“Christ, It’s Lonely” is the title of part three of the most recent release from Gary Mundy (of Ramleh) under the name Kleistwahr, and it’s about as good an indicator of the bleakness to be found mired on This World Is Not My Home as might be required to gauge its intent. Though the dense textures crushed and mushed into the album’s seven pieces (though the CD itself contains only one track) are filled with the sort of discordance and spasms also found in Ramleh’s outpourings of harsh, brutalist psychedelia, this is far more the sound of misanthropic discontent than the battering sludge purveyed by most so-called power electronics, eventually transubstantiated into pure ecstatic trance music with some curiously redeeming qualities.
“Tell The World You Tried” is the title of one portion of the album; that might possibly be the reaction of some listeners who only made it so far through what is initially something of an endurance test for the uninitiated. Mundy does bring melody and vocals of sorts into play, admittedly scouring them to purgatory and back, just the same as he treats the other sound sources; but as each movement leads to another, so moods heave and plateau, crepitating and flensing sound to the point of damnation and, more importantly, back again.
Over the album’s relatively brief 39 minutes, the range of moods varies considerably, especially given the noise genre and its general tendency to plug away until the momentum and/or ire runs out. Over the course of the whole work, it’s evident that there’s more at play here than the simple (and simplistic) blasting and spluttering of incoherent anger spasmodically into the void. The nihilistic shards of just-nearly too-intense cacophony accede to curiously effective layers of resonant drones weaving a calming passage between the cavernous slabs of almost physically present distortion. There are brief moments where the senses are lulled into a false sense of calm by relatively gentle washes of echoing delay trails and soaring skyscraper feedback which soon become rampant once more, sundering all before them in all their ear-popping, miscreant glory.
By the time the final shimmering streaks of blistered electronics have heaved their last hurrah, it’s like the aural equivalent of having had a particularly intense steam bath treatment, complete with pummelling massage and bracing plunge in the ice pool. So, by analogy, perhaps not an album to turn to every day; but when the senses need a thorough cleansing, this one will doubtless more than satisfy.
-Linus Tossio-
