, until its soft landing.

Distorted vocals that can barely be understood are like an insectile language that emerges from the substrata on Stuart Cook’s “Hepialus Humuli.” Abstract noise pulsates like an electric zapper in the night along abandoned railway corridors. “Psychostasia” by Exit Chamber closes out this catalog with a long drone of oozing fluidlike secretion, a trace left by our ancient companions.

These musical works are a good antidote to the all too prevalent use of insecticide in our world. Even science fiction books, where the thinking one could hope, would be expansive and kindly towards other forms of life, has alien enemies represented as “buggers” like in Ender’s Game or all the invasion of bugs happening across the galaxy in Starship Troopers. Yet fears are to be investigated rather than just bulldozed. Forget about pest-control. Listen to this collection and embrace the crawling chaos.

Insects is available on Dustopian Frequencies. [Bandcamp]