Pandemia (NEUMA RECORDS Neuma 168) is intended as an apocalyptic pandemic album, maybe imagining a soundtrack for the end of the world, except its creator is far from despondent and remains defiant in the face of the plague. “Maybe the pandemic has finally met its match: a response so visceral – such an unrelenting, coordinated sensory assault – that it will be forced to retreat whence it came,” roars the feisty text in the press release. I guess this is a solo work; Red Gnein Sextet is just an alias for American trouble-maker Collin J Rae, an experimental punk-noise type who is also a visual artist, and active since the late 1980s. He was a member of Ultra Vivid Scene, Telium Group, Slug, and many others.
This particular album is linked to a visual statement of his, two books of photographs called Pandemic Portraits, and we can see some samples of the distorted visages, printed in many a garish hue, on the cover artworks here. I think, with these photos, Rae wanted to bring out something of the insanity and unhinged states of mind that bubble under the surface in all of us, and which started to emerge more noticeably during the time of international lockdown when we all became stir-crazy freaks. The sound art on the CD is pretty compelling too – not the unfettered noise-assault some of you may have been expecting, but a brilliantly realised set of layered collages, perhaps using field recordings and electronic elements. The cumulative effect is of an unstoppable wind, a malign force of nature sweeping across the barren plains, ignoring humanity and blind to all but its own survival as it sweeps its scythe. (26/04/2023)