HHL, Thrall, United States, Monorail Trespassing, cassette [mt105cs] (2016)
Cassettes are increasingly becoming more prevalent as the format of choice for small upcoming labels that can only afford tiny print runs of their releases. Step forward the unforgettably named Monorail Trespassing who so far has a few cassette and digital releases to its name. One cassette that’s just come out is “Thrall” by HHL, a noise / power electronics one-man band following in the path established so many years ago by Whitehouse and Maurizio Bianchi. Brent Rellstab-Randel is the man in charge of HHL and he lives in Orange County in California.
The entire recording is a forbidding musical experience and only if you’re prepared for its textural rigours will you find much to enjoy. Side A “Ascribing Intent” is full-on harsh grinding, scraping drone suggestive of a plane winding its way through storm clouds with a hurricane or typhoon not far behind it. Winds buffet the plane about and the flight crew is desperately trying to keep it on course, even as rain batters the wings and tail-fin. Dust and grit fly into the engines and this listener gets the feeling that paint is tearing off the wings as particles leave skid marks. The inevitability of continuing chaos, the seeming passive determinism of the music actually has a calming effect and this may be the most terrifying aspect of all, akin to the calm and peaceful feeling some people apparently experience while being attacked by bears and having their heads between the animals’ jaws. As the music continues, it starts to clank under a lot of reverb that has the unfortunate effect of muddying and blurring the layers of drone and noise.
Side B “Absolving Guilt” – the album and track titles suggest a concern with psychological enslavement through an emphasis on personal guilt for sins committed, such as might be proclaimed and repeated over and over by institutional forms of Christianity – starts off less noisy and grating but more sinister with its shovel-scraping noise and background wind tunnel sigh. When the heavy industrial paint-stripping bludgeons its way onto the tape, it’s with a relentless and brutal savagery that leaves no stone untrammelled and crushed into smithereens into the ground. Voices can be heard deep within the churn, as though they were originally part of a field recording. Gradually the noise changes and becomes softer on the ear to the point of becoming inaudible – but an uneasy feeling stays with you after the tape ends.
Well yes, listening to this work can be something of an ordeal, with the sounds and scrapings of a crazed machine juggernaut crawling over gravel and swallowing up everything in its path, and leaving naught but dust in its wake. It can be monotonous but at the same time you can find yourself obsessively following the monster as it morphs into unexpected forms. After the recording finishes, you realise there was a definite structure behind it all and the whole thing did make sense after all. Your head and mind can feel very clean, purged of all darkness; whether this purging is necessarily good for you or bad for you over time is something you have to decide for yourself. Constant purging can be an addiction and sometimes the darkness, the guilt and the shame you might be constantly feeling are telling you something important that you have to confront.