Wilderness is the latest album by the free improvising duo that is Star City Survivor who do battle over these three pieces with Phil Venables on guitar and Tommy Jackson playing all the drums and percussion, as this session was recorded live in one take at Hondo Creek Studios by Mike Nicholson. My thoughts may well be a touch improvised too.
The album opens with Loss that has a nice tape hiss with improvised guitar, supple tympanic percussion that feels like it's deep in thought, with reveries of what's no longer here, the malaise of the 2020's laid bare, as rim shots feel like stray bullets piercing hearts, the guitar wails in agony, as it's skin has been ripped asunder. Gunfire and agony are all encompassing, barrages of missiles wailing agonized strains of the last shreds of hope distort from the mewling guitar brawl, before the drums fade out.
A Descending Visitation has exigent guitar being attacked by all manner of drums and cymbals, thunderstorms rage, as the buzzing in your head becomes too much, no amount of shards of guitar flailing at the edges can stop the drums from forcing you to retreat within your cocoon to escape the barrage. Escarpments descended as shale shakes loose, how will you survive or thrive against the onslaught, too much information, the overload of insanity. Bring me the head of Fred Firth, prepare to disembowel the sounds in your brain, as the world flies down the drain, intrusions of noise symbolized cymbal showers, disasters cascading with molten lava, quaking eruptions.
The album concludes with the 25 minute long In A Barren And Howling Waste that opens quiet and tremulous, as odd bass notes are joined by shimmering cymbals considering the need for evolution, slow metastasized notes are wrung from Phil's guitar as he is imperilled by the all-consuming cymbal's crushing his thoughts, drums roll around the cavernous space, buzz saw guitar figurines exemplar's of tragic agonies, decayed democracies diseased decimation, drilled concave variations of destructive urges within the ever propelling need to create. Ultimate ululations of creased notes simmering within frying pan cymbal flourishes. Extrusions wah wah through the looking glass, screeds of notes disciplining disciples do not allow earplugs. Convulsions crashing crushing your mind, revolution must occur, sanity can never return before then, have you the yen to give the haters a run for the money, can you envision the flailing arms among the cymbals, as the guitar growls on the prowl. Quizzical quintuplets of drummed distortions ground to dust empirical mewling six stringed abuse motif leaving ears ringing in tinnitus filled ecstasy.
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