The members of the world of “noise” have been largely veering away from the screeching blasts of feedback and white noise and have instead shifted their focus to crafting pieces that, while not exactly “harsh,” are still physically unsettling and creepy. This occurred to me when I saw a recent performance by Aaron Dilloway on an excellent bill that also featured John Wiese and Jason Lescalleet. All three of these dudes are capable of making some of the most brutal shit imaginable. (I remember listening to Wiese’s Magical Crystal Blah Vol.3 three times in a row during college, making myself viscerally ill in the best way possible due to all of the record’s harsh frequencies.) However, at this show, Dilloway, Wiese, and Lescalleet focused more on creating works that were deeply eerie, always threatening to explode but never quite doing so — prime examples of what Nate Young described as “the spook.”
With this in mind, Dilloway’s Opened Door may be one of the most thorough examples of this aesthetic to date. The two sides of Opened Door never really shock with volume or frequency, but a constant threat remains. With these two pieces, Dilloway weaves a murky, often clangorous tapestry out of his signature setup. At times, the B-side has a beautiful fractured quality to it, like one of Nate Young’s Regression experiments without the synth sheen; the A-side even has a beat. But despite the musical nature of this material, Opened Door is still wonderfully haunting and full of dread. Dilloway and his cohorts seem to have figured out that noise doesn’t always have to work with the same signifiers in order to affect a listener viscerally, and it’s fascinating to witness.
Opened Door is out now via Chondritic Sound. You can stream the album in its entirety below:
• Aaron Dilloway http://www.hansonrecords.bigcartel.com
• Chondritic Sound: http://www.chondriticsound.com
More about: Aaron Dilloway
