Western Massachusetts' loudest deadhead Josh Landes has followed up his live set Unrelenting Barrage of Flowers and Amethyst Energy from last year with a new studio album (well, at 18 minutes, it counts as an album in the noisecore world) that furthers his legacy of intensity and absurdity. Balancing electronic blowouts with creative field recordings, it is another disc of explosive fun.
Admittedly, these 23 songs (that are only around 30 seconds each in length) sound like broken up segments of three longer pieces rather than individual pieces. They flow consistently into one another, with each track marker opening with a vocal outburst and what sounds like Landes restarting the max BPM drum machine. Beyond that, the sizzling electronics and sputtering noises continue uninterrupted from one short burst to the next. Burnt White Elephant makes for the most chaotic of his albums that I have heard thus far, with the erratic electronics blasting from beginning to end, but never in the form of loops or anything sequenced. It is more like Landes set his gear up and just rolls it down a hill, and I mean that as a compliment.
Around these short blasts, he includes a series of field recordings captured around the Berkshires region, something like "Wormholes and Megaliths" featuring what sounds like rain and passing by a jazz band, while "Van Deusenville Railroad Blues" is exactly what it sounds like: the sound of trains passing through. The album closes on “Harry Bids You Goodnight” which is just shy of one minute of a snoring cat. Intentional or not, Burnt White Elephant seems like a day in the life of a noise artist: harsh, distorted art outbursts punctuated with the quiet mundane nature of life.
Like every Limbs Bin release I have heard, Josh Landes again blends the intense with the absurd. His work is as aggressive or violent sounding as any great harsh noise/power electronics/whatever genre release should, but devoid of the macho posturing or juvenile provocation. Instead it is just the right amount of silliness that makes the chaos and hostility fun, without dulling its impact in the slightest.
Samples can be found here.
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