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Betrayor

Betrayor sees Wolf Eyes members continuing to infect the CD-R marketvia another pseudonymous release, created by Nate Young. This, thefirst ever CD-R release on the infamous Fag Tapes cassette label, isapparently based on real instrumentation abuse rather thandeconstructing pure tones into scum sounds.

Fag Tapes

Forjust under 30 minutes Young deconstructs and brutalizes a series ofbrief piano melodies in the sonically ideal setting of some extremelyresonant workshop/torture chamber. Despite being only programmed as onetrack, Betrayor is broken up into several different sections ofincreasing violence. The main thematic pieces here are three to fivenote melodies which sound like cracked church bells slowed down to anarcotic piano peal. Phasing in and out of the foreground areglistening treble feedback whines which appear to have lost their waymoving from damp wall to damp wall. These disturbing echoes squeal likethe recently oiled rusty iron wheels of some terrible contraption andonly heap more dark onto the track.

These wrecked musicalmissives carry a kind of early Birthday Party / Bad Seeds tension intheir very deeply dislocated blues. Almost every single sound here,from the radio static whines through to the punched holes in the pianowood, has a coiling and uncoiling nastiness to it. The whiplash blastsof percussion and mechanical stallings are forced against singlethumpings of huge sides of meat to create unstable, arrhythmicscaffolding.

It’s left to reverberating plastic smacks togive it one last attempt to unsuccessfully build something more stablearound the chilly water drip sounds. A slithering snuffling aura flitsaround increasingly heavy blows to the piano as the musicality isthrown aside in favour of brutality. The instrument is taken apartpiece by piece, and the surgery sounds systematic and merciless. As itprogresses it becomes steadily more chaotic and noisy, giving way todigital rips like power tools overloading in a bucket of water.
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