For music fans such as Disaster Amnesiac, the late 1990's to late 2000's were a very intriguing and interesting times. On account of how the music industry had really started to splinter in earnest coupled with faster information dissemination via the 'net, the vast and varied micro-scene landscape started to become much more easily accessed; it was kind of thrilling to be able to become more easily appraised of and even gain access to sounds from so many different corners of so many different scenes. The American Noise situation from that era was one of those that began blowing minds and showing vastly different perspectives to more and more people, myself being one of them. Can you recall the Wolf Eyes cover of Wire magazine and their high profile signing to Sub Pop? I recall seeing Black Dice at the Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco and realizing how impactful this burgeoning group of sound artists had become. It was clear that bands such as these and others were going to be setting the tones for music making going forward: that scene trail blazed mightily, and pretty much of their own accord.
Chief among the American Noise environment was and is C. Spencer Yeh, the long term Cincinnati-based violin and electronics musician. If you've not read the extensive interview that Bananafish conducted with him and you're in the slightest way interested in development of American Noise from the 1990's onward, you've absolutely must seek it out and spend some time with its deep glimpse into Yeh's thoughts on aesthetics and such. Along with being a kind of primer for the scene in which he was an important figure, it's also at times hysterically funny. Seriously check it if you've not already done so. Disaster Amnesiac did, and has done so repeatedly since acquiring a copy of the issue one evening in Oakland. I've also sought out the varied musical releases from Yeh's groups, prime among them being Burning Star Core. It's a project that has multiple releases, and they're all worth hearing. That said I want to enthuse about Operator Dead...Post Abandoned here as it's been heavily in the rotation for a few weeks now. If memory serves correctly, that title is taken from a line in George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, which kind of makes the thing legendary right there. Is this four track blast of gooey Noise a kind of concept album based upon that Horror classic? I don't know if that's the case but I do know that it starts off with some kind of hardcore Noise frequency from Yeh's violin and a sort of sign wave sound on When The Tripods Came. This sets the tone for the entire release and its murky and mysterious heaviness never fails to draw this listener in. Electronic voices summmoned from Robert Beatty and Mike Shiflet bring dramatic, foreboding sounds until drummer Trevor Tremaine sets up a steady percussive pulse. Often when Operator Dead...Post Abandoned gets played at my place it's Trevor's playing that is the real highlight. On this and the title track he blends Free Jazz scattering with a more motorik pulse in ways that never fail to delight. Trevor's playing pushes the other sound producers into realms of surreal caterwaul and storming while giving them a genuinely grounded field from which to make their noisily conversation flights of doom. These two opening tracks alone account for well over thirty minutes of bliss for any fan of Noise and they are truly high water marks from the genre, American or anywhere else based. If one were to desire a musical analogue of post NAFTA United States scenario, one might want to play this album for its rusted and decaying sonic tableaux work with visuals from those types of corroded industrial scenes. That said they have also been the evocative soundtrack for an imagined Sci-Fi film in my mind. They rock like that, always have and always will, especially on account of Trevor's ass kicking drum skills. I'd imagine that the rest of the Burning Star Core dudes were equally stoked on his playing. Me & My Arrow, the third track on Operator Dead...Post Abandoned hits a bit more mellow for most of its duration, a tambourine setting a pulse from which percussive voices arise. Eventually things start to blow out a bit more while Tramaine plays a kind of break beat. A quick cut leads into the concluding piece The Emergency Networks Are Taking Over, wherein Burning Star Core quickly achieve lift off into an elevated Post Prog conversation between their varied rigs. Trevor goes nuts around his drum set, spinning out looming weaves of drum speak while C. Spencer Yeh waxes eloquent on his violin, showing traces of the conservatory training that he had as a youth. Beatty and Shiflet offer pulses and drones that Tremaine blasts over and among. The ensemble sounds eventually morph into one towering Noise voice, all of the elements combining into thicket of unified strains which tickles the ears until dissolving into a single drone to match the album's initiatory sound. Then a quick a cut and the listener finds themself in silence like they did with the final scene of The Sopranos.
At several years' remove from the release of Operator Dead...Post Abandoned it feels safe to say that it's a defining document from an artist (C. Spencer Yeh) and a movement (American Noise). It damn sure holds up over time. Seek it find it dig it.
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