Posts Tagged ‘grayson currin’

Album of the day: Wold – Freermasonry

Posted on Sunday, January 22nd, 2012

Lovingly pinched from Pitchfork: The catchall criticism for noise as a form of music is that, because it often seems so unordered and illogical, it must be simple and pedestrian. Play some for a cynic, and short of outright disapproval, you’ll probably be greeted with a categorical response: “I could do that, too.”

There are a handful of mostly irrefutable ways to come back at that idea– “Well, you didn’t,” for instance, or, “OK, tell me how.” But don’t be so snappy, not yet: Noise music, at least for me, should retain some element of mystery, some air of unknowing; after all, if it’s an intentional obliteration of the structures and sounds you’ve known from the first time you heard Electric Company or Sesame Street, it should force you to ask the most basic questions of what it is, how it is made, and why it is made. And in the quest for those illusory answers, the best noise, drone, and sound experimentation should either pull you in or blow you away, reaffirming that the thing itself is more provocative than the motions behind it.

This is all to say that Freermasonry– the obliterative sixth album from Wold, the Saskatchewan act led by the incredibly named Fortress Crookedjaw — is ultimately enigmatic and entirely unknowable, an intersection of noise, metal, and electronics that doesn’t yield to such plainclothes criticism. Mean, dense and multivalent, with a lyrical conceit based on Masonic symbolism and Biblical scripture, it’s the rare loud music that begs to be louder still if you’re to have any chance of understanding it.

Freermasonry is a case study in controlling the illusion of chaos, an elegantly constructed nightmare of sound where hearing one layer of serrated screams, static bursts, and feedback flares means you’ve missed some mass of activity somewhere else. Weirdly seductive rhythms tumble beneath a laundromat of blown-out tones and crackling vocals, generally pulling your attention a dozen different ways.

Continue reading: Wold: Freermasonry | Album Reviews | Pitchfork.

Tags: Album of the day, Fortress Crookedjaw, Freermasonry, grayson currin, Noise, pitchfork, profound lore, Wold
Posted in 2012, Album of the Day, Roadburn Recommended | No Comments »