Weeeeird… I have heard of the Rural Isolation Project label from Austin, Texas. I got some Knurl, Torturing Nurse and, of course, the En Nihil / No Visitors split. And there are a lot of familiar names on their roster that light up my face (John Duncan/ Black Leather Jesus, K2, Astro, JSH and Government Alpha, just to mention a few names). But “Megalithic Weather Corporation” by Steve Marsh contains music that comes close to none of what you could expect reading those names.
With a piano as the sole sound source, “Megalithic Weather Corporation” is as noisy as it gets without sounding anything like noise. There are no distortions over-compressed signals, just recordings that are properly mixed and produced into an experimental collection of tracks. And not even ridiculously played angry hammering noise. However, more the subtle sounds where the piano as such is still recognizable but with reverbs, delays and other effects, the directness of ‘playing a piano piece’ is changed into ‘working with the piano as sound source’. But as Steve is a gifted musician, he knows about tonal possibilities and which notes to combine or not combine. And sure, there are more ways to get sounds from. A piano (direct manipulation of the strings, using the body as a Cajon) and those sounds also have their place here (“Bon Bon Fabrika”). Still, most of it is recognizable as piano.
On his website, this release is promoted as dark ambient, which I don’t think covers the result. Sure, it’s dark and brooding, but this has nothing to do with ambient. Several tracks are very rhythmic, like the threatening “Fata Morgana”. Others resemble a little bit of the piano use of Nick Cave around the time of “Your Funeral, My Trial” (another happy, feel-good classic), like “Exit Strategy”. Towards the end, however (“Grand Guignol”, “Hard Targets”, and “Invisible Zoo”), the album gets more and more into dark ambient regions. And with a total of almost 30 minutes for those three tracks … It’s more like an album with two faces, or no, even three: The experimental noisy side, the improvisational yet tonal side and indeed a dark ambient side. Not bad at all, but maybe a bit too diverse to put it all on the same album.
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