The Cleaner Tapes roster continues to expand with the best of both old and new names in queer noise and industrial music. Pain Body is only the Pittsburgh-based Rain Matheke’s second tape as Farrah Faucet, the first one being Depression Body on Summer Interlude earlier this year, but the artist already displays a mastery of the power electronics fundamentals that is head and shoulders above most stuff out there, as well as plenty of singular twists that make the material fresh, exciting, and as brutal as possible. Embracing a harsh-indebted palette for the instrumentals along with a wide-ranging assortment of samples and live vocal attack, Matheke also very much takes cues from genre titans like Straight Panic in structure (that full-frontal blast after the muffled, muttered speech intro in “Lungless” is flawlessly executed) and Interracial Sex in texture, how the sounds are immensely heavy and yet seem to always be decomposing (the run of “Venom” through “Receding” makes this tape essential listening for fellow fans). But I can also confidently I’ve never heard a PE album quite like this, nor one that tackles these same topics of bodily pain, discomfort, and trauma with such depth and panache. From its uncanny, saliva-soaked lyrical delirium to the cathartic noise crescendo that swells like irritated gum tissue throughout, “Flinching” encapsulates it all in a succinct nine minutes, slathering an atmosphere that is as enthralling as it is revolting. “…I’m thinking about rot on a microscopic level.”
Noise Not Music 