It’s not often one can legitimately use the word “unique” to describe a new album these days, but in the case of the mind-bending Man With Potential, having literally heard nothing quite like it before or since, the term is particularly apposite.
The Type imprint entered a somewhat frenzied period of activity towards the end of 2011 that saw black metal, noise, dark ambient and drone releases accompany the silly season, making for a very black Christmas, but there was one final bombshell to drop, which hit in late November. Cadet-cap wearing, noise-making, social worker and one half of now defunct duo Yellow Swans, Pete Swanson is the Man With Potential, bizarrely caricatured on the front cover of his latest album as a janitor with a mop for a head (he has long hair you see). He’s been releasing solo material for some time since the Yellow Swans split, and while it hasn’t been particularly easy to obtain, those lucky enough to track down initial copies of this vinyl-only release are treated to a bonus compact disc—the forty minute “Man With Garbage”—that contains tracks from his Challenger cassette plus two additional tracks, one of which is previously unreleased.
There’s not just an air of tension that permeates Man With Potential, but of danger, pent-up aggression, even bottled insanity, and the first two tracks truly constitute the mission statement of the piece. It is a dizzying bombardment of sound grounded with just the right dose of sonic tranquilizers to sedate the listener. The frenetic “Misery Beat” reads like a screwed, technoid version of ‘Fantasia”s ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ as bit by bit, an empty, abandoned and trashed nightclub and its contents slowly come to restless, irrepressible life. First there’s the digital twittering and grainy bass as the sound-system and lighting rigs gain self-awareness, then as the echoing blips and bleeps intensify, strobes begins to flash to a pounding kick-drum pulse. The accompanying video for the piece is particularly on point, featuring shaky, blurred amateur video footage of sweeping spotlights, video backdrops pouring out images of visualizers or deserted industrial landscapes, dank interiors and slow-motion clubbers. As more and more parts of the club begin to animate, the track reaches a crescendo and a dark, raw scream begins to stream from speakers and pour out of the walls, a release of resentment and anger at the shit it has had to endure during its lifetime, before the whole place is doused in bubbles and foam and falls silent again.
There’s an almost visceral, body-horror element at the heart of “Remove View” that conjures the most uncomfortable and stomach-turning images of a David Kronenberg move. It’s as if everyone and everything around you were suddenly crawling with or transforming into hideous, chattering, buzzing insects, until nothing but a sea of spines, twitching legs and diaphanous flapping wings remains. “A&O&0” continues the chitinous, skin-crawling theme, albeit in a more traditional noise fashion with a thundering bass and the constant sounding of distant air horns underpinning the thrum and buzz of huge power stations or electrical grids a la Byetone’s Death of a Typographer.
Swanson employs a languid, unhurried pace too, and in the case of “Far Out” it is a full five-and-a-half minutes before the piece moves beyond the force-field of static, white-noise and skull-rapping morse-code bleeps to reveal a pounding techno-beat and simmering melodic hook. The title track adds the shriek of a massive bird-swarm to the mix whilst simultaneously taking the out-of-control storm of computer noise to its densest levels yet. Only the final track “Face The Music” steps over the line, the industrial rending of metals and repellent, serrated noise so unforgiving they may prove a little too intense for some ears.
It’s not often one can legitimately use the word “unique” to describe a new album these days, but in the case of the mind-bending Man With Potential, having literally heard nothing quite like it before or since, the term is particularly apposite. Whether it stays that way, given the massive amount of buzz this release generated on and for a significant period of time after its release remains to be seen—expect imitators galore.
Man With Potential is available on Type. Buy at iTunes or Amazon.
