Genre: Noise / Drone

Disc 1: Mystified
01 Exhaust Doppler
02 Beginnings Revealed
03 And So It Happened
04 Waters Edge

Disc 2: Rabbit Girls
01 Symbols
02 The Consumed
03 Resorption
04 Gyre
05 Vespers
06 Rue

It’s true what they say you know: you spend ages waiting for a bus and then three come along at once. This truism can also be applied to my experiences thus far with the noise outfit known as Mystified; prior to my becoming a journalist here at HH I had heard of them but not actually heard them. This 2x3” CDr split with Kansas City’s Rabbit Girls is indeed my third encounter with the sparkling music of Thomas J. Park in about two months and once again his disc is chock-full of his tales of the utterly fantastic and weird, all told with his usual invention, imagination and wit.

However, before I venture any deeper into Mystified’s half of the split I shall concentrate on the less familiar (at least to me) Rabbit Girls, an outfit that describe themselves biographically thusly on their MySpace profile: “The Rabbit Girls started sometime in 1995 as an ongoing noise & rhythm project. No other details are available so it’s up to you to decide what it’s all about.” This is what I think they’re about: They inhabit much of the same sonic landscape as Mystified, with hints of cyclopean technology and infernal contraptions, but the sound is denser, noisier, less controlled and a great deal grainier. Hints of looped rhythms peep out from amongst the grind and blusteriness, deeply buried in the mix. The story here though is one of devastation, the wilful destruction of our only planetary home by the twin beasts of Mammon and Industry with their constant and insatiable appetites – the machines and wheels must be kept turning and the hunger must be sated. There’s a sense of the overwhelming disregard and unfeeling ruthlessness of both Big Industry (and its concomitant Capitalism) and Big Government (the lackey of the Big Corporation) in their unbridled chase for more fuel for the ever-hungry engines of commerce and manufacture. The relentless grind and despoliation are evident and keenly felt; the juggernaut has been sent on its irrevocable and destructive course.

Mystified on the other hand, shine a torch on a different side to technology and science. It’s still the same Big Science, Big Technology and it’s still on the same massive scale encountered on the Rabbit Girl’s disc, but somehow less antagonistic, less intrusive and less malign in intent; certainly compared to the RG contribution it is a lot more benign and less violent. It’s definitely considerably less threatening and has more of an organic feel to it overall. I feel that here the story is maybe more of a symbiotic relationship, that with the help of science and technology, in alliance with nature, our species can build bigger and better, and consequently achieve more and lead healthier lives; or maybe that’s just a specious line of reasoning. But it does seem to be saying that even though technology and science can indeed overwhelm and dwarf us it need not actually intimidate us. Yes there are the machine noises and mechanical beats, a trademark of Park’s work, but there are also more organic and natural sounds taking part as well, like bubbling water for instance (‘Waters Edge’), inhalation, exhalation and voices (‘Beginnings Revealed’) and even a track like ‘And So It Happened’, despite the spastic electronic jerkiness, elaborates something more human and identifiable.

In the end though, it’s all subjective – I just attempt to let the sounds and music trigger a chain-reaction of ideas and images, and then I react to whatever emerges. Mystified’s music has a habit of sparking things off immediately on contact, and I can almost feel the neurons firing off like ephemeral constellations of light as I listen – and that’s why I like his work so much. I also liked Rabbit Girls’ efforts too, but in a different, much more primal, way; and the contrast evident between the two acts can’t have done either any harm – if anything quite the opposite. It’s that very contrast that ultimately underlines the strengths of the other’s work and underlines the intent of each. There’s another thing that they say which can be a truism: small is beautiful – in this case they certainly got that right.