- Michael’s a disturbing bloke, if his musical output is anything to go by. Actually I’m not really sure why Brisbane’s Paul Young (also of jazzy noise-pop weirdos Feet-Teeth) took the otherwise unassuming stage name, except to put some distance between himself and the fierce industrial and dark ambient noises echoing out of debut EP, Care. Perhaps it’s deliberately and deceptively button-down: Michael is the new Damien? Well, beyond the name there’s no disguising his true nature.
Care is exactly what I’ve said, almost to a fault. If you don’t listen quite closely all the ringing of metal and machine is a bit monolithic, even monotonous. Don’t get me wrong, this scary stuff is my comfort-music and anyone who wants to out-Ben Frost Ben Frost is alright by me. Anyway, when you really dive into the formidable noise -with a good pair of headphones- you’ll be pleasantly surprised, or if your tastes are a little too vanilla, brutally crushed by what you hear.
Opener Convert really invites those Ben Frost comparisons, the surges of distorted guitar noise wash in waves over the listener, obliterating the disturbing background of murmured, industrial vocals every time they do. They’re joined by shrieking treble synth wails and percussion which sounds like an anvil being struck, repeatedly, which doesn’t so much move the track forward as further build the atmospheric impression of being inside some satanic mill; as if it needed to be.
The oppression recedes into a brief bridge of proper dark ambient sound called Commune which I imagine must be a treated field recording of some refinery. The next slab of sound is a true giant: Fervent grows out of that ambient introduction, layering the audio with muted shrieks like rubber screeching or escaping steam and amplifying the bass and … everything else till you’re completely trapped in a claustrophobic cacophony. Percussive strikes, which might be the same as the ones on Care, but distorted into stabs of white noise do actually propel the track to a climax this time as the sound mix raises the pressure, moving into an ever more alarmingly treble mix, before receding through what really does sound like a trip via graphic equaliser. There’s so much gutsy body to this noise though, having each layer sequentially exposed is well worth it.
Chemistry retains those random shrieks, but, initially, removes the bassy, industrial rumbling. Unsurprisingly that gets built back in through a layering of metallic groans, variously pitched and distorted and echoing like a field recording of some herd of science-fictional half beast, half-machine creatures. After a couple more of those triumphant anvil strikes, Care almost introduces a beat! Almost: a gritty wrecked sample is repeated over and again, faster and faster until the whole sound fills up with white noise and collapses dramatically into the background atmosphere. The track is rounded out here, sounding like the meeting of a giant engine and an epic foundry before a final patina of skittering white noise, which would be enough a horror soundtrack affectation by itself, but Young shamelessly throws in a couple of jump-scare explosions of that noise, pitch-shifted to sound like nasty robots grabbing you by the ear and dragging you off for assimilation.
The EP’s final number, fittingly Ends, builds more organically like a traditional ambient composition than any other here. It suddenly and impishly drops a tone in pitch, which is almost like breaking the fourth wall (oh, so this is a sound collage and we’re not actually inside a giant machine?), before more assiduously and warmly evoking something calm and ambient. Given what we’ve heard however, it is unsurprising that Michael can’t resist folding in just a little unsettling white noise as the soundscape begins to wind down.
Paul Young hasn’t talked much about the music on here, preferring, like a lot of sound artists, to let the timbres and textures tell you what he’s about. However he has said the EP is a consolidation of three years worth of commissions. I had wondered, before I dragged out those earphones, whether he’d been shopping pretty similar sounding stuff to various different patrons. Between dark ambient, industrial and shamelessly figurative horror soundtracks, however, there’s a vibrant and diverse machine thrumming away in the imagination of Paul Young and it will reward the listener prepared to weather Michael’s shock and awe.
- Chris Cobcroft.