Very mysterious and enigmatic, this cassette release from Hallway Five! Before one even has a chance to listen to Black Pits, one will surely catch that oblique feeling from the haunted looking chiaroscuro of the cover art. Additionally, the lack of instrumental credits within the liner notes and ambiguous bio on the presser sheet don't do much to give any kind of certainty as to who is doing what (to be fair, there is some given within the latter, but still). Perhaps more information is given at their Bandcamp page? All this being said, Black Pits is a music release and Disaster Amnesiac generally writes about music, so what's happening on that end of its spectrum? Side A, in starts off with an immediate cinematic feel in the sense that I am reminded of Hollywood soundtrack music within the post Schoenberg era; the 20th Century orchestral feel is in full effect, and it's pretty incredible that this type of sound was produced by three guys with much fewer resources at their disposal. Seriously, they get a pretty huge ensemble sound! Edgar Varese would have loved this recording! Woodwinds player Sequoyah sounds to this listener as if he's playing tenor saxophone, but it's his clarinet playing that Hallway Five member and "non-musician" (his descriptor) and Sterile Garden founder Jacob deRaadt mentions within the bio information. A guy named John plays the trumpet with all of the bleating gusto one would expect from this type of band. Disaster Amnesiac has absolutely enjoyed the non-idiomatic, very rhythmic playing from Sequoyah, especially within the zones of Side B. This portion of the recording features the group going into a bit more of a 21st Century aesthetic, with denser, electronics sounds and bewildered happenings. One can easily imagine them playing at warehouse full of art and ratty furniture here. Black Pits is a document of band that apparently no longer performs, but obviously deRaadt cared enough about their existence to take the time and give their recordings from some point in the past a bit of post-production love and a physical release. It certainly lets the sounds that the members of Hallway Five produced do the majority of the proverbial talking.
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