by Pearson Greer

Crumbling empire, for sure. Undesirable though, I don't know. Goblin mode is a thing some people like, and Spife has staked a claim in this territory, with cold iron previously blooded by rearranging a dragon's guts. Or something. There is no 'folk' in this 'dungeon folk'. Indeed, DF is just a quick way to put you in the horrific picture which he and his acolytes paint. But it's definitely dungeon-ess, and I don't mean like the crabs, dear.

Much like an actual CNN set, a quick left turn is made. Sons Vide emerges and represents with a live track about the length of half of a sitcom. Honeyed volume swells, fret buzzes, and a quietly tinkling banjo slowly denature in the bag they succulently float in. The meal is plated and a perfectly tender voice is present for the first time. Delicious. Tuck in lads, don't be shy.

So far Chattanooga has been playing ball control, they've really established the atmosphere, but can they run it up the middle? Which is where Cooperative Future begins the exhibition of the deep platoon we have at the IDM spot. Succour/Starethrough-era Seefeel fans will have much to love here with the flanged Elektron beats for days and the cozy blanket of ambience around it. This would not have been out of place at the DEMF or Decibel Fest.

Slow Blink's track "Perseids" is a great example of how her music is both the moth and the flame. There is both flickering and fluttering. You are fascinated by the central loop- the porch light, if you will- and the light is indifferent to your looping flight about it. If you let your wings go limp, you can lose yourself between lamp and bug very easily in the SB sound. Right now, the cicadas outside blend perfectly with the track. Amanda's got a great backing band like that.

All this tentative, pensive, contemplative energy may have given the impression Chattanooga is a finesse team. And this is where your plan goes out the window with the punch to the face of Second Location. No matter the project, Our Man Reed brings a wall of tweeter torture and woofer porn that is compelling and unignorable. Where do you go after a couple of decades of drumming in excellent bands? Right into pure sonic worship, but not the blissed out kind, more like the bum scalding you might welcome after a particularly bad Crohn's flareup.

Oh fuck, Easy Puzzles has a drum sound! But I kid, EP never needed one, this is just another lovely texture well placed. The Cocteau Twins' project "The Moon and The Melodies" is a good way to prep someone to their sound, but without mother goddess Fraser to rely on for vocals. Alan coaxes a very rich sound from his guitar and pedal board, and Roddy's sax reminds you why the instrument need not be confined to jazz and worse, ska.

I'm not reviewing my own track. I hope y'all like it.

The other half of the CNN power rush is Leviathans of Black Hollering. Our mainstay, our community organizer, and well, to me, our standard for blackest HNW. Like being in the jaws of a beast that vibrates its food to death, it is. Discerning one noise artist from another can get you into some deep epistomelogical shit, as Stephenson would say, but you get to know the differences between one artist and another. For Aaron/LOBH, it is indeed a leviathan of a sound, and there is no room for lesser ideas.

Full disclosure, as I said, I'm on this comp too, and while I do stuff with beats, I often shy away from them because I do not have the control and full spectrum dominance of someone like Poxy Design. Joseph is tickling all the Warp/Rephlex/Skam wiggle spots here. There's those who play things and those who play at things- Joe PD plays things. An undeniable internal logic is at play which delights the private mathematical genius inside us all. I'm sick with envy and the desire to learn my own machines better.

I use a lot of sports metaphors, but Leperwitch's track makes me think of one possible use for the xenomorph — to terraform an environment by desolating everything in sight, until all that is left is just goop and carbon for recycling. The filter sweeps and overdriven voice make me think something incredibly obvious and yet not obvious enough for it to be realized — Why Doesn't Sunn Have Female Vocalists? I'm so happy Dora exists, and that she shows a peek into a world where Black One had witches as well as warlocks on voxes.

Like a palate cleanser comes Jered Scott Walz's piece.

“Color is the fruit of life” - Guillaume Apollinaire.

And such is the piece here, it's like a long shot of nothing but lens flare and an excuse for some Foley design to set up Refn's hero emergence.

Crenars is concrete. Sand. Water. Lime. All moving in geologic time. No high frequencies allowed. Telluric vibes. Again, the depth of the scene astounds me. Maybe I've gone too native, but even within the jokes and memes of the noise scene, one must pedantically point out "Well, there's HNW, there's industrial, and there's concret'..." Crenars is not totally concrete; there is an absence of overthought. This is not a bad thing.

Lost Engines sounds as their name suggests. A machine left running to the peace and solitude of a solar-powered phone in the boonies, next to its attendant light. Only insects and the stars attend its output. As metal contracts and expands with the heat and cooling of the day, so do the vibrating, emanations of LE.

For the uninitiated, it may be hard to tell Second Location from Rurnt and vice versa. I am here to tell you on tape it's just as hard for the initiated. One chief difference I notice is the VWANG tone. VWANG is a delay/modulation knob tweak. HNW with the VWANG tone is everything. Without the VWANG tone, you are serving noodles without protein.

Again, I am not reviewing my own project with Quiet Montanas.

We end with Baby Magic. Here's a bit of a limitation of the comp: I feel like this is music truly contextualized by seeing it live. Jason comes to instruments as a beginner, or amnesiac, or willfully memetically incontinent, but the effect is TRVE experimental music. I love, dig, and respect everyone's takes on the outer limits of sound, but/and J is on a course of experimentation which is truly distinct from the courses of working within known sounds and abilities to manipulate them. It truly is about the journey here.