Saturday, January 17, 2009

Cannibal Frequencies - Untitled


Cannibal Frequencies - Untitled 2








This was supposed to be one of those "mysterious" tapes. The kind of thing that, for whatever reason, has an obviously fake story about it's origins. Label Gods Of Tundra said, "I found this master buried underneath the dirt in the woods next to my building. It was covered in mud and mostly rotted. Turns out Mike Shiflet recorded this, dug a hole and threw it in there 2 years ago. Now its been unearthed and its time to for the rot to soak into your stereos." So, yeah, this is a tape by Mike Shiflet under the moniker Cannibal Frequencies and it's fucking brutal.

Two sides, 15 minutes each, both consisting of an almost totally unwavering static buzz. They're absolutely relentless. I had two co-workers come in and hear this tape and they ended up being spot on with their descriptions. One of them side of the A side, "This sounds like something from Close Encounters, you know with the UFO." I kind of doubt a real spacecraft would sound like this, but a Hollywood UFO? Definitely. I think this is more like what the radio would sound like if a UFO was flying by, disrupting the frequencies.

The other friend said the B side sounded like "the stampede of a thousand horses." So true. If you just close your eyes and imagine yourself trapped in a canyon with a herd of horses (bulls might be a more appropriate animal), I'm pretty sure this is what you'd hear. Completely static, the sound only wavering as much as a stampede would. Amazing.

This isn't really the kind of stuff I'd recommend listening to at work. My colleagues seemed a bit weirded out by it, giving me some strange looks, but they were for the most part OK with it. My guess is not all people would be as forgiving. Most might ask you to turn it off. And in this particular case, you probably don't have a really good case for keeping it on.

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