Ash Pool - World Turns on Its Hinge
March 26 2008 at 03:21:12 AM
A late arrival to the grim tea party, Ash Pool’s founder, Dominic Fernow – modest peddler of curiosities at the NY-based Hospital Productions record store and captain of audible ship wrecker, Prurient – turns now from career directions of “noise” to music of structure, though still without center. For aside from carrying over Fernow’s pet-interests in bondage and blanket deviancy,
World Turns on its Hinge plays things safe by way of inclusion and cliché. (A 7” EP put out earlier this year by Paragon entitled
Black Bondage in The North would make for a fine Darkthrone-inspired joke, but apparently they’re serious.)
The disc’s “mood” is formed patchwork, a kind of identity crisis that brings together disparate traits from USBM mainstay Judas Iscariot (“Under Zyklon Blue”) and forces it through a punk filter by way of copycat takes on current favorites Bone Awl (“Crucifixion Fantasy”) and Akitsa. Each formatted in perturbing explosions of rusty guitar lines and monomaniacal screams, graced by some brighter melodies and more than a few hard rocking hooks along the way. So, he can make music after all. Now what?
It did once look like Fernow’s apparently newfound (or newly vocalized) interest in Black Metal could lead to something at least mildly transgressive or unexpected. But while Ash Pool avoid the obvious tendency to make “electronic” Black Metal, “noise” or whatever, they also have no interest in modifying the way these thoughts are finally communicated. Instead, Fernow only subtly rephrases those bands he’s often parsed in music columns throughout the year (as well as tail certain others, like Krieg, who imploded shortly before he had the chance.) and in a more conventional way. Aren’t there enough people (admittedly, who’ll never be pictured in
Art Forum) who fill that space already? It seems like a waste; the world still turns, seasons change, skies receive their shades and dude’s still down there in the basement, mailing in those tunes.
[Todd DePalma]
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