k-punk
Spectres of Mark
CDs arrived yesterday and are predictably fabulous -
atm my favourites are Renegade Legion - forbiddingly but compulsively abstrakt, like an alien unlifeform stalking vast underground titanium corridors - and Cypher's 'Frozen Boom Erection' which is not as mentasmatic as its title suggests, but spaced out and quasi-sino -
what i love about gloomcore is that
(1) it has a consistent philosophy, a conceptual world - like all genre production, it is not about 'self-expression' but the exploration of certain conceptual, affective and sonic permutations - I guess an alternative name for it would be Gothic rave, rave beyond the pleasure principle - Acadipane really fingered this in that quotation Simon cited in his piece: "Imagine surveying earth after nuclear destruction and enjoying what you see, that's how it feels when you listen to it." * - it's so true!
(2) the sound actually delivers what the track titles promise - I remember being crushingly disappointed with heavy metal as a kid because the titles would invoke all manner of infernal practices but when you got to hear the music it would just be hoary old rock and roll - like all rave, gloomcore is not 'music' at all and it revels in the 'machinic surplus value' of new technology, the potentials for production of abstract sounds that have no correlate in nature.
* Does anyone know where there are any other interviews with Acardipane btw?
Been fascinated by what they play upstairs at the Slimelight, which is another version of Gothic Rave - not quite gloomcore, but traversing some of the same forbidding sonc wastes - it's sometimes referred to as Power Noise and it's like 'rave Merzbow' - the indifferentist impersonalism of Merzbow (much of his stuff sounds like recordings of the sun) with a beat - acts like Winterkalte, Terrorfakt and Hypnoskull, who sound like an earth scorched or frozen to the point where human habitation is no longer possible - there's so much distortion on the percussion that listening to it is like putting your body into a threshing machine - bliss! Does anyone know anything about this stuff?
(Also, I know Matt is justly wearied by making all manner of CDs for folks, but I'll be happy to make copies of the gloomcore CDs for ppl - first five folk to contact me with their address can have em).
atm my favourites are Renegade Legion - forbiddingly but compulsively abstrakt, like an alien unlifeform stalking vast underground titanium corridors - and Cypher's 'Frozen Boom Erection' which is not as mentasmatic as its title suggests, but spaced out and quasi-sino -
what i love about gloomcore is that
(1) it has a consistent philosophy, a conceptual world - like all genre production, it is not about 'self-expression' but the exploration of certain conceptual, affective and sonic permutations - I guess an alternative name for it would be Gothic rave, rave beyond the pleasure principle - Acadipane really fingered this in that quotation Simon cited in his piece: "Imagine surveying earth after nuclear destruction and enjoying what you see, that's how it feels when you listen to it." * - it's so true!
(2) the sound actually delivers what the track titles promise - I remember being crushingly disappointed with heavy metal as a kid because the titles would invoke all manner of infernal practices but when you got to hear the music it would just be hoary old rock and roll - like all rave, gloomcore is not 'music' at all and it revels in the 'machinic surplus value' of new technology, the potentials for production of abstract sounds that have no correlate in nature.
* Does anyone know where there are any other interviews with Acardipane btw?
Been fascinated by what they play upstairs at the Slimelight, which is another version of Gothic Rave - not quite gloomcore, but traversing some of the same forbidding sonc wastes - it's sometimes referred to as Power Noise and it's like 'rave Merzbow' - the indifferentist impersonalism of Merzbow (much of his stuff sounds like recordings of the sun) with a beat - acts like Winterkalte, Terrorfakt and Hypnoskull, who sound like an earth scorched or frozen to the point where human habitation is no longer possible - there's so much distortion on the percussion that listening to it is like putting your body into a threshing machine - bliss! Does anyone know anything about this stuff?
(Also, I know Matt is justly wearied by making all manner of CDs for folks, but I'll be happy to make copies of the gloomcore CDs for ppl - first five folk to contact me with their address can have em).
