seven

This disc is the first installment in a series of straightforward split releases from Zaftig Research, through which Zaftig head, Brett Lunceford, under the umbrella of his two projects, Stolen Light (his fierce noise outlet) and Goose (the milder alter ego), takes on a variety of noisy collaborators. Limited to 50 copies a piece, with basic formulaic cover art, these CD-Rs are designed to let the noise speak for itself.

CAT opens up the dialogue with the three part "Journey Backstage," a half-hour of percussive, noisy, sample based experimentation. The solo project of Crunch Pod Media founder Ben Arp, CAT has been around for a couple years now, primarily sharpening his sound on a variety of compilation appearances. The samples used here are entertaining, and sound like they're mainly drawn from television and movie sources. Basic programmed rhythms provide the floor boards for the track, somewhat mixed up and manipulated but for the most part pounding away with repetitive determination. Some melodic interludes break up the beats, but a layer of crude sampling remains a constant throughout.

Stolen Light continues with "I Take the Midnight Subway Train," a dense, concrete excursion into the entirely textural, static infused realm of pure white noise. To the average listener this will sound like a 30 minute recording of the coarse audio detritus of an untuned radio station, fragments of surrounding stations barely audible below the suffocating sheets of noise. Comparing this to past Stolen Light material, I consider it pretty bland. There's a lot of it, but not much to it.