Despite having officially "broken up" over a year ago, this duo continues to put out a lot of posthumous work, and this one closes the "War Crimes" trilogy of recordings with their final performances in the United States, showing an ever-increasing sense of melody and Zen-like calm amongst the speaker shredding roar the duo surrounded themselves with.
Sequenced out of chronological order, these four tracks represent four individual live performances, unedited and recorded by others, rather than by the band themselves. The first is the final performance in 2008, recorded in Chicago. There is a wide open sense of ambience with clattering reverberated noises, dark stabs of noise, and slow building soft guitar work, hovering between minimal and maximal. About a third of the way through it dissolves into pure harsh chaos, but the melodic guitar never goes away, and an undulating rhythm causes the noise to clash with the less abrasive sounds.
The second track, recorded in Portland by renowned noisician John Wiese, has an intentional lo-fi quality to it. The hollow sound and ambient noises at the quieter moments feel much more "in the moment" than a sterile soundboard recording, but still accurately captures the subtle and quiet guitar loops and cold rustling sound that characterize the beginning of the show. When the track launches into crunchy, overdriven noise some clipping is obviously occurring, but it never eclipses the shrill scrapes and metallic guitar soloing and instead adds to the physical sensations that would have been felt standing in front of the PAs. The recording also captures a sense of discord that comes from playing to an unfamiliar audience (the band went on between a hip-hop act and a country band).
The noisier third performance is a live movie soundtrack performed by the band that focuses on the junk noise and electronic squall, but again allowing the melodic guitar work to appear, even if it is obscured by layers of fuzzbox grime. Even amidst the occasional guitar freakouts and air-raid siren electronics, there’s a feeling of spaciousness to the mix that is often lost in these sorts of performances.
The closing piece, recorded in Iowa at the end of their last full tour, has a more old school industrial sheen to it, with the deep, bass frequency pulses, squeals, and feedback. There’s a mechanical quality to the track that feels like it could be a lost outtake of an early SPK concert or a post-show riot at a Whitehouse performance. Less concessions are made to traditional “music” here, and instead the focus is on full volume assaults.
Surely the well of remaining material will run dry in the near future, however the increased sense of melody via Gabe Saloman’s guitar playing was a unique development that I would have loved to have heard more fully evolved. While they always did dark, murky noise very well, I wonder what the future would have held with the inclusion of more actual "music." Even as a closing statement, the four live sets here give some insight into what may have been. Or what could still possibly be…perhaps they just ran out of "D" words to precede the band name on releases?
samples:
Read More
