Facialmess - "in the facialmess" (2004 troniks)

review from aversionline.com

Facialmess "In the Facialmess" CS [Troniks] Here's around 20 minutes of blazing harsh noise that's so fucking loud I can't adjust the volume of my headphones to be quiet enough not to hurt. Expect fits of absolutely searing distortion that's at times rhythmic and churning and more often than not chaotic and blistering with midrange - all cutup and pieced back together with a few distinct vocal samples, brief fits of grinded up radio music or something like that, and of course the inevitable stints of wicked feedback. There are three tracks herein ("When I Was Young", "Gone, But Not Forgotten", and "Dinner With Faust"), but they first two tend to follow the same approach and style, so you can't really differentiate between them per se. "Dinner With Faust" is the glowing exception, containing sparse percussive sounds layered together for a lightly metallic clanking effect for a brief couple of minutes to end the cassette. Very nice, and a huge change of pace! What I like about this material is that it comes across as more hyperactive than a lot of this stuff does, but at the same time it seems more thought out and precise in a way. Sure, it's completely insane and jumbled, but the way that some of the briefly recognizable hints of music seep in and the way some of the samples are allowed moments of clarity certainly seems at least somewhat calculated. Also effective is the fact that the recording is super loud and fiery without sounding too crisp or really coming off as overly raw either - it's a nice balance. Oh, and there's a ton of brutal stereo panning adding to the madness that can really fuck with your ears on occasion. As is often the case with these Troniks cassettes the packaging is nothing to write home about (a xerox on red paper with plain text and little imagery), but that's no big deal. This is good material that's been very tactfully executed - even down to the fact that the tape is an aptly concise 20 minutes rather than a mind-numbing 90 or something like that. Oh, and it's limited to 48 copies, so I don't know what the status is on that. Good stuff. (7/10) Running time - 20:00 (approximately), Tracks: 3 [Notable tracks: Dinner With Faust]

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