My new collaboration with Dave Brenner of Gridfailure, Uninvited Savior, is out tomorrow through our friends at Nefarious Industries. You can buy it from my Bandcamp here.

Here are a few words on the recording process I wrote for the premiere at Captured Howls:

“Dave and I have worked on a lot of material together before, with him mixing my contributions into several Gridfailure records. This record started in much the same way, with my organ solo on ‘Burial Delirium’ initially planned to be part of another track with several other collaborators before Dave decided it should stand on its own. He picked up on a certain funereal, liturgical vibe in my playing which we decided would form the basis for the entire project. He dubbed in layers of noise over which I recorded a pedal steel guitar solo.

‘Transfixed’ was primarily a Brenner-led creation; he laid the basic themes on which I supplied variations. I performed some granular resynthesis of his tracks and overlaid a heavily processed sample of a decree from the 70s cult the Church Universal and Triumphant.

‘Hallelujah (27 Years)’ began as a recording of Pope John Paul II reading the Rosary played through my Library of Congress tape deck. These machines are designed to play recorded written materials for the blind on tapes recorded at double speed, so when I played the rosary tape it was slowed to a crawl. I ran this through a variety of pedals and effects and came up with a dark audio collage onto which Dave recorded even more instrumentation and we had our album’s largest piece already in place. I still felt it was missing something, so I added in an extra sample of an exorcism by the revivalist A.A. Allen, which gave the piece a vital narrative arc.

This album is an undeniably gargantuan piece of work and I know most people aren’t going to bother listening to the whole thing, but I think there’s a depth and weight to it that can prove deeply affecting if you’re ready to just let it wash over you for 80 minutes.”

From the label:

“Uninvited Savior is a massive droning collaboration between Christian Molenaar, the primary fulcrum of San Diego’s intense free-jazz/noise collective THOSE DARN GNOMES, and David Brenner, hostile alchemist of New York City-area harsh experiment GRIDFAILURE. On Uninvited Savior, these two experimentalists take a sidecar to their usual outlets to collaborate on a spacious vortex of imploding spiritual psychosis.

The medieval wheel of pestilence broken in three: the trigeminal pestis lemniscus, communicating pain, heat and feeling from the eyes, the face and the mucous membranes. Epithelial noise piled high atop a lamina propria of reappropriated cult noumena, riddled with the stabwounds of infinite lacerating rete pegs and micro-papal papillae. Encased in the acoustic gingiva of Gothic organum and perforated by spires of extra-liminal electroacoustics, a foundational layer of pious hierophants and haruspices scream down the moon.

Infusing vocals, electric/acoustic/bass/pedal steel guitars, keyboards, synthesizers, organs, xylophone, harmonica, 1970s cult field recordings, resynthesis, tape manipulation, contact mic and power electronics effects, and other instrumentation tactics embodied in a vaporous haze, the three lumbering movements range between twenty and thirty-five minutes in length. All said, Uninvited Savior suspends the listener within its abyssal vacuum for more than eighty-one minutes.”

“Musique concrète at it’s best… Feels like religious music fed through a blender, an esoteric mash-up of styles and influences which has some sort of resemblance to early Cabaret Voltaire, and the found sounds echo the first few Godspeed! You Black Emperor releases. Always on the edge of collapse/distortion and free of constraints.

If you like long form mixes of noise/ambience in the spirit of Supersilent, AMM or Fripp/Eno…you’ll like the sound of this release.”

Different Noises

“Three lengthy tracks on a bed of perfectly nauseating, droning tones upon which they build jagged edges of sonic twists like strangely melodic guitar strums that by themselves might actually make for a catchy tune. Here, they’re mangled into what feels like the disorienting soundtrack that might be playing in the waiting room outside an executioner’s chamber. The tracks easily feel that intensely foreboding. The duo hide a startling array of textures in their latest sound constructions.”

Captured Howls

“A great sounding mixture of experimental, field recordings, noise and power electronics… 8/10”

Hatred Means War

“Snort an expired yellowjacket or two and settle into this collaboration between David Brenner and Christian Molenaar in celebration of facial pain and nearby mucosal torment. […] “Burial Delirium” is the coming of acid rain upon a distended power plant, complete with a flit of jazz guitar phrasing over police sirens as it comes pouring heaviest. “Transfixed” is the ambiance of an alien craft in automated environmental stasis after crash landing on a volcanic wasteland, humming at just the right frequency to attract curious insectoid scavengers. “Hallelujah (27 Years)” is the true ear-splatterer of the trio at nearly 36 minutes, from floaty cathedralesque space towards screaming harsh noise and voice samples detailing the fears and the fathomless arrogance of witchfinders and murderous zealots. […] Imaginative atmospheres and brutally harsh ambiance for a rainy day.”

Grizzly Butts