For the average, jaded audiophile born and raised on a steady diet of radio and trash culture, few things are so instantly captivating than glitch music. It seems to function like static sound on the outside, but treading even slightly below the surface reveals a writhing entity trying to coalesce from a series of random snippets of code into a complex organism. Entering into a glitch album's aural landscape is like channel-surfing on six televisions at once while sitting at a desktop computer but typing on a laptop on your lap and talking on the phone; it's sensory overload on the inside but also totally self-contained so, on the outside, is really interesting to observe from a distance.
Such is the image that Black Mold's Snow Blindness Is Crystal Antz brings to mind and, like any good and totally autonomous entity, from the opening jazz-infused push (“Metal Spider Webs”), Black Mold mastermind Chad VanGaalen totally submerges listeners in his environment. The effect is remarkably soothing; like relaxing in a warm vat of sound.
After “Metal Spider Webs” sets the tone for the album, the sound almost instantly disperses from “Dr. Snouth” forward and seeks to attach itself to any and every sound it comes into contact with; a little mold grows on the Bjork/Matmos-esque synth pop of “Gummed Desk” while some also finds its way into the cracks of the shattered downbeat workout “Barn Swallow vs. SK-1” as well as the trance-celestial petri dish “Virtual Prison.” In each case, Black Mold attaches itself like a virus to the different sounds and mutates them to move closely resemble a consistent image through the run-time and uses the true-static tracks like “Uke Puke,” “Tetra Pack Heads,” “Fuck eBay” (where Van Gaalen achieves greatest success) and “Wet Ferns” to fill in the gaps between generic transitions.
Particularly in the late-playing, Snow Blindness Is Crystal Antz gets progressively less like modern musique concrète and progressively more musical, giving listeners the impression that, while Black Mold may have glommed onto some interesting new sounds here, the evolution of the project's sound is far from complete and, by the time we hear from Van Gaalen again, the music might be totally unrecognizable. Without a word uttered, Black Mold has successfully staked its place toward the top of the glitch treacle stream with Snow Blindness Is Crystal Antz; like a biologist watching a petri dish, it'll be interesting to see what the entity mutates into next.
Artist:
Black Mold online
Black Mold myspace
Downloads:
“Metal Spider Webs”
“Tetra Pack Heads”
Album:
Snow Blindness is Crystal Antz comes out through Flemish Eye Records on August 11, 2009. Pre-order it here on Amazon.
