peter wright: snow blind (install): the terrifying realisation we could be wrong (dirty knobby)

so, buncha new stuff fresh from farfaraway new zealand this month.

firstly, the terrifying realisation we might be wrong 7” on dirty knobby. which is as existentially unsettling as the title suggests.  even the cover, a bleary washed out photo of an old woman nightmare, stares menacingly at me from some grim elseworld.  it’s a wonderfully ugly piece made from deliberately damaged instruments (bulbul tatang) and processed mic violence before settling into the wrightian (wrightian?!) textural vroom and swish and skree.  reminds me of david lynch’s eraserhead soundtrack. reminds me of the horror of decaying provincial towns.

the flip side is two shorter tracks which, aahhhh thank christ, soothe my shattered nerves with something approaching the traditional (drone) and the recognizable (guitar).  lovely hazy polaroid snaps which act as a nice counterbalance to the usual tentwentythirty minute beasts found on the albums.

secondly, the snow blind double cd on install.  mouldering away somewhere for a year and goddam it’s been worth the wait.  birthed during howling rainstorms (a fitting ambience for what’s contained within the two discs), it broods and prowls and skulks with pre-tempest grey sky tension.  and spits and snarls and wails with torrents of fucked guitar squall.  or given the intended theme/title, blizzard might be a more appropriately verbed noun.

the first disc opens with a recording of some rambling drunk’s religious wordspew, a preached mumble of satan and revelations before the track climaxes for ten glowing glowering orgasmic minutes.  sounds a bit like god explaining the end of the world by simultaneously exploding a hundred william basinkis inside every cathedral on the planet.

‘follow the leader’ even brings the riff into this post- whatever drone thing and sounds (to my warped ears) not unlike keiji haino covering godspeed you! black emperor.

it shifts musically and moodilly over the nine tracks like the seasons, tectonic drifts from ricocheting intertwining layers of twelve string bluster to oppressive tar thick blanketing drone to genuinely lovely warm liquid fuzz ambience.  it’s the most guitarmoured of his recent releases.

the second disc seems slower, full of huge bell / organ tones.  there’s an almost old testament religious feel to the whole thing, of night-time hymal or snowdoomed pastoral.  but one that looks to the earth rather than the sky.

that is until the wonderfully spiteful ‘with teeth like that you can’t help but succeed’ which starts with the reverbatory fuzz and klang of roy montgomery and mutates into this electrical snarling destructo monstrousness.  all churning static and unrestrained fury.

and it’s this physicallity, this emotion, that pulls me into the record. combining the city and the ocean into one dissonant polyphonic wash of cinematic noise.

i haven’t even begun to unpeel this huge beastly bulging bugger, teasing out the hidden kindof-melodies that blossom between the jagged shards of lo-fi hiss and vibrrratorrry chaos.  it’s one for headphones, for volume, for immersion.  can’t recommend this highly enough.  go get one of the three hundred here:

distant bombs / install / dirty knobby