The Result have fashioned a 12″ whose delirious stereo carnival antics finds it closest analog in the deep-end productions Matt John cultivated while after-after-hoursing at Bar 25. Catenaccio label owner Benjamin Fehr has a track record of dense and weird productions, like “Better Thrill” and “My Favorite Shop Is Me,” and here his first collab with Falko Brocksieper effectively doubles the trouble. It’s a case of minimal gone maximal, flush with dizzying layers of atmosphere, utilizing the broad ranges of the stereo field, placing sounds everywhere from the most intimate interior to the most unfathomable distance.
Don’t let the light, uptempo groove of “Niagara” give you a false sense of security, as its title should warn you of a perilous descent: buried in the middle of the track is a queasy, warbly sound of human voices in wordless exclamation, as if going over a waterfall only to have their cries echo infinitely in the space of some unholy cavern. The cry disappears for a spell, then resurfaces, tossed back into the foamy churn by some merciless counter-current. There’s enough space and variation in effect each time the cry reappears that you’re left with a disorienting, spectral experience of sound: did I just hear that? Did it come and go or was it always there, first menacing me, then setting me free?
At least “Niagara” is still held together with some semblance of a straight-ahead groove. The flip “Give Up” is even more spaced-out. The spine of the thing is fastened to grinding bass, a rough and undulating snake, and a bit of wooden tribal clang. Overhead, disconnected forest of sounds hang together in vertiginous array, expanding and contracting, flying in and out of mutual orbits with enough force that one expects the sounds to lose cohesion altogether and go spiraling off in a multitude of directions, like a star disintegrating into the endless abyss. Sense of order comes and goes. You give up, moving with abandon through a whirlwind of blips and shimmering noise at high speed. Then at the very end, it sounds like someone engaged the warp drive, only to find themselves shooting through a wormhole gone black. “Give Up” doesn’t end so much as recede into oblivion. It’s a powerful effect that recalls films like “Alien” or the recent “Moon” which contend with the psychedelic vastness of space. Two challenging, engaging tracks that deserve repeated listening in order to fully taken in the pleasures of navigating their mysterious microcosms.
