Tin.RP - Hun_ger flac album

MICK HARRIS once played me a piece of Dark Ambient music which he referred to as "Radiator Music" - I'm not sure if this is a recognised musical form as I have never come across the term before or since. I do however know what he meant - LULL was his reaction to DAVID LYNCH's cinematic ambience, and, apart from the "Lady In The Radiator Song", much of his work at an audio level consisted of grey atmospheres which change from scene to scene, at least through his early work ("Eraserhead"; "Elephant Man"; "Dune"). So just what has this to do with Tin.RP? Well, if you have Radiator Music, it makes a kind of sense that you should have Generator Music - the throbbing, intensive sound of machines, discordant and alienating. Some at least of this group's music falls into this category - dangerous raw electronics, dark, cold, dehumanised atmospheres. Tin.RP could be - should be - rubbing shoulders with the thermo nuclear excesses of the Japanese School of Noise. However, they fall short of these extremes, coming up with something far more entertaining and intriguing. The raw guts and bones of rhythms and structures appear here and there, stripped down and as soothing as drawing razor wire over your inner thigh. If early PAN SONIC used that which other people would regard as garbage - record scratches, ampnoise etc., then Tin.RP are soul brothers - keeping what is raw in it's original state, adding to it, scullpting it, metamorphosing through minimal changes. Pretty this isn't - yet there's a charming naive honesty to it's discord. Through a (self-)limited pallete of sounds they manage to create structures which vary from crushing walls of electricity to surprisingly subtle tracery of sonic torture. Track 12 (only 14 aappear on the CD leds, although 16 are credited) is probably the most 'composed' piece here - a fairly hectic and complex rhythm which nevertheless seems perfectly aat one with the structureless pieces. Years ago, this would have ended up on cassette and would have lost many of the subtle underlying noises in that inferior medium. Yes, this may be cacophonous, but it deserves to be heard as it was originally intended. And beneath the slug metal cumbersome bodies that form the centre of these tracks there can be found much which might be considered delicate lacery. Call it what you will - distortion; power electronics; overdriven noise - Tin.RP have created an album at least as worthy as SPK's music circa the third album. Restrained and subtle, they show you the hell of planetary destruction through the last skeletal remains of some formerly beautiful Rose Window. Originally reviewed for Metamorphic Journeyman.