I first discovered the joys of smoking weed when I was about fifteen. I was living in the basement of my parents place and one night I mustered up the courage to attempt to smoke in the house while they were upstairs sleeping. I figured if I just opened the basement window and kind of hung out of it while I took hits, I'd be fine. The only problem was I couldn't find a match or a lighter to save my life. After a bit of searching I gave up and decided to play my 3DO gaming system. Anybody remember those? Panasonic put them out and they were like $700 dollars when they first hit the stores then they dropped way down to like $150 after they were bought and sold by a few companies. I inherited one from my uncle. Anyway, the controllers had a weird design quirk; you had to plug the second player controller into the first player controller. The input was a few rows of metal pins much like the end of your computer monitor cable. I don't know how or when I figured it out, but I knew that touching your tongue to those metal pins gave the same sensation as touching your tongue to a 9-Volt battery. I also knew from science class that touching steel wool to both terminals on a 9-volt battery caused the steel wool to spark. Would it do the same when I touched it to those metal pins on the controller? My step dads tools were in the back area of the basement and he just so happened to have some steel wool stashed. I grabbed it, the 3DO, some paper towels, and my bowl and locked myself in the bathroom. I sat the 3DO on the sink, plugged it in, and went to work. It took a while to get a spark to light the paper towel and once it finally did I only had like 5 seconds to smoke because those fuckers burn fast and produce a lot of smoke. It wasn't graceful but it was enough to get me pleasantly baked and now I can say with confidence that I am probably the only person on earth who has ever smoked weed using a video game controller. I didn't get caught, but part of me wishes I did. I can see my baffled mother thinking I got so high I was trying to play video games in the bathroom. Now I still enjoy a toke now and again but let's just say I “didn't” smoke before I listened to this recent Stunned offering because I don't want anyone thinking weed had anything to do with saying this is one of the best splits I've heard in a long time. Not to mention the slick piece of eye candy these sounds are housed in: A purple cassette shell graced with the clever side titles “The Blue Push” and “The Red Kush” and various marijuana related paraphernalia all imprinted in silver ink and wrapped in an eye popping full color double sided collage work. Looks great though I have to admit it's a bit hard to tell what other recreational indulgences these guys partake in aside from all this noisin' business.
M. Geddes Gengras brings a wallop of a hazer to the table on his half of the rhyme. Drums loosely decorate your headspace in restrained hits and rolls, echoing through wisps of smoke and floating red ash. Deep thuds ripple and stick to the speakers while a red-eyed synth burns slowly, suffused with a dull orange glow. Another synth riffs on some hypnotic leads, with notes rising high in pitch, teetering right on the edge of madness as astral birds chirp and splash in a lo-res digital bath. The pot (see what I did there?) simmers for a good while, save for an occasional rise and fall in dynamics. Some extra string pluckin' sauce gets added in for a little extra flavor before a gorgeous hazy and melodic sample loops wistfully through like a warped fever dream ice cream truck dripping rainbow sherbet exhaust.
A.M. Shiner starts us off with some morning bird song and an extra-long and cavernous rise and shiner bong rip. This is abruptly replaced by some dull metallic whips and snaps...whipper-snappers, and before this bit can collect any steam, in comes what sounds like another monster bong rip. It's just dubious enough (see what I did there?) to possibly be something else but I can't help but make the association given what we're dealing with here. Some robotic bubbles start a froth complete with sandy morse code taps and two possibly stringed instruments playing a game of marco-polo while a 50's sci-fi computer gets taxed as it tries to calculate what the fuck is going on. That isn't to say this shit's a mess. It's super tight. You have to remember computers back then had to be the size of your house just to make a dot chase after another dot. Halfway in we're met with a beautiful incandescent drone and some low tide synth waves lapping at the shore. Some wet and drippy cave business soon finds its way into the picture and is abruptly replaced by a more evil, slightly more metallic and growling drone and another monster bong hit. All things considered, all this bong ripping might sound a little contrived on paper. But it works, damnit. And it works well. The side closes with a long stretch of frenzied ghost tones in a blurred and gritty blast and a rusty off-balance washing machine set on Aleatoric Spin-Cycle for 333,333,333 times around the sun and back.
These two have layed down a heavy contender for best shit of the year (2009) right here, folks. Find it if you can. Unfortunately Stunned is fresh out. Happy hunting!
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