Aube 'Hydrophobia 1993' one-sided 12" (Cheeses International)

‘Hydrophobia’ was the first Aube release, a single-sided cassette on the indelible Vanilla Records, staging what would become Akifumi Nakajima’s well-known long buildup, sounds derived from water looped, layered and distorted into a drowning torrent. The release is raw and quite raucous, opting to focus on a fearsome force of fluid which is itself soaked in distortion, the movements of the liquid resonating as crisp fissures in the rushing noise which overwhelms the piece.

‘Hydrophobias 1993’ is a previously unreleased redo of that early missive, a recreation of the original side through a different lens and time, similar to the early remix of ‘Submerged Tension’ which saw release on G.R.O.S.S. after a debut on Steeple & Globe. Here the piece is sieved from a somewhat murkier body of water: the fulsome distortion of the Vanilla tape is muted somewhat, the highs not as biting and the low frequencies emerging as muddy thrusts rather than the encompassing flow of the original. The comparison is perhaps a bit unflattering to the later recording, even if that same revelry in coursing noise is equally present on the remix even if reshaped in its course, and the immersive rush of the original is lost somewhat, replaced with a murkier experience littered with semi-submerged uncertainties.

In comparison to the original the lead-in is however more developed, a soft introduction of bathyscape heartbeat syncing into a clanging repetition and muffled low-end rumbling, an initial flurry of noise then winding down into a cantankerous buzzing loop quarantined to the left of the stereo spectrum, allowing more deep sea atmospherics before the centrepiece of gristly noise emerges fully.

It’s understandable this piece wasn’t released in 1993; it’s somewhat regressive when compared to the more refined work Aube had already uncovered in the two years since the  first ‘Hydrophobia’; this 1993 revisitation also travels a less obvious trajectory than the initial tape, missing some of the original’s peak saturation. But as a relic to dig out in 2021, ‘Hydrophobia 1993’ is quite the find, and a welcome bolstering of Aube’s body of work. If you don’t have ‘Hydrophobia’ it’s the better place to start – and I think still available from Vanilla after all this time – but this redo occupies its own space and is a very digestible listen: I spun it at least ten times the first weekend it hit the turntable.