3 out of 5

Label: Skin Graft

Produced by: Steve Albini

Powerful. Worthwhile. Puzzling. Self-defeating.

Brise-Glace brought together several Chicago indie avant-garders for some damaged art “rock” that kinda sorta made sense on Skin Graft’s “now-wave” scene, but could’ve floated through into more ambient or drone or noise labels as well… which is probably how and why it lands back on SG, the home of the genre-less.

Recorded as an improvisation of guitar, bass, drums, and some extras, B-G member Jim O’Rourke would then take to the material with a freely editing hand, cutting and splicing and giving it an ultimate mix of Steve Albini’s rootsy production. Most of the songs can be said to take a similar approach of unnerving static and keys and feedback and noise, glitching and stuttering until the drums will punch in after a few minutes, allowing for some subtly edited layering of pretty intense grooves, sped up and slowed down (manually? via Jim?) before punching right back on out to some exiting silence.

This works pretty damn effectively for some moody, jittery beats and noises on openers Neither Yield Nor Reap and Host of Latecomers, with followup Stump of a Drowner the album’s shortest, and most linear track of some Yona-Kit-esque drumming. All of this stuff kind of cuts before you can really find your feet, but Restrained From Do And Will Not (Leave) is the killer, in a bad way: it follows a similar template to the above but never quite gets to the same frantic or drone-like levels, remaining at an “almost there” midrange for about seven minutes… and then it’s 3+ minutes of damn near silence. Like, turn up your volume all the way and you’ll hear some recording hiss, and maybe an occasional shuffling of drumsticks. It’s an almighty fuck you to the listener who doesn’t want to skip this track.

Closer One Syntactical Unit brings it back together, though, going drone (like Stump) for a good long run – nearly 20 minutes – letting us sink in to Albini’s raw capturing of this stuff, and then B-G recruits some other scenesters to go full on noise assault for the final five or so minutes, excepting some outro static. Brutal.

I find the mix on this disc to be incredibly puzzling – the silence aside, even all the ambient stuff is mixed way low and without much detail, even when I’m listening on better headphones. I’d be curious to understand O’Rourke’s take on this, or if I’m not listening in some optimal way. …Or if it just needs a remaster.