Saturday 5 December 2020

Andrew Grant – ‘Scrap’ C-30 + booklet (Foul Prey)

At least since The New Blockaders’ ‘Changez Les Blockeurs’ scrap metal has been a pervasive instrument of choice in the noise/industrial idiom, a bulwark of anti-musicality which is found liberally littered through the genre. For a rare release abandoning his The Vomit Arsonist guise, Andrew Grant has compiled ‘Scrap’ from just that, a set of unnamed dark concoctions which flail, caress, abuse and distress pieces of junk metal.

Channelled through a small bank of effects – predominantly the capacity to swamp sounds in heavy reverb – and with the acoustic sounds carefully realised, ‘Scrap’ isn’t the refuse orgy of The New Blockaders or tetanus-laced infestation of Mania (although both I expect carry influence) but is more compositionally realised, each piece approaching its sound source in a different fashion.

Raw metal fumbling opens ‘Scrap’’s first piece, heavily handled in the beginning before shifting to slower grappling which makes full use of the thick reverb coating the piece for probably the simplest realisation of the concept to open. What follows is a swampy rumble of reverberated cast-offs coursing almost subterranean, its intangible reflections giving a sharper focus to the scrap metal rustling on top, before a new piece emerges to explore angular creaks and groans through a slow delay, a dynamic counterpoint to the slow simmer of the previous piece.

The second side finds further points of expression within the same techniques, its opening piece comprised triggered howls of heavily effected clatter, the reverb seeming to feed on itself to urge a hostile swarm of sound from each singular blow, high register clanging lurking in the background as the piece angrily stirs itself up before retreating into a set of slower scrapes and bumps which leech reverb and puddle it on the floor.  The following piece dips jagged cuts of metal in tape distortion for a raw sound not far from the Rupenus brothers, but evokes a dark ambient halo with thinner flickers of high-end shimmer while a low frequency rumble lurks half-submerged, moving into a final piece of gristly acoustic recordings, largely mid-frequency clamour finding points of squealing resistance as rusted objects are dragged from points of resistance.

‘Scrap’’s accompanying artwork booklet takes an almost literal approach to the title, pages of expansive white spoiled with torn scraps of collage art largely profiling the sites of decay, abandonment and danger which provide source material for ‘Scrap’’s audio recordings. It’s a welcome addition which manages to avoid the obviousness of its aesthetic in the way its torn fragments are framed on much larger pages, giving the presentation more of a gallery feel above the raw crudities of its content.

What draws me repeatedly to ‘Scrap’ is the variation to its theme, a variety of tonal and dynamic sounds lifted from the scrap metal – then shaped using Andy’s more familiar death industrial stylings. Even when bashing misshapen chunks of iron and dented oil barrels, Andy’s deft compositional hand avoids any seriously sharp edges, bloated noise, or thudding industrial commotion – leaving the cold of the steel, inhalation of its rust, and the dark shapes of its discarding.