SD24
Katchmare + Antler Piss - AUTOMATIC WEDDING
c20
Released 2008
45 copies

Track List:

A. Kettles of Horn
B. Ancestor


Reviews:


Heathen Harvest

Katchmare + Antler Piss "AUTOMATIC WEDDING"


Katchmare + Antler Piss' recording Automatic Wedding is a tape of twenty minutes. That's right, old fashioned cassette with two sides and two spools of magnetic tape containing sound. The cover depicts a waterfall and is as uninformative as the format is inaccessible. All we get to know is the name of the tape, it's creators, track names catalogue number and label url. The only interesting piece of information is the, perhaps somewhat anachronistic "recorded by mail". To me, a man in his early thirties tape and e-mail belongs to two different eras. In a way I guess this juxtaposition is a way to underline the timelessness of the material. Or maybe I'm reading too much into it. Fact remains: Katchmare and Antler Piss recorded these tracks on tape as a result of an internet collaboration.

Automatic Wedding is a piece, or rather two pieces, of pure unadulterated old school noise. As noise goes however it's a rather comfortable listen, atleast to experienced listeners. The sheer abrasiveness and harshness of Hijokaidan or Masonna, or the extreme shock of Gerogerigegege, or the dynamic chaos of Merzbow is nowhere to be heard. Instead we are left with something like ambient noise. In a way the recording is something half way between Sunn O))) and eighties japanoise.

The first piece, Kettles of Horn takes up side A of the tape and is certainly the harshest of the two compositions. It consists of drones and scraping noises in a landscape ascending slowly towards a sonic hill. It never gets too extreme however. Track two, Ancestor is less noisy, and much more minimalist in approach. It is clearly ambient by design and sounds a bit like a slightly muffled sine wave against a blowing wind. The track ends rather abruptly after a sudden fade.

There is hardly any development in either of the two tracks, but they never get boring. They are soothing, as soothing as noise can get, and meditative. They never fail in their focus. It might not be the most memorable sonic slab I have heard in my life, but it certainly acheives its aim. Automatic Wedding is of course also very respectfull towards the roots of the genre, with overt references to tape trading and lo fi recording. The patina of a tape is somewhat more meaningful in a genre that spawned Monte Cazazza and Grey Wolves than in the trite world of U2 and Coldplay.




Ruido Horrible

Katchmare + Antler Piss - Automatic Wedding (Scissor Death, SD24, 2008)

Drones lentos, conectados a distancia, se enlazan entre la ríspida decadencia de sus bordes, repletos de estática. Su flujo por momentos es terso, por otros es punzante, como cuando se desarroll entre oscilaciones, "Kettles of Horn" puede llegar a recordar por momentos las siempre incómodas maniobras entre dulzura y orpobio de Slow Listener.
Por su parte, "Ancestor" es un drone que parece al borde del derrumbe, luchando para abrirse paso entre el gis de la señal magnética. Muy en el fondo yacen dinámicas atonales como corrientes subterráneas que se trenzan como hilos fantasmales en el cuerpo del estertóreo canal principal. Un bello momento. (S.S.)




The One True Dead Angel

Katchmare + Antler Piss -- AUTOMATIC WEDDING cs [Scissor Death]

This brief (twenty minutes) but intriguing release is apparently a collaboration by mail between Katchmare and Antler Piss, with one track on each side. "Kettles of Horn" is mostly agitated harsh droning with various overmodulated examples of things thrumming, vibrating, or threatening to break up; it's not an all-out assault on the senses, but it's still pretty obnoxious in its own way, and thoroughly grounded in subterranean screech. It bleeds with repetitive, throbbing drone and the distant din of whirling knives before grinding to a halt in a series of echo-laden disruptions. The flip side, "Ancestor," employs some different sounds and a more fluctuating set of dynamics, but is otherwise pretty much in the same ballpark, aesthetically speaking. The collaboration in general has a reasonably good level of quality and an interesting approach to textured sound collage, and the tape's brevity keeps them from lapsing into extended self-indulgence or tedium. The liner notes are pretty much nonexistent and the artwork (a photo of rocks in a riverbed) is simple and divorced of any relation to the album or song titles, which just adds to the mystery vibe.




Vital Weekly

KATCHMARE & ANTLER PISS - AUTOMATIC WEDDING (Cassette by Scissor Death)
Not much info on this release, but apparently its a collaboration between Katchmare and Antler Piss, two bands I never of. They collaborated by exchanging files through e-mail and the two pieces on this twenty minute tape is the result. Two quite different results actually - I could easily believe that each participant did his own version, but we don't know who did what here. 'Kettles Of Horn' on the a-side is a distorted piece of drone music. Not really over the top noise, but certainly quite a heavy beast and not relaxing in terms of drones. 'Ancestor' on the other side has that quality - it's drone based and ambient, and works much better. Its much softer also with carefully processed sounds. Not that we know what it is that they do, or what kind of instruments they are using, but certainly the b-side is quite beautiful. (FdW)