THE RITA / MARION – Crystal Smith LP (no poster)

HNW has a funny way of making you see or hear what isn’t really there. It makes you read into things. Heavily. To an excruciating, almost insatiable degree. What’s that sound? Who’s voice is that? Why the fuck am I watching some contact mic-wielding cynic wank his oscillators dry? These questions are overwhelmingly human. We need to know what oblivion feels like. We need to know the names of those that crush us. But past the general technological and aesthetic mystique of the genre, harsh noise thrives in fetishizing mundane realities. And there might be no better example than Marion’s seminal work, The Bathtub.
In that same vein, Crystal Smith creates an ivory tower of blown out sound-bytes, abysmal distortion and mildew-smothered scenes of erotic beauty. It’s like an anti-cinematic deconstruction of soundscape theory. Instead of expanding a single sonic moment exponentially into some bland ephemeral bullshit, Marion and The Rita take stock of HNW’s inherent existential dread. The void is like the number zero. Multiply and expand all you want, but nothingness is absolute.

– Jeff Low