Almost two weeks ago Jim Mckenna created a short-and-sweet Reddit post that said, in its entirety: “I make experimental noise, cybergrind and electronic music. All free. Enjoy.” There were a handful upvotes from the noisemusic subreddit, but no other comments or reactions. But for me, this is the type of post I always click through to see what’s going on, and I’m especially glad I did in this case.
On Facebook he says: “anti-music enthusiast. I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that is poetry as I need it.” Love it. It appears Jim has been putting out roughly an album a month for the last couple years, so there is a lot to choose from. For today I’m going with the rhymingly named “Gravestones and Ice Cream Cones.”
The album opens with “Cup of Ruin” and its cool, muted percussion beat that actually sets a nice mellow groove, as static and harsh noises drop in and out for the duration. The rest of the album features reappearing compositional elements like manipulated voice samples and various machine noises, and what might be a recording of an actual beast of some sort that makes hideous noises and ends up consuming “The Suck” at the end. The track “Rabies” features a manipulated voice sample that simply describes rabies, although mixed with the featured haunted graveyard noises. It makes it seem like suffering from rabies is way worse that the dry clinical medical description would indicate, as bad as that is.
There is good variety too. “Random Guitar Demo” consists of a lo-fi drum and distorted guitar combo. It has a simple one-and-two-and-three-and-four drum pattern, but the overall effect sounds like the house band in a country music bar on Mars.
So even though this music may be filed generically under the categories of “noise” or “experimental,” there are enough flavors of good weirdness that it never gets dull. Dig in and give it a taste.