Monday 13 April 2020

The Gerogerigegege ‘Piss Shower Girlfriend’ 12” (FOAD)

Adherents know that while The Gerogerigegege may forever be labelled a noise project, it frequently – sometimes infuriatingly – isn’t. 2016 comeback album ‘Moena Hai’ was an exquisite combination of ambient craftmanship, field recordings and in-the-red shoegaze riffing which was somehow easily defining of the project even in its sprawl. But the following LPs were appropriated from 1970s pop schtick in that nonchalant fuck-you way the project delivers in spades, and newly self-released editions were a confusing mess of archival curiosities, self-bootlegged bootlegs, and a revised presentation of classic LP ‘Senzuri Champion’.

Within all that mess of culled cultural excess, lo-fi curiosities, rehearsal circumspection and hint of class, Juntaro Yamanouchi’s credentials as a noise artist lay untouched and seemingly uncared for in the project’s resurrection, but ‘Piss Shower Girlfriend’ is the exaltation of volume, distortion and abandon which has been lying in wait the last four years of the project (at least). ‘Piss Shower Girlfriend’ effects a more immediate and volume-dependent bustle than even ‘Senzuri Champion’’s centrepiece “Violence Onanie” but is similarly liberally noisy and unrestrained. The LP is a festering squall of high volume feedback and vocal noise, with a heavy Masonna feel in its slashes of shrieking vocal gibberish, cleaving feedback air, flip-switch effect injections and occasional pauses of equipment faltering in overheated exhaustion.

While the first side is utterly primal and unhinged, departing only from its shriek-and-howl template with a bath of reverb in final track “Piss Shower Telephone #4”, the second side seems to push some (probably sampled) junk clatter and movie script speech through its raucous amplification, those moments of performed downtime then fuelling spasmodic spurts of fierce movement, garbled vocal jags and greater equipment defeat/interruption.

Each side plays out as a single piece but let’s not forget that – of course – each isn’t. The LP purports to contain 13 tracks even if it doesn’t really, and to make it better the track titles are divine as only Juntaro could do: personal highlights are “Piss Shower Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon” and “Piss Purple Draank (T.V Bastard)”. For bonus points the pressing is a picture disc, cheesecake muscle men innocently handstanding, their smile and serene pose at dubious odds with the vibrant audio content.

I get why The Gerogerigegege is a difficult or taboo project for many, but any and all unpreparedness or selectivity is out: ‘Piss Shower Girlfriend’ has to be the exception for anyone yearning for liberated and deranged harsh noise with a juvenile fascination for loudness, feedback and human caterwaul. ‘Piss Shower Girlfriend’ is the LP which will yet again entrench The Gerogerigegege in the noise consciousness, and lead to a whole new round of disappointments as that newly attracted audience find the next few releases to bear no sonic resemblance or care for convention.

http://www.foadrecords.it/

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