So much for the status quo …
(wait for it)
… -heleth.
(NAILED IT.)
Billed as “the world’s very first noise rock remix album” (somebody check me and also the band on that), Ape Dog Wars Chide the Stem Toil is “a deconstruction by [one-man-post-rock band] Whettman Chelmets” of Qoheleth’s 2017 release God Is the Warmest Place to Hide, and also serves as an anagram of that album title.
(Did you get through that long yet amazingly well-crafted sentence unscathed? Well done you.)
Ape Dog Wars does exactly what Whettman Chelmets (probably) promised Qoheleth he’d do to their record: flip that nasty noise rock on its head and tease out all manner of sonic subtleties. God bless him, Chelmets really did a job on these tunes.
The great thing is, not once does Ape Dog Wars actually manage to sound like AmRep-indebted noise rock (and trust me, I love me some AmRep-indebted noise rock). The closest the album comes is on “Bombardier,” and even then the tune stumbles drunkenly through reverbed rhythm. Instead, Chelmets lets his imagination run wild, picking up on subtle cues throughout Warmest Place and stretching them to song length, sometimes focusing on single sounds as a foundation (e.g. “LKK”), other times finding a groove and lacing it with strange particles (“Skidozer 301”).
Not convinced? (And there’s no reason you shouldn’t be — just saying.) The label releasing this pup on CD is called “Philip K. Discs.” Like, why hasn’t anyone done that before? It seems so obvious now!
More about: QOHELETH
