Bruit Direct Disques / France / 2023 / LP, Printed inner sleeve
Ten brilliantly confounding provocations from Brisbane warlock Glen Schenau (Per Purpose, Cured Pink, Bent, earlier in Kitchen’s Floor, amidst others). Moods fall to various recognizable styles (postpunk lord, croonin’ Iggy full-chestal shake, soccer hooligan), buttressed by everything-is-a-drum percussion, a whole mess of dissonant struck-string/tin can telephone loops, and unconventional lead instrument choices. But there’s a spatial placement to these aggravated sounds that seats them at odd distances to your ear (some right next to, some from two rooms over), which gives the whole album a “shreds” quality that transcends the notion that music is some sort of joke. If “Tagging My Friends” or anything else here sounds like four songs being played at once, I’m taking the over: I just heard four new songs in a way that radically saved my time (and as we know, time is of the essence). There’s something about the very treatment of these riffs and the coating they’re given, like how the fairly easy/weird groove of “Melody Moody - The Re-Incision” becomes menacing over the runtime, that lands the same way The Shadow Ring tended to land, same as the Pheromoans, and let’s all land there on stilts - Doug Mosurock