Seattle’s weirdo super-collective Dull Knife has now, after six years of terror-jams, been pared down to just two, Garek Druss (Tecumseh) and Adam Svenson (Karnak Temples). Here, the duo ushers in a new era for Debacle Records with the label’s first-ever vinyl record, which, an impressive 78 CD-Rs later, is kiiiiiind of a big deal. So we rejoice in the bounty of wax, full of tones that are paradoxically razor sharp and blunt as brick. “Excavating” finds Dull Knife combing stacks of textures out into the tall walls of synthetic drone. It’s an intense mix of high frequencies grinding into one another to paint a dark and murky landscape with forlorn melodies hiding in the storm. And bleak. This is fucking bleak, by the way. But the entire effect ends up sounding gloriously holy, awe-inspiring, and enveloping like church organs or dare-you-think-it Tim Hecker. This short excerpt is but a modest peek into the group’s sense for sonic molding and compositional balance, features that make the self-titled effort a killer offering of improvised doom on the whole and Dull Knife stand out within 2012’s incredibly fruitful world of drone.
• Dull Knife: http://debaclerecords.bandcamp.com/album/dull-knife
• Debacle Records: http://debaclerecords.com
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