Klinikal Skum is one of many projects by Ryan Oppermann. This one is dedicated to and inspired by mental hospitals, psychosis, medical fetishes and a handful of other more interesting moments of life. This is one aspect of industrial music that interests musicians and is reflected in releases for more than 30 years. But it seems that there's still something new and interesting left to discover while dissecting seemingly always the same body of the human being and find there new objects of enjoyment. Well, that's the same kind of endless treasury of inspiration as porno, gore, darker side of humanity and so on. The cassette was released on Portuguese labal Narcolepsia. As always minimalistic cover with insert and song titles on it. And the tape with some interesting sound material. I've spent quite some time trying to tune my tape deck so that it would sound as I would imagine Klinikal Skum would've wanted this album to sound, but finally I've chosen the configuration that suited my ears best. I usually don't touch the deck, but the first long track "Medicine Grin" seemed requiring that. So many weird sound layers. This track does sound like a transmission from outer space. Dry noises and dusty feedbacks on the upper level of frequencies, distant pulsating rumbling and weird sounds moving from from left to right. It seems as if someone would be playing metallic bongs deeply underwater. The sound of the track is like listening to some radio program with huge amount of interferences. That slightly irritates, but also gives some interesting colour to the track. Weirdly full of everything opening song in twisted industrial mood. Though the second one began with rustle of interferences too, but soon they uncovered sweet massive monotonous fundament of bass which I was secretly expecting in the first track. The middle of "Pro-psychoactive paranoids" is subsided to dark melody of several bass notes and kind of rhythm with distant trills of feedback and noises. The beginning and the end of the track are dryer sounds. The third track starts with a surprise. I won't reveal that, but even listening to this record for Nth time, I still flinch and wish to take off headphones and turn back to see where noises are coming from. Nice. Further the track evolves into dreary and painful meditation sinking in oppressive loops. The other side of the tape starts from samples, destroyed in noises that gradually transforms into heavy ant repetitive synth notes. Different musical pictures are painted in background through different(ly) distorted samples. Well, with the title of the track "thought broadcasting channel II", Ryan revealed the secret about the transmissions! The next song is in somewhat creepy ghostly sci-fi mood. Intertwined lines of sounds from, it seems, noise generator, synth and perhaps field recordings forms that strange atmosphere. For the end of the album - the longest track. "Thought Broadcasting Channel". On the fundament of massive monotony, cranium is removed and brains cut with scalpels of rough sounds. You feel the clicks inside and after these something changes in your sight. Body is paralysed and the tongue transforms into poisonous snake. That's what this release is about. I think I'd have better written a short story about this tape and not a review. I don't even imagine what's the length of this album. But who needs that kind of statistics. Though the places with slightly too dry sound was not for my ears, but the bigger part of the album was something sincerely dark and homicidal. Spill the spirit on the wounds! Consulting hours of Ryan Oppermann starts!

Format: CS
Released: 2009
Label: Narcolepsia
Edition: 47