As Weird as Iowa

Altar of Flies – The Creeping Unknown

I just got a completely kickass trade package from Matthias, the man behind both the Swedish Hasten & Korset label (sinkorswim61@hotmail.com) and the Altar of Flies project. In exchange for an old CDR and a zine, he sent me three tapes, two buttons, and a completely kickass sticker – I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about who got the better end of the deal.

Even better, the tapes are really good, particularly this Altar of Flies record. It’s just the sort of nasty, crunchy, but strangely soothing low-frequency shit I loved to go to sleep to when I first started getting into noise, and would have gotten huge play on the original sleepnotwork radio show I did in college. It’s perfect 4am listening. There is no melody; primarily it’s low-frequency tones with a nice bit of grit to them. This is going to sound a bit too wholesome, but it’s the sound of eating granola – That is, of course, if granola occasionally started resonating at high frequency in your skull. There are small animals mewling in the boulders.