To witness Hogg in action is to be won over, even against your own best judgement. Hogg obliterates judgement. The Chicago-based noise/primal rock/performance art power duo of Emma Sims and Hanna Elliott compel you to edge up close to the stage and figure out what exactly the fuck is going on over there, man, like, what could possib—
All manner of instruments, little amps, blocks of wood, tom-toms, sheets of scrap metal, unidentifiable implements, etc., cover the floor around them. Sims and Elliott trade each other guitar for drum sticks. Both are howling into a microphone. The individual building blocks of each “song” seem impossibly slight — maybe one molasses bass riff, maybe a whispered monologue, maybe an oscillator squealing into the abyss — and yet everything serves its foul purpose. The band’s new Bury The Dog Deeper tape, out now via Nihilist, succeeds as a full-length statement by virtue of its stripped down diversity, its commitment to rending your skull clean open over and over with as few tools as possible.
Quoth Elliott:
“Don’t you try to label me.”
Quoth Sims:
“I’m a man. You’re not gonna stick your finger up my asshole and tell me you’re tickling my fanny.”
Sink too deep into Hogg’s corroded basement terrorzone and you might forget what makes “normal” music, or something, any good. I guess I forgot what makes normal music good a long time ago. Something makes it good, probably, but that something is not “the incessant pounding of a drum machine beat in tandem with a scuzzed out atonal riff, flecked by hellish screams,” so why bother ever going back?
• Nihilist Records: http://nihilistrecords.net/news.php
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