Members of Romance and Filthy Turd join up for three tracks of raw experimental noise recorded completely live with no overdubs. Despite some overly long running times and a certain lack of movement, this would actually be a nice little release if it didn't sound like complete shit. Don't get me wrong, I can appreciate lo-fi recordings and the aesthetics that intentional rawness often provides, but this thing sounds like it was recorded live in a closet with a microphone placed down the hall. The minutes and minutes of twisted pulses, piercing feedback, tactfully aggressive distortion, and moaning drones are completely clouded with overloaded recording distortion and a completely muddy sound that destroys almost all of the detail to the individual pieces. You can make out just enough to get a feel for what's going on... and to deduce that it wouldn't be half bad at all were the sound more beneficial to the work. Despite being one-sided the tracks flow decently, with hypnotic levels of repetition and consistency helping things along in a sense. The CD-R is housed in a plastic sleeve with very crude xeroxed artwork of a woman whose nose is gushing blood all over her face. Other than that it's nothing but basic text. Were the print quality stronger it might look okay, but I can't stand behind this half-assed kind of look since it would've been made more visually interesting with almost no added effort at all. I honestly don't understand the motivation behind such releases at all. Why waste a half hour recording decent material if it's going to come out sounding like dirt? And why spend a few bucks producing each individual copy when the artwork's gonna look horrible as well? I'm only being an asshole here because with a tactfully minimal and inexpensive package and an even slightly more robust 4-track recording (if that) this release could've garnered a 7/10 from me - which is saying something. But in its current state it comes off as a waste of time and (little) effort. Really, why not take the work more seriously and do it justice?
[Voltagestress*r]
Running time - 33:15, Tracks: 3
[Notable tracks: all three are pretty decent, but the sound quality is shit]
Voltagestress*r - http://homepage.ntlworld.com/voltagestressr/
