See bottom of this post for digest commentaryAprapat – Chamber Music c20
Aprapat – Ultimate Freedom c32Aprapat popped up on Special Interests earlier this year via a smattering of
enthused if pithy plaudits from a few fellow Fins. Sufficient to spark interest in duly sampling the sonics but insufficient, in my case, to prepare the earholes for the primo penetrations so persuasively pummeled home. The project manages to project a sound that– at peak saturation– is immediate, dense, complex, while tightly reigning in the scope of materials in play. Of the materials, metal scraps a’plenty, emphasis on plenty, and therefore, as far as I’m concerned already automatic win. But also ranging wide by way of burnt-to-shit textural blow-out, particularly via the principle worldwide debut,
Ultimate Freedom.
Before getting to the principle worldwide debute, a few words on the follow-up. If bandcamp is anything to go by,
Chamber Music debuted in March of this year, a good three months after Ultimate Freedom. The title is a good clue, and given that Aprapat remains relatively obscure– though I’d sincerely expect not for long!– I’d like to draw comparison to a couple of similarly obscure entries.
First,
Violent Shogun’s memorably noisome study in scrap,
Taste Our Japanese Steel. When they say chamber music, they mean it. Per TOJS, the baroque sensibility is there, twisted deep, excruciatingly so, in gut. Dynamically layered deliberation to introduce the instrumentation in play. Thematic movement working in counterpoint to carefully arrayed assemblage. Progressive builds to mighty eye-watering crescendo. Harsh FUCKING Noise, yes, but elaborated in a way that is downright conversational. Second, the live
T. Mikawa track from
FUCK MY ASS: Live at Binspark. On the FUCK MY ASS occasion, T. Mikawa memorably fucks with initial expectation by backdropping his molestations of a small, manipulable, square of scrap metal with looped mournful dirge. Aprapat similarly backdrops his scraps with a modulated loop of depressed gregorians on lithium. In both cases, The Mikawa and the Aprapat, the backdrop is almost completely forgotten in the ensuing pile-on of harsh pointy-ness, and both cases are similarly served by quite pointy-edged thwacking of collapsible scrap impact.
Pointy-edged thwacking of collapsible scrap impact is pretty much all you get in the opening track,
Chants Of Steel, building steadily toward massed mangled messes of scrappily thwacked chaos. First the muffled, lithium-blessed, gregorian dirge. Then the incremental introduction of various acoustic scraps. For the opening minute, the scrap edges are plainly visible, broken shards clanking and clattering inauspiciously in the corner, the occasional heftier impact hinting at the jumbled cantanker-mess to come. Soon we're deep in the mess of it, a quite robust and raging working-over of the channel pan, amplified scraps smashing and bashing together with forceful physical exuberance. At this point the gregorian dirge is reduced to a dull, recurring drone, but. As the dirge amplifies the field starts to distort under the pressure of meatier bass textures. Some smashings now past the midway mark, the whole scrapping horde drops out, leaving in its wake a low oscillating throb to underscore the final recapitulation,
Stained Glass. Again by increments subtle scraps of steel– or glass– are introduced, soon to explode confetti-like among more pointed, sharp-edged glitters and shards. The explosive exercise is short-lived– short-lived but lip-smackingly nasty!– biting and tearing with a ferocity that appears hell-bent on inflicting upon the remaining scraps a maximum of physical damage. Damage done, the movement ducks back into looped throb before dissolving completely in a closing medley of quietly muffled scrapes and prickly static spittle.
Side B takes its sweet old time leading up to the inevitable hot mess of harsh, four solid minutes worth of mild mannered restraint entitled
Courtyard Shadows. Dull mechanical scrapes loop against austere clanking tests of the metal, indistinct wobbles and pings sounding vaguely waterlogged in the smudged corner of an unseen antechamber. The harsh drops without warning, tightly compressed acoustics of
Stained Glass II thwacking with the collapsible scrap impact of strangulated metal-fused-glass in heat. This is by far the most pointedly vicious movement of the tape, fixing its brutalities on skull central, making no effort to gently round out the stereophonic scope. After two minutes, the brutalities abruptly cut out, perhaps concerned about the damages being wrought. In their place a brief stretch of amplified bass hum ushers in a second slide into scrap,
Wind Of Chains. This time the scraps are noticeably spare, widely panned about whining drawls of low key feedback. Hefty low-end rumble lurches into the field as the scraps start again to gain weight, and dimension, crafting in their comparatively mellow concatenations a decidedly cinematic depth, shattered shards tumbling and pirouetting about the stage: The Dance Of The Sugar Plum Scrap Heaps! At last it is but the naked scraps in their singular glory, tumbling completely out of the picture as a dull mechanical loop ascends to abbreviated tape-burnt finish.
In contrast to the intensively scrap-focused investigations of the more recent Chamber Music,
Ultimate Freedom is gifted a relatively broad palate of textures over which to range, unhindered in the event by the limitations of track titles. As such, this feels more like a proper statement of intent, a full accounting of the project’s not inconsiderable powers in potentia. Crudely bedraggled crunch-gristle, sputtering crud-motors, mangled tape abuse, concrete dirt-pile snuffling– and, of course, masses upon masses of metal-junk scraps in variously hammered states of continuous collapse.
One commonality between the two tapes, the shit is raw as fuck. But where the brute rawness of Chamber Music is finessed in the measured inter-leavening of dynamic scrap impact, Ultimate Freedom seems more inclined to revel in the brutality of the moment. The moments stretch out, clearly in no hurry to disturb their revelry, easily accommodating each successive shift in terrain, smoothly mingling with the disheveled textural non-congruities as they lurch into play. In other words, the work flows, the need for track titles forgotten in their drawn-out rambling elaborations.
Side A immediately establishes the essential grubby underbelly. Thick blurty electronic grumbling underscores more wrinkled granite-tinged crumbling, the barest hint of metal scrap poking through crowded surface. Half-second intermission and then the main event: metal-scrap monstrosities collapsing en masse. Quite the robust range of metal-on-metal abuse, legitimately symphonic in scope. The first movement drives deep into the heat of a very physical scraping assault, twisted steel canisters forcibly wrenched through rusted screeching apertures. Two minutes of this and whole comes banging together in a spot of looped hammering as a nasty interval of surprisingly harsh analog shriekery briefly intrudes. Then. Metal scrap-piles pitch headlong into deep-sunk clang-o-dungeon as disembodied collisions of low-pitched clunk and clonk ker-blooOOOoonng in the gloom. Motors suddenly sputter to life, stubborn metal gears screech in protest, passionate friction heats up, distorts– and, quite abruptly, surrenders its fleeting furies to a miserablist medley of whinnying hinge-squeak and close-mic'd sandpaper scrinching, dry scritches and needlepoint scratches setting off the hoarse hack and wheeze of downpitched mic freely dangling in some poor bastard's sorely abused windpipe.
Side B is given more latitude to drift away from the already loosed moorings, engaging a diverse and often quite abrasive indulgence in ill-tethered incandescence. To culminate, classic-style, in raging full-metal rackets of purest HARSH. The opening lines are delivered by a lithium-voiced announcer over the muted warbling of spare piano keys, evidently sourced from recycled tape that has seen better days, the barest smidgen of metals tinkling in the background. A rather more foregrounded series of THWACKS aggressively unsettles the mood and suddenly it’s as though mangled tape ribbon were being roughly yanked through a rotten wooded frame. Huge chunks splinter in the ensuing collapse, large glass pieces fracturing and ringing shrill as the edges ascend to quite rabid frictions of badly abraded dry-shred clusters. As though to close out the opening section, the lithium-voiced announcer is back, this time grounded in wrinkled grubbings of dragged-in-dirt snuffling. The voice drops out and the dirt-snuffling is augmented with the brittle chiseling scavenges of dull-edged screwdrivers, hands worked raw at the unyielding soot-blackened surface. Soon the familiar metal-scrap assemblage rolls onto the scene, filling the field with faintly echoed scrapes and bonks, setting up the five-minute finale. Five minute finale: sudden drop to full-barreled mass of muffled thunder-bulge and then the incoming peaks of screeching high-end. Pointed percussive penetrations busy themselves in the frantic thwacking fury of full-in-body metal-on-metal whang. This is it, the harsh proper, ultimate freedom ultimately stoked in the eternal moment, wild-eyed blisses enraptured in steely-scorched fire.
Digest spew:No ironies to be had in the finessed inter-leavening of
Chamber Music’s dynamic scrap impact. The baroque sensibility is hard to deny, the thematic movement working in measured counterpoint to carefully arrayed assemblage. Harsh fucking noise, but elaborated in a way that is downright conversational. History lesson: In May of the previous year, a fifteen minute tape entitled
Nude Scraps dropped, with picture perfect self-descriptor
bare junk metal scraping. Well this time, the junk metal scraping has got its clothes on. It's got heft. It's got density. Full bodied. Robust. Massed textures spanning the stereophonic scope. What it may also have is the collapsible scrap impacts of twisted and broken shards, of glass, and of steel, fusing together in a voltron moment of perfectly dis-ordered elaboration.
The name Aprapat may go back some ways, but as of this writing the only remaining online traces go back to May of 2019.
Ultimate Freedom is dated January 2020 and could be said to represent a decisive statement of intent. The intent, as I see it: deliver raw as fuck sound of pure and unfettered brutality. But to deliver, I would add, in supreme and seldom to be rivaled fashion. The intent, as the earholes record it: crudely bedraggled crunch-gristle, sputtering crud-motors, mangled tape abuse, concrete dirt-pile snuffling. And, first and foremost, masses upon masses of metal-junk scraps in variously hammered states of continuous collapse. Evidently, then, a good number of moments, every one of them an invitation to revel in the brutality of the moment. The moments stretch out, clearly in no hurry to disturb their revelry, easily accommodating of each successive shift in terrain, smoothly mingling with the disheveled textural non-congruities lurched into play. There is so much to love in these thirty-one plus minutes, culminating in the ultimate freedom of wild-eyed bliss singularly suffused in steely saturations of scorched-earth fire.
