10 - 20: Neurobashment

...it's about placement: the 10-20 stuff passed through the circuitry from Thorsten at Highpoint Lowlife (cheers!) is finding a way into my skull; the songs I've heard so far appear slightly ragged and loose-limbed and it's only during a very close listen that you recognise the patterns and the placement are rather more considered than that...


...at first, this reminded me a little of a dubbier, steppier Nurse With Wound (I'm thinking especially the proto-junglist tinbox percussive NWW of the Automating Vol 2 compilation, esp. The Strange Play of the Mouth... but then, then, the structure sort of creeps out at you, leaves that kind of automation (writing, scribing, channelling) behind, replacing it with a more mechanistic, lurching robot, signature that does seem to have order...



<<<<<....placement of electrodes on the scalp; sending beams in and recievers switching themes and blocking patterns and shooting shards of pure energy into the brain. The intent was never to free the patient, more to entrap them in a device of our making...>>>>>

From: Tripwires and Tangents: the misuse of others by Dr. G. A. Solomon

...and it's then that a lot of what I said about previous Highpoint Lowlife releases starts to take hold - again, this seems like accidental dubstep, leaking electricity, currents running through everything... the beats are considered in the sense that they follow the paths of electricity itself, the sounds come in waves because, well, they are already travelling in waves...

<<<<<...we'll turn them, inside and out; that was the whole point of everything I argued for...>>>>>

From: A Bird's Eye Of The Brain by D. A. Robertson

and then it makes me think that 10-20 as a human is just there to press pause at appropriate moments; is there primarily to observe, to consider when the circuits should be switched... this music might be as endless as all the audio gunk from that early Eno software... the human simply cuts in and out... music as flint knapping...

Neurobashment.

Highpoint Lowlife are putting together an impressively coherent roster... they are due some attention...

Of course, if the 10-20 relates to something entirely different then I'm going to re-evaluate, re-listen and re-hear - if there's one pair of ears I have no problem mistrusting then it's my own...