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“Two Archipelagos looks at how different kinds of music-making machines interact, with human intervention often limited to making sure that various forms of noise interfere with each other. Verdun is generally preoccupied with oscillatory sounds, whether generated through analogue feedback loops or repeated digital synthetics. These are the vaguely pulmonary rhythms that come from the warp core aboard the USS Enterprise, or else from your CD player when something goes terribly wrong. Verdun also love to torture electric guitars. Beyond that, the sounds variety and singularity make it near impossible to describe. The opening track, “Days of Being Wild,” records the interaction between several textures of feedback and repetition, interrupting itself now and then with the static clipping of an over-distorted guitar, or else with the long drone of dissonant chords. The icing on this cake of noise, near the end of the song, is a crystal-clear series of descending synthetic notes, as might come out of a ray-gun. Similar interplay happens in “(Oo)”. We hear the worlds worst garage band—a mutilated electric guitar, a cheap drum kit unskillfully played—but this is so muffled that the garage door might be shut. Then the robotic parents come to complain in their modem-language, and the rest of the song performs the two groups dispute: Verdun is about exploring just such contrasts between acoustical and digital noises. In Two Archipelagos, Verdun offers an insightful unfolding of the textural possibilities that our weird technological vector makes possible; this is a record that asks oblique questions and makes strange observations about what music today can and should do. Its a challenging and rewarding listen.” – Seth Perlow. Hand-screened limited edition of 100 copies. |
http://www.myspace.com/vverdun Contact Verdun 'At' Eyland [dots] org Verdun is the sound of subway rats building musical monuments to the Brothers and Sisters crushed under-wheel. The sound of Muridae ceremonies: drums made of Saran Wrap beat with femurs by a drum-leader drugged out on VHS Head Cleaner over which the rest of the rats use electricity stolen from the third rail to power an orchestra of broken Sidekicks and Blackberries, bleating melodies of error messages through echo tunnels under the city. 
    
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