Oh, so it's harsh noise you're looking for, is it? You like the sound of demolition, amplified to the point just before your speaker cones rip, yes? And what about the sounds from a great white shark cage? Believe you me, it's more unsettling than words would make it seem, and when filtered through whatever it's filtered through, The Rita transforms this source material into an all-encompassing noise blast. But have you ever smoked so much pot that you actually sobered up? It's an anomaly difficult to believe, but a quintessential stoner moment nonetheless. And just like becoming immune to the medicine, The Rita lays it on so consistently thick that eventually the initial impact gets lost. But in exchange for a heavy bludgeoning comes clarity, and there's lucidity in what once seemed impenetrable. Although Thousands of Dead Gods is indeed a tour de force with seemingly infinite layers all at full clip, time reveals a more amorphous texture with nooks and crannies hidden deep within the walls of static.
After a while, it's easy to zoom in, becoming hypersensitive to the constant yet subtle changes, and you might even feel a little smarter when the whole thing is over (or completely numb). Yes, you can ride its waves, but make no mistake: Thousands of Dead Gods does not merely flow from moment to moment with open arms to chaos and little regard for form. The piece is actually an extraordinary exercise in control, and its structure could best be heard as a singular gesture. One... hour... long... noisy... gesture. Hell yeah, it's like a lot of time to devote to a single action, but The Rita works more like an architect than a freestyle skater, and length is a necessity in this mammoth structure. Eventually it becomes difficult to tell how much time has passed and even more difficult to imagine what life was like without the CD playing. While demanding attention and about as far as you could get from ambient sounds, its own ambience manages to become something of a permanent fixture to its surroundings. It ends as abruptly as it began, and like stepping off a treadmill to find that your legs feel like they should still be running, there's an unsettling euphoria in the silence and the constant reminder of what had become so natural.
1. Thousands of Dead Gods