If you weren’t already aware that Albuquerque’s Ryan O’Connor, the man behind Ineffable Slime, is an avid reader and devoted independent bookseller (dig Alarum), you could probably surmise as much from the numerous literary allusions and arcane homages scattered throughout his modest but steadily metastasizing discography. Through recent releases on Fusty and Tribe he’s homed in on a distinct aesthetic steeped in European/Anglospheric avant-garde and esotericism, sharpened to a fine point with his two full-length CDs on the Milwaukee-based Virtues label (run by Alex Kmet of Climax Denial and Sexkrime fame), Stalking the Sphinx and now Deep and Desperate Fictions. The inscriptions and imagery run right off the yellowed pages of a dusty tome, and yet O’Connor’s sound is more sterile than ever. Had I not seen him play before I might assume a heavily modular rig, or maybe even some laptop, but listening closer it’s clear it’s all about the pedals—despite the crystal-clear surgical sound, the noise is too brash and beefy, its kinesis and dynamics too gestural. It’s less contrast, more amalgam due to the eclectic setup: the samples deploy via microcassettes and tape loops add agility, all while synth boxes and glitch delays work up caustic storms. Conceptually too it feels like a more serious outing than previous ones, which featured track titles such as “Quantum Suicide of the Satanic Guido” and “Liturgical Dunce Conniption”; here, ominous phrases like “Cartesian Errata” and “Casting Leaden Eternity” evoke a cold, clinical pessimism fitting for these deep and desperate times.
Noise Not Music 