Jim Haynes: unspecified sources
The Wires Cracked is offered on vinyl, therefore doesn’t protract to a fault. Its short continuance notwithstanding, the work touches on several psychoacoustic issues, mostly belonging to the grey areas where our perceptual experience connects with the concept of “altered states”, either mental or related to concrete matters. Sonic ambiguity and phenomenic gravity not only live together but coalesce, thus producing the same effect of a thorough brainwashing, in turn leaving an enthralled participant in the condition of “wanting more” despite a clearly perceivable anguish deriving from the attempt of disconnecting ourselves from what gives us material trouble.
Synthetically, the three movements – “Oscar”, “X-Ray” and “November” – could be described by a different triad of names, say “Trauma”, “Awareness” and “Final Oscillation”. The so-called violence comes first: hypertrophied emanations and menacing outbursts underlined by clusters of organs-of-the-void and clattering detritus gradually piling up, the essence of clamorous pounding expanding until a strange acoustic signal remains the lone presence. Afterward, following an initial series of shocking disruptions, the progressive gathering of the elements provides an environment halfway through fluvial and cryogenic, a sense of unsafety always in attendance in spite of Haynes’ hinting to “a belief in the hope for a renewal” in the press release. The longest track is that where the “I want to be taken away by this, right now” factor is felt at its strongest, extended stretches of vacillating frequencies and parabolas of dilating dejection lulling us towards a stopping point where signs of actual human activity are still visible. Nomadic itineraries across compatible conditions of presentiment, dysphoric pregnancies sung by the voice of decay.
MASSIMO RICCI. TOUCHING EXTREMES. 