Jamie Stewart is stirring something. Or at least attempting to animate it. It’s a body of indistinct, fleshless noise distilled into the corporeal. There’s method to how Stewart charges “Inconsistent and Peculiar Volume” into ascension, drawing that noise out of the primitive and giving it a suffocating aura via ritualized synth. I can’t see a beginning or end to this ritual, only the procedure and its results, effervescing rust and static. This is that burning electric smell rendered for the ears, haunting animus that exists for no reason other than to serve as a reminder. The reminder of old sound, rent to pieces and molded by coarse hands to the present, the sound of Stewart’s old-growth forest, made of metal, ruin, and cacophony.
“Inconsistent and Peculiar Volume” is off Jamie Stewart’s solo debut, An Aggressive, Chain Smoking Alcoholic, out on Record Store Day, April 21, on pinyon.
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