jffstnhs: Broken
Cooper Cult

Taking a decidedly nightmarish turn, the latest release from Cooper Cult evokes states of discombobulation and psychosis. jffstnhs' aptly titled Broken finds Jeff Stonehouse losing the vowels and assuming a considerably darker persona than that associated with his previous project Listening Mirror.

Presented in a three-inch CD format (in an edition of 50 copies), the twenty-two-minute piece opens with a sample of a man's voice that's so distorted the words can barely be deciphered before plunging into a black hole of cavernous rumble. The sound mass reverberates insistently thereafter in such a way as to invite the genre classification dark ambient, though deep-space drone might be just as viable a descriptor. Gradually the intensity level subsides, a move that allows a cycling flow of convulsions to become more dominant, until the hazy mass returns, this time swelling into a crackling cloud and surrendering to madness all the more. Crank that stereo as loudly as it can go, and then lie back and strap yourself in for this haunted trip to the outermost reaches.

April 2013