Beast Nest – A History of Sexual Violence
10.26.18 by Malocculsion

Bay Area sound artist, lecturer, curator, community organizer, and sound engineer Sharmi Basu is no stranger to the self-released cassette as a medium for advancing her own work, offering up nearly a half-dozen self-released cassettes throughout the least three years. However, none are as sonically diverse as “A History Of Sexual Violence.”

Basu’s densely present, malleable compositions are filled with a plethora of shimmering life-like tones. Her sound is poised and elegant, weaving ethereal layers of pulsating, swelling synthesizers, rumbling polyrhythmic drum machines, and a myriad of digital and analog glitches that span the human spectrum of hearing and beyond. “A History Of Sexual Violence” isn’t easily classified into traditional experimental sub-genres such as drone, noise, neoclassical, or even new age, but in its own unique way it does reference these strategies throughout its near forty-minute sonic excursion. Whereas many contemporary drone artists tend to introspect in a sea of tone poem ambiance, never offering a sound up for a larger interpretation or a deeper meaning, Basu’s sound operates by its own rules: The artist masterfully sets up through her complex, idiosyncratic systems.

On the album’s opening piece, Relief, Basu synthesizes the sound of large, cavernous, shifting earth-tones through a rhizome-like web of auditory relationships. Low, deep, humming drones are accentuated by smaller, clusters of hissing and buzzing actions, the dynamic of nature coming alive viciously yet elegantly in that exact moment. On arcing journeys through unexplored worlds these sounds require their own spaces for contemplation and experience, shifting around our inner ear until they eclipse the inside of our body and gently rest atop the spinal column.

When we reach the track Friends, Basu toys with a distant orchestral, ethereal drone accompanied by gentle, distant explosions, which quickly form into a percussion track, accelerating the mood and tempo rather quickly into an arpeggiated sea of tonal bliss. At this point the music once again has become complex and undefinable, which is refreshing to say the least. If one were to focus on just the synth arpeggios, they could pass as highly constructed classical riffs. The drones are their own cavernous offerings, and the musique concrète style of sample manipulation leaves the ear and the mind begging the question, where did these sounds come from, the past or perhaps the future? Distorted horns eventually crawl out of the background, laying a heavy and cacophonous plane for other voices to sing and glow into a distorted light that reflects back in through your ear and causes a blissful collapse to the cloud that has crept beneath your knees in slow motion. The sound of “ A History Of Sexual Violence” is complex as it is ethereal, deep as it is present, bright as it is confrontational. Beast Next articulates lucid glimpses of hope in a mucky, boot-trodden earth which has all but rid itself of the existential problem of (most of) humanity. Beast Nest is simultaneously an echo from a previous sonic event and the music of the future art’s eradication of white supremacy.

700 Bliss – Spa 700
9.4.18 by Malocculsion

Sometimes you pop in a tape not knowing what in the twisted world will belt out of the speakers – A cacophonous blast of harsh noise wall? The slued out or morphed in? Chirpy, abstract synthesizer bloops or chopped and mutilated yelling over pillars of feedback? – Even if one is familiar with the project in question, sometimes we just don’t know for sure. As soon as my 700 Bliss tape arrived in the mail from Halycon Veil, I eagerly knew it was time to find out. As I rolled a joint atop its Norelco case for the first listen, I knew by looking at the collage cover art, and knowing the personnel involved in this project, that “Spa 700” was going to be a sonic experience not quite like anything else I have jammed into my dusty, resin caked tape deck in quite sometime. 700 Bliss is a collaborative project between two renowned, artistically and politically radical Philadelphia based producers, MOOR MOTHER (aka Camae Ayewa) and DJ HARAM (also of the all femme DJ collective, DISCWOMAN.)

After the leader expires, a to-the-point, annoyed, and fed up sample lets us know just what we are in this life: Not funny, not entertaining, not smart. Just ANNOYING. We are quickly transported into dark, cosmic zones of dense and angry synthesizers accented with the slamming of thick bass drums and the first 700 lyrical histories of “SPA 700,” which remain true to Ayewa’s unmistakable and indelible style of lyricism. Armed with a sword-like, bleeding cadence – and a deep celestial knowledge – Ayewa begins the slaughter. With the glitches of Haram’s hauntingly pulsated production shifting space-time through portals and back into the club, Ayewa is freely able spit her psychedelically astute and poignantly dangerous vocal rhythms throughout the albums opener, and perhaps heaviest track, “Basic.” The entire album goes on to articulate the massive loss of black lives coming over on slave ships and violent tensions fueled by white supremacy and imperialism. Haram’s unique style of jazzy and heavy hybridized production (nodding elegantly to early footwork/juke, trap, West African New Wave Funk, dancehall, Charlie Parker, and Throbbing Gristle) melds into mountains of cascading peaks and troughs for Ayewa to slice jugulars with her uncompromisingly stark phrases. This is rap, this is industrial, this is club music, this is revolution music to slice the neck of your boss to. Eloquently wipe the blade on your pants and turn it up to eleven as if this twisted life never actually happened.

700 Bliss is the reality check we all needed. The sonic encapsulating structure of “SPA 700” leaks blood and futuristic knowledge into our empty cup, the education of the trash of imperialism, all while affirming the artists and their collaborators within their own uncompromising positions within the histories of futuristic sounds and societies. 700 Bliss’ music tells their unheard stories through an uncannily stark and real web of historical knowledge, black futurism, and sonic sorcery. 700 Bliss is radical protest music for the beginnings of a world which must leave this current place far behind to burn in peace. With “Spa 700,” 700 Bliss stands as one of the most sonically important contemporary electronic music duos to date. Which side are you on? (SORRY, you don’t get to choose, they do.)