Dilloway, Aaron – “Modern Jester” – [Hanson Records]

abacus   5/9/2012   A Library, CD

Using recorded voices and sounds, fuzzed out primitive synthscapes and an amalgamation of tape loops this trickster tears down all preconceived borders of noise and sound, letting loose an overwhelming freedom through confusion and destruction. This prolific noiseician from the group Wolf Eyes released this double LP (we got the promo CD) on his own Hanson Records label, throwing a mirror up for the world to see the primordial delusions that gave birth to noise, stripped to the bare bones. With Tremors we’re introduced to the protagonist, an inflatable clown caricature cooing and cackling that resurfaces throughout the album, who is suddenly cut off by Eight Cut Scars??with its assaulting, repetitive yet extravagant and magisterial loops that circle round and round like a waltz stuck on the same twirl or the Electric Light Parade circling a cul-de-sac. The album continues with all sorts of delinquent antics fumbling in a drunken haze;??Body Chaos??is a three part symphony of a circus of wanton destruction where the entire zoo of animals is set loose in a swirling inferno. Shatter all Organized Activities??comes at us like a militant declaration of war, with chainsaw sounds and long cords of chain dragging down grated staircases. We get ceaseless hauntings of ghoulish elephants and fuzzy memories of rabid dogs along with slowed down hip-hop grooves played backwards and broken cuckoo clock chiming, all with the recurrent appearances of the cackling clown emerging from our subconscious, demonstrating as any jester would, his capacity to critique within the perpetual amusement.