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Stillbirth/Prurient, "The Mirror of Purification"
Both artists on this brief 7" are going in directions that are perhaps unexpected with their sound, and that’s for the best. The Stillbirth track mixes elements of traditional noise and bits of music, while Prurient’s work is an electro-acoustic collage with some overt synth work that’s not far from something that’d be heard from his work in Cold Cave.
The Stillbirth track, "The View Untangled" opens with slow, menacing vibrations that are coupled with cutting shards of distorted noise. However, there is the occasional fragment of what sounds like an organ arising from the mist, and pieces of shortwave radio transmissions that are obvious, but just a bit too out of focus to be comprehended.
Dom Fernow’s "Where Secrets are Guarded" begins with rudimentary synth sequences that could be on a much more "pop" friendly track, but when mixed with the abstract rattling percussion and wavering tempo it won’t be on the soundtrack to any teen-oriented TV show this fall. The addition of the pained, moaning vocals and calm, lightly processed spoken word material keeps it in Prurient territory, though definitively in the more sparse, reflective category.
Clocking in at barely over six minutes, this split is a bit shorter than it should be, because it is a great example of two artists refining their own styles and expanding the boundaries of noise as more than just chains of distortion pedals and misogyny.
