Great cassette tape of evil, sick synth goop from Leandro Barzabal, an Argentine fellow living in Paris. His Bris De Clôture (SCUM YR EARTH SCUM TAPES 106) comprises six tracks where he torments the living daylights out of his custom modular synth.
The Parisian label that put this monster out has a story about seeing Barzabal play a live set where he seems to have taken over the situation much like an invading pirate boarding a galleon – in fact it’s not even clear if he was meant to be playing there. He did evil things with an electric guitar which have already passed into legend in the Le Marais district. Sadly there’s none of that guitar-mangling diablery on offer here, but even so it’s clear our man Leandro was born to be a “sadique” of the music world, remorselessly twisting any instrument or device that he can seize with his iron tongs. What I like mostly about this grisly lump of filth is the unceasing absurdity of it – it’s like he can’t stop himself from uttering one profanity after another, and he keeps going with it long past the point of common sense. It’s not the kind of dumb over-loud distorto noise that every harsh-wall impersonator used to come up with 20 years ago, rather an unending series of absurd and nauseating tones, and Barzabal acts as if he’s the custodian of some new facts and discoveries about the genre. He’s certainly determined to tell us about them at some length, whether we want to listen or not, and this eloquence extends to certain verbose track titles, some of which sound like a cross between a Surrealist poem and the instruction sheet for a piece of violent performance art. His conviction is remarkable, and parts of this tape really push at the barriers.
What a total fucking gem. I keep hoping there’s going to be a renaissance of good old-fashioned noise across the world; it’s probably too early to pin my hopes on this one tape, but it’s a great start. From 15th March 2022.
P.S. to hear his fiendish guitar work, maybe bend an ear to his Worst Guitar Playing on the Vice De Forme label.