— out of 5

Label: Auris Apothecary

Produced by: Unholy Triforce (?)

Y’all: I can’t listen to this. That’s… the point. That’s the point of Auris Apothecary’s “anti-” releases, and Unholy Triforce’s continually inventive ways of producing legit physical items that are designed to prevent someone from actually hearing what’s been imprinted upon them, and if you’re scratching your head in wonder at the Why of it, either you’ve been googling this band / concept out of curiosity, or you’re already sitting deep in a pile of anti-releases, and enjoying gathering whatever other info on them you can.

To the former, I’ve got nothin’ for you. You can call it an art project if that helps, but I would consider these distinct from something solely produced as art, as its a framework for the delivery of music… even if that music is inaccessible. We can get into a discussion on what any of this means or doesn’t mean, or if AA and Unholy Triforce just like fucking with us, but just like art (and music, for that matter), it ultimately boils down to “different strokes…”

To the latter, I’ve got nothin’ for you either, or at least nothin’ you can’t find by reading the Auris release page for this, or observing your own cassette in your by now glitter covered hands; there are supposedly two tracks on this thing, and I’m sure, like other UT recordings, they are noise (I mean, from that page – “The audio content features the amplified sounds of glitter being made by industrial machines, mangled into a callously obnoxious track of piercing tones and churning gears;” …Great!), but I’m not even going to experiment to see if I can extract the songs from this, and this is one of those Triforce releases that doesn’t seem to have digital floating around.

I could just rank the presentation on this, which is fun – I eked a few paragraphs of words about it above! – but I’d prefer rating based on the tunes + presentation, and so it feels disingenuous to force a ranking otherwise. This “review” thus exists just to give the internet some other page mentioning this thing, and declare that I enjoy having it in my collection alongside shattered discs and recordings with nails through them and etcetera.