HIDE

Chicagoan two-unit HIDE (fine artist Gabel and percussionist Seth Sher) present a new form of field music. On new LP ‘Hell is Here’ they utilise found sounds, disruptive plundersonics and poised noise creating an industrial-ienated backdrop that is pure dystopic in its perception-reception. With titles by the names of ‘Hell’, ‘Grief, ‘Everyone’s dead and ‘Pain’ this is a tip-toe traipse across terror-firma.

That isn’t to say this is new though. To date they have released 2016’s Black Flame EP (dedicated to the memory of Reyhana Jabbari, a 27 year old Iranian woman who was hung for allegedly killing someone trying to rape her) and 2017’s debut, the teste-oh-zone wincing ‘Castration Anxiety’. Unofficially subtitled: Songs of hurt and blood in the knackers yard.

Ever wondered what a song called ‘Chainsaw’ would sound like? Well, wonder no more, it’s here and it sounds exactly like you’d wonder. Abrasive, searing and with the potential to lacerate all in its wake, this metal machine music is augmented by the blunt bellowing of Gabel, as she screams ‘bitch … fuck you then …’ whoever’s being addressed can rest assured they won’t be receiving any festive greetings this year. Or any.

‘999’ is a yawning chasm of terror backed by the cogs of clanging doom. ‘SSSD’ (Self-self-Self Destruct) is a Sigue Sigue Sputnikesque ultraviolent auto-immolation: deconstruct the ego, reassemble and reconstruct a new, better ‘you’.

Aggressive, transgressive, challenging, political, critical, analytical, the knives are out, the sights are trained, the trigger set.

Some may deny this is ‘music’, others may decry it as ‘unlistenable noise that crowds my thought processes’. Ignore them: amongst an arid culture-zone where styled and scripted autotuned automatons ape archaic moves and grooves this is art as statement/statement as art.

As the saying goes ‘Music’s not for everyone’