Built over standing peals of guitar skronk/scrape and dry spoken vocals delivered with the half-fervor of a shamanic beat poet, Alex Moskos’s performances under the Drainolith moniker hit us as chunks of “no wave” noise layered heavy with abstracted rock signifiers and garbled melodies. Dense sessions like “Inside and Outside (Bog’s Blues),” our first preview of Drainolith’s Hysteria LP due June 2 on NNA Tapes, exemplify a zoned mind determined to give less fucks than have ever been given before — a benchmark defined and redefined by the experiments of Moskos’s other projects, like the now defunct AIDS Wolf or the noise collage supergroup Dan’l Boone (which initially formed to workshop Drainolith material).
On Drainolith Presents: Moskos Reads The Zonal Poets Vol. 1, a tape only available bundled with early preorders of the Hysteria LP, Moskos takes a step back from his musical practice to assume the role of literary conduit, digging into the minds and creative processes of his contemporaries in the US underground by performing readings of their poetry. Pieces contributed by the likes of trip metal godfather John Olson and Spectrum Spools honcho John Elliott offer thematic complements to the distorted reality of Moskos’s music, to the point that one wonders whether the stories dilute or exaggerate whatever real life events and/or hallucinations that inspired them. Just as Moskos’s vocals in Drainolith unfold as a series of enjambed poetic inklings, his readings of others’ work capture a similar dedication to focused fragmentation.
Press play on “3 Phases In Saliva,” premiering below, and follow Moskos down a spiral of industrial arcana, as birthed from the trip mentality of Wolf Eyes legend John Olson. Olson’s vivid diction reaches us as a smattering of olfactory details, grisly incidents witnessed, and visions of decay both socioeconomic and physical. “I am numb to seeing humans in danger,” says our narrator, as The Electrics carry out a ritual just for his sake. Olson’s detached narrative viewpoint and command of suspense within a framework of mundane experience evoke tactics used by Carver or Bukowski, but the content is pure ™ to the bone — filtered through an equally anarchic and meditative perspective honed through decades spent exploring the musical abyss.
Drainolith’s North American tour starts today. You can find dates here.
• Drainolith: https://www.facebook.com/Drainolith
• NNA Tapes: http://nnatapes.com/
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