Cut-and-paste album review of the day: Geocidal by tētēma (Ipecac, 2014).
New “abstract, conceptual masterpiece” (ref) by Australian composer Anthony Pateras and vocalist Mike Patton: it’s “audio caffeine injected direct into your eyeballs” (ref.) The album, presumably a mash-up of the words “geographic” and “homicidal” (or “suicidal”?), “investigates the murder of place (…) Is there any specificity left in this generalized cesspool of culture? Or has the tidal wave of digitally-fuelled apathy swamped any sense of tangible individuality?” (ref.) “The interesting thing about the record is that every element is recorded in a different country, and this gives the sound a displaced, almost vaporous intensity (…) the whole Geocidal thing is about coming from no place, re-birthing, watching the place you are from be altered beyond recognition that you have nothing to do with it anymore” – says Pateras (ref), “This is not a Luddite manifesto, it was more a desire to base everything in this music on feel and instinct — to never be told what to do by a machine and embrace the temporal fecundity which comes out of that” (ref.) “Geocidal harbors a death drive, a passionate and maniacal appetite for pain and suffering and carnage, and in all of its extremity there is also a solid truth: pain, which we attempt to bliss away with any sort of fantasy, is real and out there and coming someday (…) you’re soon to be transformed into a stain on the wall of a public bathroom in hell” (ref).
Listen on Spotify or buy here.
