(03.10.06) An antagonistic collective of noise anarchists, Mash Up Soundsystem has been leaving their mark on speaker systems and house parties with a series of 12″ records. A Great Escape From Lunacy, their first CD, collects the best mind bombs from the underground vinyl in addition to some new noise grenades to toss onto your dance floor. The contributors — aliases that further the collective’s obscurative Singularity — are Concrete Cookie, the Dog, Depth Error, the Maggot Farmer, Jism, Retrigger and Incredibad. Additionally, some tracks are collaborative efforts. This confusion is so you don’t know who to blame when you slam dance your way into a body cast or head trauma.
Skewed vocal samples, blistering beats, acid trip hip-hop, noise-core filled with the sizzling percussion of bacon grease and ADD-fueled cut-ups are the styles of the day for Mash Up Soundsystem and these 23 tracks certainly play the field as they mangle and distort electronics. You’ll get thirty seconds of vaguely sex-kitten moans (Jism’s “Promenade”) or a Merzbow-ian wash of noise for a little over a minute (Jism’s “The World Pt2”) before galloping off into chaotic splinter beat territory for four minutes with the Dog and Concrete Cookie stomper, “Reload.” Retrigger, from Brazil, clevers sends up California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger by layering some of his cringe-worthy dialogue from a Rio travelogue video over a waterfall of electronics; while in “Tmnt vs The Sunset Riders,” he captures a video-stream collision between animated turtles and sepia-toned westerns.
The Maggot Farmer’s “Sourpuss Suicide” is a beat poet’s febrile nightmare set to a stomping industrial Iszoloscope-style beat; while his “Domestic Violence” burns through the house like a techno party lit by flaming tribal torches. Concrete Cookie offers squelchy IDM punctuated by bubbling synths and tinny percussion (“Northern Lights”) and rollicking street-party dance rhythms (“City Boy”) filled with crowd noises and Rastafarian MCs hurling verses through decrepit megaphones. Depth Error’s drum ‘n’ bass (“The Seeker”) is charged with electrical current, guttering wires that make echoing sparks run across tautly programmed beats while “Please Reflect” groans with undercurrents of flexed rhythms, melody bending that lends menace to the caustic beats.
The organization of A Great Escape From Lunacy keeps the listener off-guard. You roll from the hard mechanical beats of “Please Reflect” to the more tribal rhythms of Concrete Cookie’s “Shut Up! [PMF]” to the groaning, mumbling ambience of Jism’s “Mikolaj.” Expectations are meant to be destroyed, much like all preconceptions of music. Mash Up Soundsystem’s guerilla assault will leave you dazed and confused, often within the same song. Heads wrecked. Mission accomplished.
A Great Escape From Lunacy is out now on Hive.
