Selving, the latest and perhaps greatest solo project from Dan Williams (a.k.a. Swarm Survival; member of Pyramid Dust, Culled, Ghoul’s Teeth, Rust Belt), first torched tape with 2021’s appropriately titled Willed Into Existence on the artist’s own imprint Structures Without Purpose. Though there was already plenty of cut-up DNA woven into the two mono-heavy blasts of that C20, those strands have grown like hungry vines through the thick analog churn of Guerrilla Bamboozlement Campaign and now thrive in the loamy ruins of Miniscula, cinch-amputating slabs of surging pedal-noise into jagged chunks with stretches of humid dead air in between. I hope I get to see a live set someday, because this is the kind of stuff that’s better witnessed than simply heard; every rumble and roar in “Bizarre Animalcule” sounds forced from a maxed-out effects chain by ruthless killswitch compressions—Caustic Pulse Rupture?—and one can almost see the knobs twisting through the soupy direct-action smog of “Muling.” There’s a (frequent) time and (large) place for the high-fidelity, stereo-lush shrapnel storms of audiophilic surgeons like T.E.F, Negation, Marion, and others, but I’m just as often in the mood for this blunt-nosed approach that is thriving in underground hotspots around the States and across the globe, a trend with aspects both fresh and classic that Fusty has been faithfully chronicling with many of these inspired recent tape releases. Miniscula has all the colorful density and textural eclecticism of Bamboozlement (one of my most played tapes in the box of noise-bags that lives right next to the deck), but here Williams also introduces a well-humored volatility into the mix, cross-contaminating currents and injecting left-field sample breaks with inflammatory irreverence. My sole complaint is that it’s too damn short.
Noise Not Music 