Aaron Dilloway - Rotting Nepal (Blossoming Noise LP)

The logical follow-up to yesterday's revue...it's a two-fer! Seems to me like Aaron Dilloway's made his trip to Nepal count. Sure it got him kicked out of Wolf Eyes (sike) but he's gotten a lot of inspiration for his solo projects - first the Nath Family tapes, then the "Radio Nepal" series, now "Rotting Nepal". Actually I should probably say "Rotting Nepal" first since it was recorded in January 2005 and probably did come out before the other ones, albeit in a tiny edition of 63 on Dilloway's own Hanson Records label. Somebody at the Blossoming Noise HQ must've liked it enough to do a full-scale vinyl reissue, on 140 gram wax with a red marble design no less (although truth be told mine looks more like a solid dark rust colour with nary a marbled texture in sight unless I squint real hard). It was also limited to 500 copies and sold out quick as the dickens because it only came out on November 12th. I must say that kind of caught me off guard but hey, BxNx brings the quality so I shouldn't be too shocked that lotsa people jumped on board for this one (self included).
Although the original "Rotting Nepal" CD-R consisted of multiple short pieces, no such divisions are made clear on the record and everything just sorta plays out like two side-longs. The first opens with some chopped-up samples of Indian speak pulled from god knows where and eventually descends into prime New Blockaders electronic scramble territory. Not at all as harsh or destructive as many other solo Dilloway sets I've come to hear. Au contraire in fact...if Dilloway termed John Wiese's approach to noise as horror/librarian, well this sounds downright academic to my cauliflower ears. There isn't a whole lot to make note of apart from the convusling "dogshit electronics" as Aaron himsef so elegantly puts it. He calls it crude too but I think it sits rather nice, like guzzling velvet down the hatch. Bottums up wot ho!
The second side spins out a squelchy, dying synth rhythm or the repetitions of some ailing machine's last gasp for air on near-dead brains/batteries with drawn out high-pitched emissions like sine wave strings of barbed wire...kinda also makes me think of John Olson's Waves project and you know how much those dudes dig a synth. Midway into the scrap field a Nepali pop song does fierce but hopeless battle with Dilloway's zeroes-and-ones-puking machines and is quickly swallowed up by said racket...towards the conclusion there's more flipped high-strung exorcisms that engage in argument with the recorded voices of unknown Indian talking heads/disc jockeys till the needle lifts off the record.
The label says this is a "totally wierd" (sic) recording and I'm inclined to agree, although it's certainly not Dilloway's greatest effort to date...that has to go, hands down, to the masterstroke called "Beggar Master". Or even "Bad Dreams" on the PACrec label. And so what if these last two BxNx releases haven't fully bowled me over? I'm just a finicky kind of guy. Maybe if this was a parallel universe and I had ordered the new-ish Thurston Moore and Dave Phillips releases (which I would have, if money were not an issue) instead I'd be praising them to the hills and the label's catalogue would remain pristine in my eyes. Nevertheless! You can't keep a good label down, and I'm always curious to know what's round the bend from these guys. So too should you be.