For every upstart youth that cobbles together some tape decks and contact mics, adopts a grisly moniker (“Double Trilldo Gaggins”), and slouches into the underground noise circuit, there exists a slew of OG heads who have been there/done that for going-on-two-decades now. You might not see these champions’ names plastered in white block letters on a Red Bull flyer, but they’ve pounded out more solo, duo, trio, and collective releases than you have Snapchat contacts. They’ve moved beyond the likes of loop pedal jams, static synth meditations, and no-input mixer feedback, and have drifted idea by idea into the more rarefied echelons of noise/drone experimentation. They aren’t stopping any time soon. They’ve heard enough to know what still remains to be heard.
Steve Kenney shattered minds alongside Aaron Dilloway (in Galen, and in Isis & Werewolves) and Nate Young (in Demons) as a member of formative experimental projects in the 90s and 00s. His solo catalog features releases on such bastions of the underground as Andrew Coltrane’s Hermitage Tapes, Heath Moerland’s Fag Tapes, and Mike Haley’s 905 Tapes. Night Warning, his second solo tape on 905 Tapes, and first since the label’s recent tatted-up visual reincarnation, offers two fifteen minutes slabs of otherworldly synth murk cushioned in tape hiss. Side A smears a respectable four chord progression through filters and effects processes, yielding a hallucination of half-remembered tones that creeps into your psyche with each recursion. Side B shifts through a series of synth drifts and queasy atmospheres, and sinks into a suspended animation vibe not too far from SAW2 before rebuilding itself into a horror-score zombie crawl complete with a languorous drum machine.
Night Warning is available to order as part of 905 Tapes new batch, which also includes sure-to-destroy solo works by Witchbeam and Mr. Matthews of Telecult Powers.
• 905 Tapes: http://905store.blogspot.com
More about: Steve Kenney
