The early ’90s were heaven for people like us. Postage was low, CDs became accessible in production, vinyl plants weren’t occupied by Adele or Taylor Swift, and people in the scene felt the urge to make statements. Statements of the kind where you were not afraid of possible consequences or retaliations connected to it. So music-wise, when it came to the underground or alternative scene, those were the days of Cold Meat Industry, Ant-Zen (both still active albeit in a different form) and Slaughter Productions. This last one was the brainchild of Italian-born Marco Corbelli, who we also knew as Atrax Morgue, A prolific, highly creative, sincere, beautiful and sadly also troubled artist who we lost – 37 years young – in 2007.
Slaughter Productions was his label, and he gave people a platform where others may be held back a bit. Not afraid to touch subjects like murder, necrophilia and alienation combined with styles like death-industrial, power electronics, harsh noise and dark ambient, the Slaughter roster gave birth to excellent releases, one of which EVERYBODY should have because of its meaning to the development of ‘our’ scene, being the “Death Odors”-sampler. I got that album in ’94, and it was how I heard of Megaptera, Shee Retina Stimulants, Atom Infant Incubator and (my personal favourite) Deaf Machine. So reading that Tribe Tapes was re-releasing three of the old Slaughter Tapes to CD, I was like… Damn, So good to see Marco’s spirit still living on and still having people paying respect and honour to the guy that did so much for us.
The third in the re-release batch of Tribe Tapes is a collaboration between Smell & Quim and Expose Your Eyes. “Non-Stop Pathological Gland-Sucking” – you can imagine the true meaning – is from 1996 and is a co-production between Slaughter and Stinky Horse Fuck Productions. Two half-hour eruptions with titles like we could expect from this bunch of madmen: “24 Hours From Lust A (Doggy Style)” and “Quim B Exposition (Variations)”. They went into puberty and liked it so much that they stayed there. The best thing about it? We became adults, and they misbehaved, so we didn’t have to. They are quite brilliant, and we should be grateful to them.
So I’ve listened to these tracks several times. And with all the love I have in me, I would like to write what it’s about, but I’ll start with the outcome: I can’t. Believe me, I’ve tried. It’s completely incoherent, but there are phases/fragments/parts in these tracks that are mind-tingling. It’s all a complete expulsion of energy, eruption maybe, explosion, extrusion, ejection… Something with an ‘E’, most probably. Parts of the tracks are deep noise drones, other parts completely incoherent harsh noise, then a sense of rhythm, then pure feedback. Sometimes it’s chaotic, sometimes structured (although: chaos is just higher-order stability, as we all know 😉 So well, yeah … I have no clue, but maybe because of being clueless, it’s so intriguing. But that’s also the whole noise thing. Does everything have a beginning and an end? Or do we need to stop focusing on trying to determine everything we don’t comprehend at once? Can’t you ‘just enjoy’ sounds? Or does it need to be explained? In a live setting with equipment, there is always the ‘Jackson Pollock’ factor; The movement of the artist in combination with the sound makes one able to make a connection. Look at some of the concerts on Youtube: A couple of guys in Elvis suits or wearing pig masks… I mean: This stuff doesn’t need an explanation; it just must be heard and lived.
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