Chell Oracle Turret


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Space Railing (2017), 6.5/10 (EP)
The U.S. Crack Open (2019), 6.5/10
Orson Welles (2020), 6.5/10
Descent (2020), 6.5 (EP)
Hot Michigan Turn (2020), 6/10 (mini)
Yeah U (2022), 6/10
It's Not What You Think (2022)
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Chell Oracle Turret, named after a videogame female player-character (Chell) and one of the three sentry turrets (Oracle Turret) of the videogame Portal, composed the nine-minute instrumental Saved from Aperture's Android Hell (2017), which finds a way to generate jarring noise from a mass of drones, and the EP Space Railing (2017), containg four electronic songs whose style sounds hyper-psychedelic like Syd Barrett unleashed in a studio of computer music. Oh-Saw Anduffleduh is four minutes of demented vocal emissions over clownish musique concrete, Stroll of 50 Fires is six minutes of desolate vocal sounds, grating minimalist organ and found sounds, The 13-minute Ran Across The Land begins gloriously with childish drumming, shaman howls and a hammering piano, but then indulges too long in a spoken-word section that kills the momentum.

The mini-album The U.S. Crack Open (2019) only contains the 24-minute Wake Up To Test Enter This Anxious Building, which sounds like a very neurotic Tom Waits having added real lyrics to and reciting Kurt Schwitters' Ur Sonata while a very delirious Arto Lindsay intones folk songs on his atonal guitar.

The mini-album Orson Welles (2020) contains Big Spirit Cave (13:39), a collage of hissing noise, pow-wow drumming and mauled vocals, and Sky Splash (12:04), a denser, meaner, radioactive noise poem.

The EP Descent (2020) contains the seven-minute noise-percusive instrumental Too Many Supplements and the 18-minute conceptual suite Descent that opens promisingly in a macabre suspenseful atmosphere, reminiscent of early Throbbing Gristle and This Heat, but then gets lost in a maze of grating metallic noises and pulsing geyser-like hisses, before the coda of trance-horror declamation.

The 27-minute five-song mini-album Hot Michigan Turn (2020) contains four vignettes of old-fashioned Dadaistic musique concrete (especially the spastic blues of Dog Strolling) and the ten-minute Fractured Memory, yet another erratic collage.

The nine-minute single Men Scare at the Blackest Ball (2020) is a silly joke of a spastic ditty.

Chell Oracle Turret released two albums in 2022 (never a good sign). Yeah U (2022) indulges in repetition. The nine-minute Affair sounds like a cross between a spoken-word version of Suicide's psychobilly and Trio's demented Da Da Da. The electrifying Holy Nipple could definitely be a Suicide leftover. Jungle Jungle is instead a wild and abstract sound collage. Nothing here is particularly creative. The 16-song It's Not What You Think (2022) is beyond indulgent. Most of the songs are trivial and repetitive, some feel unfinished, some feel like they were composed and recorded in a few seconds. The ones that cohere (mainly Yar) are not exactly masterpieces.

(Copyright © 2020 Piero Scaruffi | Terms of use )