Slip out of those overalls, secure the instant depuffing eye mask, and slide straight into the spa waters. Aaron Dilloway is reissuing his full-length album Beauty Bath, previously available as a short-run international LP, in a fresh edition of 500 picture discs via his own Hanson Records. As the bubbles eddy around your aching limbs, lean back and prepare to beam one whole side of the wax straight into your dome. In the right mindset, the alien is familiar. In the right location, noise is comfort.
As ever, Dilloway sets up shop and doles out platters of abstraction and hallucinatory audio recontextualization. Filtering his deep-cut curatorial sensibilities as a tape collagist through a disfiguring battery of effects and loop-based processes, whatever sounds he pre-records or whatever pre-existing media he samples or whatever the hell any of this once was emerges from the boards as a layered session of white noise, industrial clamoring, and slo-mo drone. The A-side of Beauty Bath bends and writhes as a suite of juxtaposed textures all over the [Harsh] → <- [Placid] spectrum, giving each segment of disembodied terror its own few minutes in the spotlight before jettisoning the loops for another round. Though every tone he presents would register as “hellish noise” with the norm-core contingent, Dilloway excels at weaving sounds with radically different grains and degrees of legibility into fractured narrative journeys. He offers bite-sized servings of discernible synth-like moans and the occasional clearly sampled instrument before pulling the rug out via expanses of hissing pointillist static.
Around the 18-minute mark of the A-side, Dilloway begins a passage of loping tape squelches dusted with suspended synth tones and haunted whistling — giving us an idea of how Ennio Morricone would sound 800% percent slower and mangled into near nothingness. When the whistles end and the loops grind to a halt, feel free to take off the eye mask and re-enter society. When your hands dry, grip Beauty Bath from Hanson Records — or spring for the LP bundle pack with Adrian Rew’s sublime Slot Machine Music. Both ship in early September.
• Aaron Dilloway/Hanson Records: http://hansonrecords.bigcartel.com
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