Apetal Thunderfall is fairly difficult to listen to. Basically taking a bunch of abrasives tones and layering them into a sort of ambient space, where they kind of jump in and out of the music. Kind of randomly, but completely not, okay that makes no sense. Almost makes me think of like a broken tape player or something where the song really can’t quite begin, but keeps running and different speeds, invading the listeners headspace trying to fuck you up, maybe make a nice drug induced trance or something I don’t know. Just lulling the listener, while alternately blasting you with some intense harsh sounds.
At first it couldn’t think of what it reminds me of, but then I realized it reminds me very heavily of Nurse with Wound, in that sort of abstract Dadaist use of sound, particularly early NWW. Taking sounds and playing them in completely bizarre ways, taking a sound form the unlistenable to the melodic and back again in a matter of seconds. In a completely surreal sound collage. Never leaving anything hanging long enough to really take hold, but all the while a sort of rhythm is created out of the chaos, so it doesn’t just sound random, it sounds somehow broken. And not in a bad or negative way, just broken, almost like it wants to break the listeners head, but somehow makes you feel like you’re not quite right, like you don’t really follow the pattern, rather than the abstraction of the pattern.
Okay I just spaced out for a few minutes there, I don’t know if it’s a good idea to listen to it on headphones that might just be asking for trouble. I think it’s doing something to my brain. The randomness of it just seems to want to taunt sanity. Like the music sounds barely sane, I think maybe that’s the point, to try and create insanity inducing music.
Yeah if that makes any sense, it sounds like the actual songs are crazy, like there is some sort of lurking insanity, that never quite reveals itself, but underlies everything. Or maybe it’s just supposed to force us to take a second to think about our preconceptions of music.
Like how we expect a certain structure to our songs, and while it exists on Thunderfall, it also doesn’t. I mean there is clearly a structure, but it is shaky and loose. Definitely no clear pattern, or message. The unexpected seems to continually happen, but somehow it seems to flow, not just random snippets of sound, but sound as texture. This is pretty fucked up, but yet somehow kind of awesome.
