---__—____ - Night of Fire (Orange Milk Records, 2024)
The insistent opening track ‘Night Of Fire’ rubs so hard that the record immediately immerses you in an uncomfortable feeling. One that stays with you for the duration of the album. Night of Fire’ is the latest collaboration between more eaze and Seth Graham as ---__—____ with recovery girl. Three names lurking in the experimental noise scene. Night of Fire’ is the follow-up to 2021’s ‘The Heart Pumps Kool-Aid’, an album that already stood out at the time. The trio hides behind harsh digital noise, acoustic string arrangements and sugarsweet melodies. A bizarre combination that on ‘Night of Fire’ is given all the space it needs to burst open like a festering pimple. ‘Night of Fire’ is about the everyday violence of living in a state that actively tries to oppress its most vulnerable citizens. Which ultimately leads to a love-hate relationship with your hometown or country. It’s a familiar feeling for many minorities, and this album is drowning in it. This tension can be heard on tracks like ‘Countdown City’ and ‘Christian Rock’, where More’s voice and her swooning ambient Americana are interspersed with intense hardcore interludes, a solid grunt and digital crackling. The songs are high voltage and ‘Formation’ dives deep into electrocution. The voice of Diana Starshine - who forms the duo digifae with Galen Tipton - on ‘Kill Kare’ is drowned in an abundance of auto-tune, strings and ambient. For a moment, the chaos is contained, only to burst out generously again on ‘Eating out on Christmas’. The helplessness, the pain, the rejection is so immensely present that the album feels a bit like a catharsis, but it also highlights even more the discomfort of not being allowed to be who you are. The fact that the trio invites Lucy Liyou to join them for the closing track ‘When God Released Me’, with her whispered spoken word overshadowing the harsh, maximalist electronics, underlines the feelings of rejection once again. An album that scratches at the scratches you already have, if you are one of the rejected. Or makes you feel that pain. Intense.
_Released on Orange Milk Records,