[15 PLN for Cassette // Edition of 10 // 10 PLN for Download //
https://jasien.bandcamp.com/album/kompostownik-2014]
This begins with three tracks from Dubcore, which I believe would be Side A. It starts with a sort of muted audio clip so I cannot quite figure out what is being said. There are car doors opening and closing and then what could be bucket-style percussion. It's on the quieter side, somewhat minimal in a sense but it also feels like we're out in the middle of nowhere somewhere and someone is just recording what's going on around them. Slight static and a harmony can be heard in the distance. The dinging of perhaps a train bell, the percussion is ever-present here. The cackling of a bird, the ripping of tape, such as one would do if they were about to duct tape someone or something. A knock and running water. Digging and a zipper. It's time to bury this.
Organs come through in a very serious sense because it reminds me of one of the first entrance theme songs for The Undertaker and so the funeral vibe begins to come into play here. Bass is backing this up and it feels rather tribal, yet also like someone is meeting their ultimate doom-- a feeling that the previous sounds seemed to be leading up to anyway. Metallic scraping has the bass intensify and it becomes almost hypnotic now. I feel like I'm on a bad trip, though in all fairness I am about 40% sick so that might be playing its part. We've moved onto a dredge song: deep bass, a dragging of metal tools and just all around a chanting type of rhythm only without any actual chanting going on. Static comes in and again you can barely hear someone talking.
It's quieted down now, except for that booming in the background. People are talking but you can't hear them well enough to know what's going on. And then the sound of a saw comes in with what could possibly be a train passing by. Someone laughs and it's quiet. The low hum of the bass is building back up and birds are chirping. A car horn now. Several car horns. We are walking through traffic. Back and forth between that tribal feel and the illusion of the city. Beats come through in the slightest and I'm digging the rhythm. We jump back to a car horn and then silence again.
Crackling. Zippers. Sonic boom of doom. Children are making children noises. This is some kind of feverdream, is it not? There are bass sounds in the background that could be tribal, but the kids making sounds still remains at the front. Bells ding like a train again and it cuts off into the sound of footsteps. Waves are crashing. How can you be walking on such a hard surface at a place with waves, such as the ocean, I do not know. It gets quiet and then returns loudly. All of the previous sounds seem to be meshed together, as the people are talking in a state of panic. I feel like Godzilla is attacking the city. It only grows louder as static laser blasts are fired. We're somewhere between a sci-fi/horror movie and a realistic terror type of movie ala "Cloverfield".
It quiets down again but the beats come through. It's not quite relaxing but is more so than the previous parts. Beeping, dinging and other electronic sounds take us into the virtual world before we appear to have reached the soundtrack to a crowded train station. I feel like we are being torn between two different places, two different stories and two different worlds, as car horns are once again beeping. Those beats keep beating in the background of it all. Everything stops, then comes back. It's like someone in the car next to us is listening to loud hip hop. But now it's coming in loudly with us as well. Now the sounds of India.
We're quiet again, very faint sounds of something. It's building in whirrs and little jungle noises-- not crickets, but close. People are talking and audio clips of songs are being sampled now I think. Whsitling/chirping sounds come out before we're back to the cars. It ends like the changing of a radio station and as I watch Windows Media Player I can see that we have switched over to the second track. The first twenty seconds is just bass drum and tom beats that have that bass sound to them. It could be made with a drum machine easy enough, as it has that electronic sound to it, and I could probably even recreate it in Garage Band on my phone if I knew more about percussion. It gets quieter, but then comes back about the same as this was just under a minute of an interlude connecting the first and last song for Dubcore.
The third song comes out ringing and then the sonic boom of doom hits. It's static filled and it's somewhat terrifying as I imagine the world arround me crumbling. The first song had more of a story to it, a series of events, and this one just seems to be the hum of all out destruction. It kind of drones out into the shaking of a tambourine and I'm somewhere between India and Hare Krishna. This is definitely just being recorded somewhere, as someone coughs, and I picture a diner for some reason. Birds can be heard, as well as traffic, and this is finding itself back where we were for the first track. Kids making kids noises, adults speaking as well. It's a crowded city during rush hour on their way home from a long day's work.
Something like lasers come through again and as this scene is unfolding before us- verbally- I feel as if it is being transmitted through a modem as it has that extra layer of sound over it. The big bass beats return, the kind that were shaking the earth earlier. It's making hollow static sounds of gunfire, back and forth with other sounds and once again it is taking something so ordinary and every day and adding an out of this world level to it. People can be heard walking and talking now. I'm not sure why, but I imagine someone seated on the ground, as if to appear homeless, but really recording the sounds of those around him. Static comes through in a somewhat harsh and sharp manner while people are talking in the background of it. It's not quite your standard drive-thru order but it does have a similarity to it.
Blasts and car horns, somewhere at the seven minute mark we get quiet again. Some static is picking things up, but not too loudly. Various sounds in the streets are jumbled together and this just makes for such an interesting experience of hearing the world outside in such a different way, like an abstract painting for your ears. Traffic again. Cymbal crashes as people speak in loops. Some static returns again and I'm feeling like "Ghost in the Machine". The beats continue to drop and this has just become a theme of this venture that I've almost grown immune to it, as they keep happening so naturally now. Is that a monkey? Definitely some birds and high pitched chirps. It's static, pots and pans being jumbled and the big beats now.
As we approach the twelve minute marker it quiets down. The bass still there, but a tribal sounding drum coming back through again and I am reminded of the beginning, as if we have come full circle. More talking and now some sort of notes that sound like a piano mixed with what, I have no idea. It's minimal noise mixed with a field recording (and by "field recording" I mean that it was something just recorded in a public place, not in an actual field) and it builds, the beats come out and it builds like that one scene from "A Clockwork Orange". And then it just cuts off. Silence for a few moments. Acoustic guitar strings are plucked, something is banged as if with a hammer. And the loudness comes rushing back in a short burst. People are heard conversating again as it is quiet once more.
The loud comes through with one more shot and then hip hop can be heard- someone is rapping over those Us3 type of horns. We're back into the wave of destruction now and this is one of the strangest video games I have ever played. Another quiet reset. One final loud blast, then ticking is heard along with a clip of classical music to bring this to an end. Wow. You can interpret this in any number of ways, but there is enough going on here for someone to make a short film out of it and I definitely think that someone should.
