Cerberus Vol.3(24)
Featuring M. Sage, RN White, Suryummy, and Mark Tester
Thank you all for allowing me some time to conduct other non-Cerberus stuff. For those unaware, this is the “busy time” for the board gaming industry. If you have any interest in the hobby and want to read some of my thoughts, please feel free to read this at your leisure.
But in that time, I was turning to a bunch of new music to help power me through my convention coverage and the now the subsequent playing and reviewing of board games. Music + board games = bliss.
M. Sage — Wants a Diamond Pivot Bright
This has been officially dubbed The Year of Matthew, as Sage has utterly devastated me emotionally (in the best possible manner) with his compositions. Just when I didn’t think he had anything left in him comes Wants a Diamond Pivot Bright, a collaborative feat based on lines of poetry from Wallace Stevens.
Sage asked his collaborators to begin an idea buoyed by a line or poem of Stevens’s, and then he finished it up. Other recent heavy hitters joined him in this saga, featuring claire rousay, Hakobune, Lee Noble, Josh Mason, Patrick Shiroishi and more than a handful of others I’m not forgetting and are equally spectacular on this album.
What’s most magical about Wants a Diamond Pivot Bright is the album’s cohesion, which was a concern of Sage’s. Yet, it’s the album’s pacing and distinct, airy mood that brings the ideas together. This physical and psychological space allows all players the ability to feel their way through provocation and evocation. Nothing is deliberately confrontational, but there are muted moments where a sound rises to strike at the delicate balancing act of a composition, such as “Valley Candle” when various out-of-nowhere rustles and rattles reach into the jar, shaking — however gently — the cocktail to generate a new level of dynamism beyond what was already occurring just by the players reveling in the space.
These are necessary interruptions. Wants a Diamond Pivot Bright is not a meditative overture, but rather a work of contemplative interruption. It’s meant to be listened to and not just placed in the background. Those moments where the melody is disturbed by a pulsating grind or a sweeping, bit crushed interlude keep the focus squarely on the music.
RN White — Cerebral Split
I have long been a fan of Rachel’s work since her guitar duo #tits (scour the old TMT archives for those write ups) tore up the noise skronk playbook. She has long been mingling on the fringes of Seattle’s noise community, but has always been a factor of highlight and regard. She is not a prolific artist, and her recent career shift into the work of funeral direction and after-life care was recorded on the magnificent Blessed Blood album two years ago.
This time LeBlanc returns under the RN White moniker for Kole Galbraith and Josh Medina’s Obscure & Terrible label with one hell of a noise experiment. LeBlanc’s primary instrument these days are her voice, but rather than the beauty of Blessed Blood, on Cerebral Split it is a weapon of destruction. Side A “The Meeting” is a brooding, noisy hive of sound that is further agitated when LeBlanc’s voice comes tearing through loud and unintelligible. Where LeBlanc’s work life is about comfort, her musical life as RN White is anything but comforting.
Side B does slightly lighten up the mood, but “Accord” goes right back to the buzzing, angry, seething plateau of Side A. Cerebral Split is a devastating record, yet it provides a cathartic energy for when screaming into the void just isn’t enough. Rather, Cerebral Split is proof the void will eventually answer, and you may be surprised of how it echoes the chaos and disinformation around us. As a practitioner of the healing arts, LeBlanc has seen firsthand what it being reaped from what we have sown. This is just a taste of our medicine and you shouldn’t hold your nose to swallow it.
Suryummy — Polynators
I’m still knee deep in that last Constellation Tatsu batch and oh lawd, gimme this sweet, sweet synthetic chill from Suryummy. Polynators, as its title implies, is a playful & blissed out collection of warm vibes. You try listening to “Heart Fountains” and not have a smile on your face or lose yourself in “Fail Night” and have a laugh at youthful ignorance now that you are older, wiser, and certainly more chill. Polynators breaks zero new ground, but that isn’t a slight. It’s designed to inhabit a piece of mental real estate where memories go to relax in dimly lit neon, sipping on fancy drinks, and playing catch up with each other. It tickles inner fancies and relaxes weary minds and tired muscles. It’s okay to take a dip in these brain fluids every once in a while. It’s good for the soul. Just don’t overstay the welcome.
Mark Tester — Oblivion Rhythms Revisited
Tester’s work (such as with Thee Open Sex and Landon Caldwell) has always been about brain melters. They are the sort of works that manipulate time and play with repetition until all markers are lost. When you find yourself roaming the wilderness of Tester’s work, it’s truly a freeing experience.
Oblivion Rhythms Revisited may be the pinnacle of this experience, as Tester weaves a world out synthetics like a New Age Gaia. This is our planet now; we are all full-up on microplastics and artificial light. But Oblivion Rhythms Revisited harnesses this into something beautiful and organic, lifting itself above our strewn refuse until we reach both literal and figurative “Subconscious Destinations”.
Leaving the atmosphere with such velocity can cause dizziness, captured in Tester’s 30 second-swirl of “Sip of Winter Tonic”. Aside from three lengthy tracks, much of Oblivion Rhythms Revisited is situated in these miniscule compositions, fixing on these moments of our dystopic-as-utopic present. Where we waste and destroy, there is a price to pay but also something new and worthy to be built.
Twitter: @genxsaisquoi @cerberuszine
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