Enregistreur

Featuring members of the always-confounding Godspeed You Black Emperor! collective, Exhaust is an atypical three-man job who strips away conventions and screws around with found sounds, live drums and bass, and anti-tech analog tape splices. If it sounds weird and slightly inaccessible, that's because it is, but for those willing to explore the foreign expressions of sound, you may just hear something you never imagined before. Simply put, these guys really know what they're doing. When the volume jumps and abrasive noise circles around the speakers, never letting the listener even figure out its origins, the clamor still contains some unarguable beauty. Instead of simple clicks and beeps to fill the spaces, the sounds on Enregistreur are completely organic, as if the musicians were actually taking apart your radio with skilled hands as you listened in. This sort of sound manipulation can either delight or flat-out annoy, and if unbridled passion for making new noises sounds like a science experiment instead of music, then you can probably count yourself among the masses who will be no better off after hearing this. Exhaust makes music for sound junkies, and while the live instrumentation on the disc is nothing to ignore, it is unarguably the fractured presentation that elevates it toward something more important. ~ Peter J. D'Angelo