(04.26.05) More than 35 artists answered when asked the question: What would the end of the world sound like? The Last Signal collects these
disparate visions of apocalypse and the styles range from tape-burning
torch songs to aborted squirts and blasts of white noise to the fading
hums of technology and civilization to a thirty second analog tone
that rises up to heaven. Most of the tracks aren’t much more than a
minute in length and, taken as a whole, The Last Signal, seems
like an hour long snapshot of finality as if we were witnessing the
world’s reaction to armageddon through a radio signal and, each minute
or so, the dial is snapped to a new station.
Matt Frantz, the curator of the project, asked contributors to keep
their submissions short or, in the case of a number of the
contributions, allow their work to be condensed as necessary to fit
the project scope. As a result, some of the tracks are layered
canvases as a longer work is folded back on itself several times.
Nectarphonic’s “Will I (Last Signal Abrupt End Edit)” opens The
Last Signal and is the torch song playing at the final bar at the
end of the world and, like the title suggests, it is cut short as if
the power simply faded into nothigness. Combination no. 10 offers
“Gutbrain sound (condensed edit),” a blast of dischordia that cleaves
straight through the preceding silence. Some of the tracks are just
hints of melody, the barest suggestion of sound that burps or gasps or
hiccups before fading into silence. Others are bursts of heavy sound
— lumbering beats that stagger like escaped loops from Techno Animals
records out to wreck the town.
Horrendous’ “End Us” is a filled with warped chords like the fusion of
dying birds and collapsing buildings as interpreted by an experimental
guitarist while Satyr Oz’s “Shattered Cradle Playground/The Last
Swirlings” is a wall of child voices trapped behind barbed wire
fences. While Aaron Butler’s “Original Soundtrack To The End Of The
World (Dark Audio Dub Mix)” begins with hand drums and ambient tones,
the calm interplay is interrupted by the chaotic burst of jump cut
editing, a John Zorn style of slash and burn that captures the
horrific panic of the unplannned dissolution of reality.
Brekekekexkoaxkoax finds some order in the chaos with “ma’vet o’lam
(Asiyah)” which sounds like an industrial compactor smashing the world
into a nice neat square of compressed metal, and Mike Hallenbeck’s
“Untitled” begins with the noisy chaos of a jet airplane turbine
before draining away into a placid dark ambience. Matt Frantz’s
“Oversaturated” is just an explosion in mid-town, a whirlwind blast
that sucks up all the panic and fear of the city into a single rising
cloud of static and shrieking metal and terrified sirens.
For some, the end of the world is dischordia; for others, it just
slows down and stops or it vanishes into a burst of noise and static.
The world doesn’t end with a bang or a whimper; it simply ends. And
for everyone, the end will be indelibly stamped with their own vision
and their own sonic interpretation. The Last Signal argues
that, when the heat death of the universe arives, there will still be
music. Ahem to that.
The Last Signal is out now on Independent Opposition.
