2.21.20 by Ryan Masteller

It’s not fun unless you’re pounded with a psychosis-inducing amount of rhythm, right? That’s the Davey Harms way, and after one listen to “World War,” you, like me, will have an in-the-red attitude and outlook that’s only forward-moving, perpetual in its progress, and dangerous in its implementation. How else would something called “World War” be perceived by the populace? As a harbinger of unity? As a sign of utopia? As a cuddly kitten of comfort? 

Let’s pump it into the water table and see what happens.

Actually, Davey Harms has recorded under the moniker World War (as well as Mincemeat or Tenspeed), so none of this is actually a surprise – we’ve been subjected to this digital mayhem before, and on Hausu Mountain no less. Here Harms’s mechanistic techno thud is fully realized into a glowing electronic nightmare, garbled circuits leaking neon fluids and shorting itself at regular intervals and in time with the beat. Harms repurposes the sizzling corrosion into abject tunefulness, each rancid banger rippling with electricity and life as it creaks and clanks to its feet like a badly damaged terminator getting its lights turned back on. Then it dances like it’s in the “Thriller” video. That’s where all this is going.

Once this thing peters out, all you’re left with is that psychosis, the stinging aftereffects of multiple ordeals, the blurred vision and cloudiness of having your bell rung. You can shake your head to clear it, but it’s altered you now, it’s inside you, that mechanical futuristic crunch. Your own circuits have leaked their neon fluids … and since when did you have circuits? Have you been mutating this whole time, listening to “World War”? Have you somehow been linked to an impending cataclysmic evolutionary anomaly that hasn’t happened yet? Or have you already lived through it and this is your present now?

So many hard questions to answer. Too hard. Just listen.

“World War” is out on Hausu Mountain.

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