5 out of 5

Label: self-released

Produced by: ?

In the midst of an ongoing slew of noise and drone releases, Matthew Bower dropped ‘A Crispy Void,’ which harkens back to… I don’t know, man, Transformer-era stuff? 25 years ago? Time is a flat circle. Or maybe it’s a crispy void, whatever that could mean, although with additional tracks called ‘Chunkraga’ and ‘Lost Cosmic Slop Debris,’ some matching imagery does get smudged into view: playing on SF sonic attributes such as raga, or spacey jams, or “voids” – which I’ll read as noise, or drone – and giving it some additional texture (debris; chunks; so on.)

Am I making that up? Of course. But nonetheless: I bring up Transformer as a relatively accessible SF album, which bridged the gap (y’know, via a long and rickety bridge) between noise and psychedelia, in such a way that the disc was accessible enough for a “regular” label like Sympathy For the Music Industry. While Void is a self-released CDr and shan’t be circulating on the same shelves as White Stripes releases, the vibe of shaping Bower’s barrage into something that resembles “songs” is the link: Crispy Void relies on the “usual” long-form repetition of a riff with a busy background burble of further distortion or noise, but the mix makes this stuff just so delightful – like the upfront riff is legitimately catchy, and like baby’s-first-solo just kind of playing pleasantly with notes; the background burbles is formed enough to act like an actual melody. …And song transitions! Things don’t just end abruptly: you’ll notice a few song titles are linked by ellipses, and that’s represented in the material, where one track may invert the other (bringing the background forward, or just going quiet when the preceding is loud), with enough uniqueness per song such I can actually call these out of a song list, much like early, early SF (and Transformer, and maaaybe up through Orange Canyon Mind or something).

This is still the noisefest / psychdelic drone you want, but it’s also an album that could be tolerated by more genteel company. Decades on; non-stop releases – digitally, CDr, cassette – and Bower (and associates) still produces music that I not only adore, but that can surprise me.