Post Scriptvm

Available from Hermetique, BP68, 59009 Lille Cedex, France

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C ONCIEVED in Brooklyn, New York City, this is Post Scriptvm’s second full-length album. Released on Jerome Nougaillon’s Hermetique label, the imaginative packaging is superb and closely rivals those produced by Chris Donovan over at Somnambulant Corpse. Wrapped in a jet-black square envelope, ‘Marginal Existence’ is accompanied by a series of grim postcards, each of which function like windows looking onto scenes of utter devastation and despair. There are archways of light falling upon desolate rooms, debris scattered through filthy hallways and thick woodland observed through broken glass. The cover shows a rotting human corpse, the macabre remains strewn across a dirty mattress like a discarded patient in an NHS hospital.

The first of eight tracks, ‘Warped In Sickness’, flickers erratically like a spluttering hosepipe of white noise, a barely-discernible Italian voice permeating the void like a semblance of reality in a world devoid of references. A hum increases in volume before descending into a pit of half-formed screeches and crackling rumbles. A female voice joins the fray, edgy and hysterical, like a recently-bereaved mother walking alone through the aftermath of a violent earthquake. More brutal samples appear, sounding like a cross between Caligua in a bad mood and Gabriele D’Annunzio auditioning for the latest Merzbow album. ‘Etherized Erosion’ is hollow and metallic, like someone emptying a bag of coat-hangers in a bowling alley.There is drama and suspense, the incessant flapping caught between a pitiless alarm bell and the mournful drone of an endless wind. This increases as the track goes on, systematically wearing down the final sinews of your mind like acid thrown in the face of a straw man. It’s like taking a wrong turning and then finding oneself inexplicably stuck on a stretch of the M25. Avoidable and slightly uncomfortable, perhaps, but somehow you eventually find your way out.

‘Isolation of Sores’ sounds like a form of damage-control after a visit to a local brothel. The track itself contains high-pitched beeps, the unhurried chug-chugging of a steam train pushing its way through the middle of a radiophonic hurricane and what sounds like a general Japanese Noise free-for-all. Towards the end you can hear the sound of a solitary pick striking against stone, as the noise of the engine becomes isolated and slowed. ‘Etch’, I must admit, made me feel slightly uncomfortable, filled, as it is, with an unmistakably waspish drone (a personal phobia of mine which ruins all my best nightmares). There are more cleverly-crafted electronic effects used here, mixed with distorted American vocal samples which remind me of Endura’s ‘Bio Mechanical Soul Journey’. The theme concerns the story of a man taken to an isolated line of graves and being forced to simulate a form of burial. It’s a fantastic track with some incredibly complex and original effects, a rattle of slamming doors or heavy footsteps ending in a climax of pure energy and vision.

‘In Order of Derangement’ is equally menacing, with aural cut-ups partially-formed and then sealed together with slow drumbeats and harsh swathes of pure Noise. Men and women yell in the background, although there is barely any space left to breath in this claustrophobic mish-mash of sound. ‘Crumbling Personae’ is a good name for this stage of the album and it’s exactly how I feel about being forcibly deconstructed like a vital organ in the immediate vicinity of an exploding dum-dum bullet. There is a sense of rhythm about this track. It begins as a 2/4 beat flanked by slurred vocals and submarine-like beeps, but eventually deteriorates – perhaps accelerates – into swishing echoes and something approaching two electronic didgeridoos sharing a conversation in stereo. The whole thing burns out slightly after five and a half minutes, soon replaced altogether with the sound of gunfire, screaming children and what sounds like a broken extractor fan. ‘Cadaverine Deficiency’ employs more Italian samples – albeit comparatively more sane and controlled than the predecessors - and howls of manipulated anguish. One of the strange pseudo-didgeridoos returns under an Eastern-sounding rhythmic barrage. Diverse frequencies come and go, spitting madly like a forgotten sausage left to the mercies of a furnace.

Finally, ‘Grey Rat In White Morgue’ is a torrent of formless power that seems contained like a dangerous lunatic in an asylum. In terms of volume and pitch the track manages to keep to a steady course, but inevitably breaks out towards the end before quickly gravitating towards a slow and dissipating demise. This is a pretty impressive album, certainly far better than most of the Dark Noise material I’ve heard recently and well worth a listen.