Liebestod – “Escaping Freedom” – [Chondritic Sound]

Robin Banks   6/28/2022   A Library, CD

“Darkness is Easeful” is the title of track 5, and I imagine it would be for whoever made this stuff. A tinny clang rings out across a ruinated, lamenting, and paranoid landscape that Jesse Sanes has decided to make his playground. Sanes is a hardcore man who sang for punks HOAX from Western Mass, active 2010-2016. This CD compiles two cassettes released in 2014 and 2017 under his solo Liebestod moniker (“love death” in German). While noise tapes are known to sell fast and disappear forever, save for the rare appearance and coinciding astronomical markup on Discogs, limits of the medium often belie the scope of the sounds they contain. Enter “Chill” Will Killingsworth (renowned engineer, Dead Air Studios, WMass), who did this material a solid kindness by mastering this work to sound not only crisp but dangerously loud on CD. I was literally cringing at the thought of and afraid to go above 50% volume, but my ears are pretty sensitive and damaged so maybe that’s just my problem.

A pastiche of field recordings, power electronics, and spoken word converge on you in the fetal position as you try to gather your scattered and scribbled thoughts to steel yourself for the foraging of anything that might sustain you until darkness falls once again.

-Robin Banks