Thanks to our good friend climate change, turbulence-free flights are becoming a rarity—ironic, considering how much carbon the aviation industry spews into the atmosphere. Those nerve-racking bumps and batters only add to the nightmare that is air travel, a nightmare in which Red Eye to Hell revels. From the stressful release description to the auxiliary packaging (a “Travel Service” paper barf bag), this debut single-sider by Frequent Flyer nosedives toward an aesthetic that is all the more repulsive for its familiarity. Beginning with a transportation security announcement as a cursed overture, the tape soon climbs to a cruising altitude of thick analog distortion, much of which sounds like it could have been sourced from recordings of commercial jet engines. Fans of blown-out four-track harsh will feel right at home in this catastrophically depressurized cabin; the noise is heavy, dense, sluggish, but with just enough bite to keep it from fading into the background. Around the eight-minute mark the fuselage starts to shake itself apart, and a brief interlude of loose bolts and groaning metal plates builds anticipation for the roar’s unceremonious return. The pacing feels like flying against the current, deliberate but impeded, and especially in the latter half the trajectory tends toward rumbling stasis… less wall, more wind tunnel perhaps. Another great release from a criminally underappreciated label.
Copies are available via email: brucepilaf@gmail.com.
Noise Not Music 