The music of Wolf Eyes is abrasive and challenging. When combined with the music of similar, like-minded artists, that music becomes something else that's challenging in other, new ways. Difficult Messages, the new collection of Wolf Eyes collabs, is out now via Disciples, and it's highly recommended.
The percolating "Passive Tempos" with Time Designers gives way to the claustrophia of "Locked Rivers" with Gretchen. This one is a highlight of sorts here, with the dank murk of the track punctuated by what sound like samples of computer bleeps, or slowed-down tapes. Elsewhere, "Tense Lapse" with Universal Eyes combines that sort of thing with a doom-ridden clatter. The pulsing "Counted Reverb" with U Eye Trio feels like something from early on in the career of Throbbing Gristle, while "Tulsa Once", a partnership with Wolf Raven, is fuzzier still, the sound of a Cabaret Voltaire-style track gone wrong.
Difficul Messages retains a consistency of approach thanks to the mix by Warren Defever (His Name is Alive). The selections here dabble in a kind of sonic paranoia, which is exactly what we'd expect from a Wolf Eyes project. The whole record conjures an unsettling mood and punctuates it with flashes of harder, brighter beats, or samples of unknown instruments. It's an album of dark pleasures, where a listener is not so much assaulted by noise, but seduced by it. The boundaries are blurred throughout Difficult Messages, making a description of this in any genre terms, a difficult task. Devotees of Wolf Eyes should find the risks taken here compelling ones.
Difficult Messages from Wolf Eyes is out now via Disciples.
[Photo: Unsung Hunger PR]