Maybe it's happening too often that I describe releases as "weird", but the tape I'm listening to this evening also deserves this title. I still don't quite understand whether I like what I hear or not. Tape with 30 minutes of playing time was released on Side of the Sun label. It's a conceptual split between Mind Movies and Flesh Coffin - one side represents communication between sailors in a sinking ship, another - happenings at the bottom of the ocean after sinking. Idea is really interesting, but if I wouldn't have found this description somewhere in the internet, I could go on into philosophical ramblings forever for on the cover there's nothing mentioned about it. I've never heard Mind Movies before. Discography of this project consists of three tapes, one of which is this split. Communications between sailors are told in the sound of Mind Movies. A side starts from field recording - rain or underwater recording or something like that. Several effects are added after time, distant metal clanging, but the material is minimal and very moderate. The base of this side - static, slightly modified hiss and soft rumble based on mid-frequencies. Sound slightly changes, distorted by effects or by added new layers, but all in all, "Communication" is calm, heaving mass of field recordings and almost invisible manipulations that ends in continuous hiss, reminding of sea-sounds. Communication is stopped. We are transferred to the bottom of the ocean on B side. Flesh Coffin is one of many projects of Andreas Brandal, dedicated to harsh noise. It's multilayered field recording or at least it sounds like that. You can hear squeaking and softly rattling wood and loads of one-colored noise statics. Concrete sounds are covered and hidden under a curtain of statics and heard just episodically - to be swept away by waves of interferences right away. "Down" seems more concentrated and monolithic, though it exist in the same soundspace as "Communication" - somewhere between static field recordings and ambient. Interesting release because of a conception. And its bleak in sound. Static, colorless, minimalistic, weirdly empty and strangely associating with the cover of a tape with smiling sailors on it. Not quite my type of record, but it was interesting to listen to it. 

Format: CS
Released: 2010
Label: Side of the Sun