Schtummm's hot-off-the-press album, Music to Be Despised (released through the exploratory Submarine Broadcasting Company), is anything but mum: an electronic field of flighty discord and piercing placation, spewing noises that settle one in, even as its compositions clang deprecation.
"First Cuts", the album's emoting kick-off, and "Gynaecomastia - black midi for the secret flesh", its piano-pinged ("Colossus of New York"/Nathan Van Cleave-sounding) finale, are the most subdued: intrinsic book ends that beckon listeners while bidding adieu to life's (bio)mechanical excess.
"Cesium Bed Deposits" is, in truth, the unofficial start, an industrial grinding that rides off "First Cuts'" chimes and a companion piece for the inevitable "Norwegian Metal", which unlike the Beatles' melodious wood, is hard to the core.
Their strength chisels the way for "Juggerman" (an irreverent, harebrained tour de force) and "Circuitry" (Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" on low-corridor, high-grade acid), piling pressing preludes that one won't wish to unplug, no matter how stripped one's screws have become.
"Sandman II" perhaps gives some reprieve as it nurtures its nightmarish seeds. "Tempest Fidget - white boys can't dance" could be called its truculent outcome: if not a veritable nightmare than the uncoordinated residue of one.
The album is ultimately characterized by the epic "Memorygauze" trilogy. Its parts consist of "erosion of nostalgia infantile dementia"; "erosion of nostalgia juvenile dementia"; and "erosion of nostalgia alienator goofiest nosh". The combination alludes to an organic machine gone mad, designed by either Tobe Hooper or David Lynch, its swathing tensions shoved into a reconstructive crash.
In the end, Music to be Despised is really an anthology about developmental rise and (r)evolutionary pain. And pain is surely a sensation to be despised (if not reluctantly subscribed), in the way it breaks and rebuilds us all at the same time. So will Schtummm's entire sojourn: an album that'll fit one's equivocal psychology like a snug, soiled glove.
Try "Music to be Despised" on for size at
https://submarinebroadcastingco.bandcamp.com/album/music-to-be-despised.
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