Spasm

(Invisible)
by Lex Marburger

This is a recording of an impromptu concert held for about twenty people by Spasm, which seems to be a “Best Of” group, featuring Mark Spybey of Dead Voices on Air, Eric Pounder of Lab Report, Martin Atkins of Pigface, Curse Mackey of Evil Mothers, and, uh, “Satan.” Don’t ask me, that’s what it says. Anyway, this album is filled with what I guess you’d call “Industrial Ambient” or some such thing. Soft, creepy, extended sounds, mixed at times with elementary rhythms and feedback. The problem is that it tends to be neither Industrial nor Ambient. Traces of Drawings of Patient O.T. can be heard, but Neubauten’s terror is conspicuously absent. At the same time, the music falls between the grazing edges of sound on Apollo and the sonic overload of E.A.R. It neither lures you in with subtlety nor bonks you over the head with formless noise. The first few tracks are interesting (the songs aren’t named, isn’t that artsy?), because it feels like it’s building up to something, be it an FLA industrial assault, or a tribal dub á la Synapse Interrupt. However, after almost an hour of the same examples of subtle non-subtlety, I was itching for something else to listen to, be it Laswell’s soft sonic overrides, or Death Ride 69’s overboard onslaught.