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Stabscotch, a combo from Bloomington (Indiana) fronted by vocalist Tyler Blensdorf, debuted with the ten-song album Eldritch (2014), split between
manic hardcore imploding in psychological depression (such as Genganger and Trough Cult) and sonic experiments (like Anhedonia).
However, the closing eight-minute Holiday is a different animal, a lengthy expressionist drama over warped electronica, brittle noise and creative drumming.
The 12-minute composition of the EP Ziggurat (2015) is mostly an
exercise of expressionist declamation.
Stabscotch then recorded between November 2015 and July 2016 the sprawling 18-song album Uncanny Valley (Visual Disturbances, 2017),
a work that defies the laws of physics, or, at least, the laws of harmony.
The trio, with guitarist Zack Hubbard and percussionist James Vavrek,
covers an enormous range of styles, tempos, and mental states,
methodically jettisoning rationality in the name of expressive eloquence.
Half of the songs would be enough to candidate the album to most intense
release of the decade.
Open Sesemji, which opens with the vocalist's obsessive shouting amid roaring noise, is a chamber opera that proceeds at a stuttering pace.
Hide Me, a tableau of aimless guitar strumming and ghostly noise, is lost in Pere Ubu's wastelands of free-form music,
until it suddenly soars into thundering post-metal.
The whirling chaos of voices and cacophony of Hands Undressed
decays into a Gong-like musichall skit.
Nick of Time begins with a calm and gentle Frank Zappa-esque declamation that escalates into an epileptic fit, sinks into a Zappa-esque collage, and ends with a hysterical Zappa-esque tirade.
The Zappa influence continues in the nine-minute Tanic,
a Zappa-esque mini-opera which is also the vocalist's tour de force,
with an apex of pathos seven minutes into the piece when all instruments collide against each other.
The seven-minute Along Alligator Drunes (a visceral peak) struggles with sparse chords and Jim Morrison-ian suspenseful recitation before turning into a punkish rant and a catastrophic funk-metal jam and ends with an odd coda of acoustic guitar that echoes the Pink Floyd's Astronomy Domine.
Radio Spiricom is an instrumental intermezzo of ghostly musique concrete
and childish gamelan tinkling with a Stockhausen-like symphonic finale.
Tdykila-Thuru Wara is the opposite: torrential blast-drumming, carpet-bombing of guitar noise and pompous vocals.
Creature Control builds magniloquence over the martial chords of Van Halen's Runnin' with the Devil alternating with horror electronics.
The nine-minute instrumental jam The Fugal Brooden Rainforest
is an absolute mess: an African tribal and possibly cannibal dance with horribly played flutes that after four minutes is further derailed by accelerating rhythm with the guitar that repeats a runchy riff.
The voice returns in the seven-minute Black Effigy Speaks, which pits an
acoustic guitar motif a` la Pink Floyd's Learning to Fly against
a distorted guitar and industrial clangor.
Voice and instruments compete in the brief Unkown Pleasures in crafting extremely painful music (punk, metal or whatever), another peak of pathos but this time crafted via uncontrolled Captain Beefheart-style mayhem.
The nine-minute The Spires indulges in minimalist repetition and lysergic vocals before venturing into a
demented psychedelic guitarscape, warped and looped into endless
transformations.
The insane tornado of I Master incubates another terrifying kammerspiel,
the third sadistic pillar of the album with Along Alligator Drunes and Unkown Pleasures.
The least emotional of their songs, Liberation / Dimensional Snot, despite its carpet-bombing coda, shows that they could deliver a power-ballad if they wanted.
Luckily, they don't.
Blensdorf debuted solo with the album Anthrocide (2018), credited to Dizayga.
(Copyright © 2016 Piero Scaruffi | Terms of use )
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(Translation by/ Tradotto da Alessandro Rusignuolo)
Stabscotch,
un combo di Bloomington (Indiana), con alla testa il
cantante Tyler Blensdorf,
ha realizzato l'esteso
album di ben 18 brani dal nome
Uncanny Valley (Visual Disturbances, 2017), un'opera
che sfida le leggi della fisica
o, almeno, le leggi dell'armonia. Il trio, con il chitarrista Zack Hubbard e il percussionista James Vavrek, copre un'enorme
varietà di stili, tempi e stati mentali, rifiutando metodicamente la razionalità in nome dell'eloquenza espressiva. La metà delle canzoni sarebbe
sufficiente per candidare l'album quale prodotto
artistico più intenso del decennio.
Open Sesemji, che si apre con le urla ossessive del
vocalist in mezzo a un rumore ruggente,
è un'opera da camera che procede con un'andatura balbettante. Hide
Me, un tableau di chitarra
che strimpella senza scopo
e di un rumore spettrale, si perde
nelle terre desolate di musica a forma libera dei Pere
Ubu, fino a quando, all'improvviso, non si libra in un tuono post-metal. Il vorticoso caos di voci e cacofonia
di Hands Undressed si
deteriora sino a diventare uno sketch tipico dei Gong. Nick of Time
inizia con una calma e delicata declamazione di Frank Zappa che si trasforma
in un attacco epilettico, sprofonda in un
collage zappiano e termina ancora una volta
con una isterica tirata zappiana. L'influenza di Zappa continua nei nove minuti
di Tanic, una mini opera che è anche il tour de force del
vocalist, con un apice di
pathos di sette minuti dopo che
tutti gli strumenti si sono
scontrati l'uno contro l'altro. Il pezzo di sette
minuti Along Alligator Drunes
(un picco viscerale) lotta con accordi sparsi e recitazione alla Jim Morrison prima di trasformarsi in uno sproloquio punk e in una catastrofica jam funk-metal, concludendo
con una strana coda di chitarra acustica
che riecheggia il pezzo dei
Pink Floyd Astronomy Domine. Radio Spiricom è un intermezzo strumentale di musica concreta spettrale e gamelan tintinnanti infantili con un finale sinfonico
assimilabile a quello di Stockhausen. Tdykila-Thuru
Wara è l'opposto: una torrenziale esplosione di tamburo,
un bombardamento a tappeto di rumore
chitarristico e voce solenne.
Creature Control costruisce magniloquenza sulle corde marziali di Runnin'
with the Devil dei Van Halen
in alternanza con elettronica
dell'orrore. La jam session strumentale
di nove minuti
The Fugal Brooden Rainforest è un caos assoluto:
una danza tribale africana e possibilmente cannibale con flauti suonati orribilmente che, dopo quattro minuti,
è ulteriormente inquinata dal ritmo accelerato
di chitarra che ripete un riff runchy. La voce ritorna nei sette minuti
di Black Effigy Speaks, che
mette in contrasto un motivo di chitarra
acustica come in Learning to Fly dei
Pink Floyd verso una chitarra
distorta e un clangore industriale. La voce e gli strumenti competono nel breve Unkown
Pleasures nella produzione
di musica estremamente dolorosa (punk, metal o qualsiasi
altra cosa), un altro picco
di pathos ma questa volta realizzato attraverso un disordine incontrollato in stile Captain Beefheart.
I nove minuti The Spires
indulgono nella ripetizione minimalista e in una voce lisergica prima di avventurarsi in un forsennato/psichedelico
paesaggio chitarristico, deformato e avvolto in infinite trasformazioni. Il folle tornado di I Master cova un terrificante kammerspiel, il terzo pilastro sadico dell'album con Along
Alligator Drunes e Unkown
Pleasures. La meno emotiva
delle loro canzoni, Liberation/Dimensional Snot, nonostante la sua coda esplosiva, dimostra che avrebbero potuto
offrire una power ballad se
avessero voluto. Fortunatamente hanno
rinunciato.
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They also released the 100-minute
Witness (2017), consisting of three lengthy droning compositions:
Inside Room (29:22),
Thieves (30:57) and
Tihkal (39:53).
Tyler Blensdorf also released
Faux Shaman's Forbidden (2020), which sounds like a cross between
Current 93's pagan folk and noise-rock of the 1990s, and
Dizayga's Anthrocide - Exit by Accented Figures (2018).
Twilight Dawn (2020)
compiles the mini-album 7 is a Cycle and the EP Drama Dragon.
Songs such as The Last Alchemist and
Glass Bubbles seem influenced by the new wave of the Residents and
Pere Ubu.
Blood Loves // Satyrs is an impressive show of declamation, but not very musical, ending in a tornado of noise.
The eleven-minute Gravity is instead one of their most powerful shock-therapies, a psychotic nightmare of loose violent distorted spasmodic sounds and screams.
The four songs of Drama Dragon include the
furious hardcore of Jump on the Urinal and Stand on Your Head, with a sideral acceleration at the end, and the
dislocated jazz ballad NRG Pisces.
Dizayga also released the mini-album Room on Fire (2021)
Stabscotch collaborated with
Five Star Hotel (Melanie Jerome's project)
for the chaotic electronic songs
of Radioactive Boss Baby (2022).
Most of them, starting with
Bitch Baby Boss Killer,
are abstract sound collages, but too many are ruined by the petulant
spoken-word of Tyler Blensdorf.
Nonetheless the project yields the demonic industrial voodoo-polka of Kids 4 Christmas and the savage digital hardcore dance of Human Colored Walls, both decorated with a jungle of noisy arrangements.
Stabscotch were a quartet on Prison Jar (2022):
vocalist and bassist Tyler Blensdorf, guitarist Zack Hubbard, drummer Scott Mcgough and Dominick Grande on sax, flute, and synth.
Perhaps under the influence of Radioactive Boss Baby,
the new lineup embraces more electronica and jazz, but the electronic sounds
cannot hide the fact that the songs are childish and trivial, whether the
violent sound collage Xallelujah Daemon
or the virulent punk-jazz jam Monkey With a Bomb
or the bombastic noise-rock theater of Sugar Asshole.
The collision of punk-rock and drum'n'bass in Hyper Xtal Immolation, or
the explosive convergence of videogame music and heavy metal Life Beam,
could be interesting if they went somewhere, but instead they remain occasional and tentative.
The six-minute Prison Jar has several moments of sheer terror but also
twice as many moments of utter irrelevance.
The other long song, Love Me Feed Me but Please Don't See Me, is a better
example of industrial punk vomit... for about three minutes, before it decays
into pointless doodling, making the catastrophic ending a sort of footnote instead of an emotional peak.
For what it has to say, the album is overlong. It could have been a three-song EP, and even that would not have been a terribly interesting one.
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