Originally part of the intial CrackHouse tape-only release from 1989, IAO, gunks of improvised free psych spew forth in the very first "no music" recordings. Contains the exhausting classic "Black Light Discipline Room", a 47-minute mushroom seance of over-effected guitars, delay, feedback, and drug movie soundtracks. Like a puppet show of mongoloid Jimi Hendrixes jamming on "After Cease To Exist".
Dead Angel #52 (07/02)
http://www.monotremata.com/dead/issues/da52.html
"TMU: Well, they're off to a promising start with that name, aren't they? The title of this first song is called "Black Light Discipline Room." I like the way they think already....
TTBMD: Yeah, it sounds good. Guitar waffling with background noise....
TMU: Calliope sounds....
TTBMD: This is in the same realm as Skullflower. This sounds like it was recorded live.
TMU: There's just two perverts making all this racket. One of the instruments they list is "shattered skull of the black goat" -- (squints) oh wait, actually "guitars, samples, synths, noise," sorry about that.
TTBMD (munching): These sunflower seeds be salty!
TMU: "... sweeeeeeet, sweeeet, sweeeeeeet, sweeeeet sunflowwwwwwaaaahhhhh...."
TTBMD: Did you do a review already for that Low album?
TMU: Yah, when it came out. Back when it was still possible for me to not play it constantly. Like all the time. I am enslaved by Mimi's forbidding snare.
TTBMD: There's a song here called "Leatherface."
TMU: Everybody digs that crazy cat and his stylin' chainsaw.
TTBMD: I highly approve of this. It's everything I look for in sonic exploration and use of delay and guitar drone. Faaaaaar out!
TMU: This is the music of the Atomic Ass Vacuum Cleaner Salesmen of Neptune. Hear their lovely shrieks as they pummel you into senselessness if you don't buy the deluxe model with all the sexual attachments! Like the Horn-0-Matic 500! The Galaxie Pedal of Delayed and Deferred Doom! Buy from them so many products that your bowels ache with desire, lest their wives -- the dreaded Platinum Devil Dolls of Planet Playtex -- come and whip you into senseless abandon and a state of ecstatic, shamanistic desire by beating upon your forehead with their fanged silver phalluses! (panting) The ritual of ectasy begins... the bodies are joined... sweat runs down the Elder God's back and dribbles into the Ocular Shifting Anus... nugggh... areyeh... that which lies dreaming cannot be dead... yuuuu... ugu... agar... (shrieking) the blind maggot eyes of the Goat of a Thousand Young! Blind black goat festering at the center of the universe! The terrible three-lobed eye! Hell titan! Death pig! I AM THE GOD OF VACUUM CLEANER ATTACHMENTS! I YI FUCKING YIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEE!!!
TTBMD: What the fuck are you talking about, man?
TMU: This song. I think. It's hard to tell, I'm possessed by chickens.
TTBMD: Crackhouse is totally the shit. I'll have to check out more stuff on Mandragora. Where are they from?
TMU: The crab caves of Neptune.
TTBMD: This was recorded back in 1989.
TMU: Oooo, wave transmissions from the great beyond... what song is this?
TTBMD: "Thorazine Brain Melt."
TMU: My brain is an ice-cold Slushee.
TTBMD: This CD just keeps getting better. I wonder if they have anything more recent out.
TMU: This i do not know, o swami. My Great and Terrible Eye of Anu -- HAIL ANU! MAY HIS EYE NEVER CLOSE! -- does not see this information. It does see the panties of the girl next door, but not discography information.
TTBMD: This song....
TMU: Yes?
TTBMD: ... it sounds like going through withdrawal.
TMU: Burroughs kicking junk in a tiny windowless hole in some Tijuana fleabag while heavy construction equipment builds the future around him. Sunlight streams in through pinholes in the walls and motes of light dance across his cancerous flesh. The needle gleams. Noises escape like gases. The Atomic Ass Brain burns, oh how it fucking BURNS! HELL -- yes, o my brother, a real and terrible HELL -- is right here! Right now! In the mind of the tortured souls who would unleash such terrifying sounds upon an unsuspecting world!
TTBMD: Doppleganger and Crackhouse should put out a split CD.
TMU: Stop that, you're fucking scaring me and shit. Such a terrible and forbidding thought to even attempt to contemplate... now you've done it, i'm fucking scared, mommy, come HOLD ME!"
Indieville.com - 5/05/02
http://www.indieville.com
So ya like your noise, eh? Ya like it hard; ya like it psychedelic? And ya love those overdriven guitars, too, don't ya? Well say hello to Crackhouse, then. The magnificent duo of Erik Amlee and David Gilden recorded these five pieces of noise all the way back in 1989, and, by golly, they stand up perfectly well today.
Guitars, synths, samples, and all sorts of other bizarre sounds come together on this cool little album, released on the increasingly cool Mandragora label. A plethora of moods are represented here - from the harsh and strident to the eerily calm. "Leatherface," the second track on the album, starts off calmly, but then builds into a symphony of grating junk noise. Fans of Mike Shiflet and his Noumena outfit will surely enjoy this. The last track, "I'm Gonna Die," is somewhat different. Using a spoken sample of the words "I'm gonna die," and combining it with all sorts of other grating noise, Crackhouse has created one of the most haunting noise pieces I've ever heard.
As good as those tracks are, though, nothing lives up to the bar set by "Black Light Discipline Room," the main attraction on this album. Spanning the entirety of forty-seven minutes, the track bellows out mad layers of pedalized guitar noise - kind of like something Caspar Brotzmann would do, except with a more psychedelic bend. By the end of it all, your entire body will feel numb." - Matt Shimmer
