5 out of 5

Label: Skin Graft

Produced by: Weasel Walter

Sure, give it 5.

I admittedly again did the “how is this not Arab on Radar?” double-take, given the similarity in singing and guitaring and drumming and Weasel Waltering, but AIDS, again, isn’t A.O.R.; for the latter’s adherence to, essentially, songs, AIDS Wolf is certainly a proponent of noise, and Dustin’ Off the Sphinx, at an evilly awesomely brief 4 tracks (plus, on CD, the 7 bonus ‘pas rapport’ cassette-release tracks), is the noisiest of the noise, a blinding (?) assault made by four kids howling and banging on instruments.  And to unprepared ears, it certainly stops there, but if you’ve warmed up with other AIDS (or Skin Graft) releases, you can sense method to the madness… even if the end result is madness all the same.  Previous A.W. releases I might call out songs, but the line is blurry here.  I can mention how opener ‘Old Fashioned Values’ sounds like shit in a beautiful way, though, the drums like tin cans and the vocals like they were shouted through a kazoo – all down to Walter’s understanding of this kind of stuff when behind the boards.  And third track Abortifacient is somehow even more blazing fast than the other blazing fast tracks.  I made the mistake of turning it up to hear the vocals upon first spin and almost shredded my ears, because discerning one element over the other is quite not the point.  I’ve grumbled in a few recent reviews about when elements of a disc are mastered louder than others, causing you to have to turn the volume down all of a sudden, but I’m okay with the earache when the group’s upfront about it from the get-go, and there’s no doubting it here: Dustin’ is primed to kill.  So only keep it up loud if you want to die.

The addition of the bonus tracks definitely enhances the listen, for as crisp and high-pitched as the Sphinx tracks are, there’s a pause before the “instant compositions” (which we’ll say means improvised to tape) of ‘pas rapport’ kick in, and they’re just as noisy, but in a much lower register and stick around for a couple of minutes longer.  The ‘songs’ are more ‘listenable’ in this sense, with the recording heavily distorted and mostly sounding like drums.  It’s a valuable palette cleanser to fluff out the listen, and acts as a breather if you want to go back around to experience the heart-attack of the actual EP once more.

I mean, sure, 5 stars might be misleading: I’m not singing along to these tracks.  But this is one of the most concise and effective applications of no-wave noise I’ve heard, and that deserves some notice.