number none + medroxy progesterone acetate
damp and damned [Sloow Tapes]

cassette-only release, december 2005. produced by belgium's sloow tapes in a hand-cut and colored edition of 65.

seed material recorded by number none in a time-dilated possession state / fed through a protean sequence of mystery recording techniques by MPA / resultant offspring dissected and reconstructed by number none

tracks

1. solar kraken
2. king of dead

60 minutes
 

reviews

"Rarely does an object pass through three sets of hands and emerge pure. Making Damp and Damned a film-form Santa Maria, I suppose. The project between Chicago’s Number None and mysterious nowhere man Darren Bauler began nearly two years ago, when the first version of the material that would morph into this cassette slipped the speculative and grabbed hold of time. The recordings then met Mr. Bauler, who performed unspeakable acts of charity and brutality upon them before shipping the remains back to Chicago, whereupon Number None reconstituted the sounds into their final form.

"Quite a trip, eh? Poor tape must be tuckered out. But I’ll be damned if this wasn’t recorded yesterday. From what I’d heard prior, Number None delivered measured, somber drone, clean loop exploration, and delicate mood architecture. A sound verging on professional. But here they’ve relaxed, indulged their sense of humor—and even, at times, a sense of camp—and produced a gleeful, grimy horror movie soundtrack. While Damp and Damned may not trump Number None’s best work, its orgiastic destruction, regretful reconstruction, and spooky posing provides a visceral pleasure lacking in the group's more cerebral work.

"A shame this was released in December. It’s got Halloween all over it. Ah, well, I guess I can save it for my mad-scientist-lab Haunted House. Side A, “Solar Kraken,” would make a good accompaniment. Ghastly oscillations rising and falling like unnameable neon liquids through coiled rubber tubings, jagged arcs of light and sound splitting the dead dark, and, eventually the lurching rhythm of the reanimated creature plodding over a steel grate. Said creature then runs amok (surprise!), demolishing the track and leaving only a grumbling, crackling pile of ashes.

"The B side reverses the process, starting at Ground Zero, and building back up. It’s certainly not the same by any means, but the frame helped shape the sudden violence and aural terror “King of Dead” seemed bent on.

"Damp and Damned is a silly, sobering, ghoulish treat. Break out a skeleton costume, paint your face, and prance."

-Bryan Berge, Stylus, January 19, 2006

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"Chicago’s Number None end up reworking two tracks from their own 2004 3" CDR release Nervous Climates into two new pieces via the devolutions of Iowa’s Medroxy Progesterone Acetate’s side long remixes. The similarities to the original tracks are fleeting and buried as the barren landscapes of the originals are abused and bruised into extended storms on this cassette release. 'Solar Kraken' begins with a difficult to interpret voice punched through with a mangled melodic snatch of a bashed electronic riff and it's a good three minutes before the icy noise of the original reveals self. Even so the sound is still one removed becoming a static ed up digging pulse with segments of cold treble sailing over the top and the whole song has a much more digital damaged feel than the organic drones of the source material. Where 'Polar Kraken' was the sound of the endless flurries in the incalculable claustrophobia of the icecap's snowy deserts, the reconstituted 'Solar Kraken' is the sound and threat of the impossible emptiness of space. If space really did have an OST it's more likely to be this than 'The Blue Danube.' From a single 'systems engaged' hum comes a intense near black noise dragging an off kilter crushing (possible) rhythm behind it like the backend of some junkyard mechanical flying machine. Juddering along like the premature rumblings of the blackest Metal I can only presume this one runs on fuels made from the bones of the working classes. Side two’s 'King of Dead' constantly detunes itself on a perilous knife edge of feedback that could just as easily be the screwed up highlights of a session of heavy guitar maltreatment. Even the slightest sound seems to bore holes in the brain as the shortwave cloud surrounds like a swarm of rodents giving off the sort off high pitch sounds that bypass the ears and go straight to fucking up the eyes."

-Scott McKeating, Brainwashed, December 2005

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