A new stash of Love Earth Music hit the office doormat this week and the first one that hits the tray is “Scissors” by Flesh Shuddering. For me a new name and it seems Caleb Crittenden is the man behind this project. There have been several releases since 2020, of which a few are released by the ‘usual suspects’ like Abhorrent A.D., Tribe Tapes, Serrated Tapes, as well as Caleb’s own label Cruel Symphonies. This latter I had not heard of before, with an excellent roster of past releases where SBTDOH, The Rita, Knurl, Dosis Letalis, Vincent Dallas, G.X., Kadaver, Xome and L’Eclipse Nue are just the names I also find in my private collection. So yeah, fun, DIY, noisy and loud should probably fit the general direction of where to think.
So how is my first encounter with Caleb? Well, not unpleasant at all. From the first sounds, it’s loud, in your face and obnoxious, so it’s exactly how I like my harsher noise. However, the 45 minutes of this one go through several states of harshness and sound specifications. At some moments, the compositions have an analogue feel (“Isolated”, “Zeitgeist”), creating some deeper layers in the frequency spectrum, while at other moments, it seems to be done more within the digital domain where – yes, personal opinion – I sometimes miss the depth of lower harmonics. Examples of the second might be “Exhibit A” and “Depatterning”. And no, it’s not a validation of the quality of the compositions; It’s just a remark. After all, noise is about experimentation, and if there is one thing that Caleb does on this album, he does not run away from experimentation.
The subtitle of this album is ‘Data Scanning, Formatting, and Distribution Systems’, and I have no clue what to make of that, especially not in relationship to scissors. I mean, yes, the album has moments of cut-up noise and weird samples fed into the compositions, but I doubt that is what the message is. And the drawing inside from a sent signal from a message from sender to receiver through encoding and decoding through the noise… It’s not making it any clearer for me. Although listening to the album made me think about modulation and demodulation of sounds. And to be invited to believe by a fellow artist is a great thing in my book. Thanks Caleb!
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