New high bar set here with Jeremy Bible’s physical issues of his once digital-only Collisions album; both the cassette version (which I have on hand), and the CD version of this release are top-notch. Look at that! Mirror-metallic print on a glossy box with bellyband? Shit, seriously good. Sonically, Bible’s never sounded more in control, precise, and sharp than on this one. A friend of mine likened it to birds, and the frantic, fast-paced and high-pitched nature of that animal fits this record’s trajectory quite well. You can also just hear what sound like genuine field recordings of them throughout the length of the recording — the flapping of wings, their worm-wanting chirps, etc., all of it pieced together with synths and tape samples, and whatever all else you won’t be able to place in your imagination. Instead of approaching a noise-collagist’s oft-used technique of mashing textures together, smearing things into a pasty pastiche of blended “harsh,” Bible puts things together with a care that almost feels obsessive, giving each and every individual sound he creates edges that are refined and defined. It is designed music. Bible adds and subtracts elements as if building a sculpture out of Jenga blocks, and while the architecture is built to feel like it should be teetering on the brink of collapse at any moment with sounds swooping in and crashing into one another with blind and aggressive accents, wavering on unsteady waves of dynamic shifts, Bible’s foundations are still strong enough to keep the sound remarkably sturdy. And though he can also be tender, finding the softer side of his instrumental array as the album makes its way toward the end, even his quietest moments (completely dead, negative spaces) are used in ways that could leave many white-knuckled and squeamish. Also this: Album of the year.
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