208 Possession EP
On paper, 208 is a noisy guitar-and-drums garage punk duo out of Detroit. But it’s best not to go into this release with that as your primary frame of reference. You’d likely come out the other side thinking it sounds like an unlistenable mess. Because it is…sort of. The production sounds like someone held a cheap microcassette recorder up to a boombox with blown-out speakers blasting one of PUSSY GALORE’s lowest-fidelity songs. It’s extreme. It wasn’t until I got to the record’s instrumental title track that I think I finally got things. I’d zoned out while it was on, to the point of forgetting what I was listening to. When I snapped back into focus, all of a sudden it sounded like I was inside the engine of some rusty steam engine, barrelling through some industrial hellscape. So, being able to recontextualize this as something closer to a pure noise project, maybe something like CHROME meets the DEAD C meets Metal Machine Music, I was able to get into it a little. Not sure if that was their intention. In any event, I think I’m OK with this now. I’m really curious to see how this would translate live.
