#absurd matter

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Shapednoise’s Absurd Matter 2

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Shapednoise — Absurd Matter (Weight Looming)

Photo by Leonardo Scotti

Sicilian producer Nino Pedone, AKA Shapednoise, deconstructs club music into junkyard soundscapes which writhe, crack and spark under the pressure of heat and crush. There’s no dancing to be done here but mixed into the noise, rappers Armand Hammer and ZelooperZ, poet Moor Mother and composers Dean Hurley and Brodinski are on hand to declaim, add atmosphere and augment the tour through Pedone’s scrap museum. Having recently recovered from temporary hearing loss, Absurd Matter is trapped in a world where heart thump, blood woosh and the burbles of cranky organs are the thrum of life and external sounds are felt rather than heard. There’s a chilling intensity to the instrumental tracks and the vocalists work to develop rhythmic cadence within the juddering cacophony.

David Lynch collaborator Hurley brings the claustrophobia and existential dread of the dungeon to “Intro,” the foreshadowing of a dank doom seeping into your bones. Armand Hammer (the duo of billy woods and Elucid) play off the mechanoid backing of “Family” dropping their verses with funereal clarity; Pedone’s inserts of a decayed orchestral loop, more lamentation than disintegration. Brodinski and ZeelooperZ stretch and distort both music and voice over the clatter of widgets dropping from the end of an unattended conveyor belt. Working alone, Shapednoise’s titles give you an idea of how they sound. “Weighty!” “Savage Mindedness” and “Metal” carry barely recognizable strands of bass music and hip hop, hammered out of shape, amputated, cauterized and sent out to crash and bang as best they can. Yet within the apparent randomness there are clusters of melody, dissident pockets of fractal organization and rhythmic patterns that emerge with stubborn insistence that absurdity is an essential strategy not a gratuitous gesture. “Poetry” features Moor Mother, no stranger to experimental sounds, reasserting the identity generating power of the word. The beats here are as straightforward as Absurd Matter gets, which is merely to say, they hold their shape, barely, amidst the babel babble and ricocheting pitch distortions engulfing the track. At the center of this maelstrom, the Poet, as commanding and compelling a voice as any in music;  “As soon as you heard the voice/You knew/it’s me/Poetry.” 

Andrew Forell