The label Spectrum Spools around Emerald’s John Elliot, which for two years now has carried out the job of moving American snyth-music closer to the public’s attention, never gets tired of pointing out that they wouldn’t even exist without artists like Hive Mind. Hence, the little secret society, which fetishizes »Kosmische Musik« and other forms of fiddling with buttons on electrophones, has got itself a new high priest. As a matter of fact, generating sounds on the basis of one or more synthesizers could actually be named the prototype for the label’s artistic orientation. Since 2002, Greh Holger a.k.a. Hive Mind has produced cassettes made of noise from the synthesizer and sound studies, made for record carriers of either 30 or 60 minutes of running time. On Elemental Disgrace, the musician from Ann Arbor, Michigan, doesn’t move away one bit from these parameters. The studies titled Elemental Disgrace I and Elemental Disgrace II would take up a side each on a cassette with 30 minutes of running time. The test assembly is laid out, the experiment about to begin and the machine starts to rattle. Little by little, a brew of organic sounds is beginning to take shape, while Greh Holder spices and stirs like an alchemist; every now and then, he even tries to heat the bubbling mixture beyond its boiling point. What comes out in the end, is the refinement of a sound, which finally is much closer to the noise by Wolf Eyes and the early Black Dice (about ten years ago) than to the synths-heros of the 1970s.
Elemental Disgrace
