• Wolf Eyes - Difficult Messages
  • Wolf Eyes - Difficult Messages
  • Wolf Eyes - Difficult Messages
  • Wolf Eyes - Difficult Messages

Wolf Eyes - Difficult Messages

Disciples

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Seriously good sh*t from the Disciples label, re-representing some hallucinogenic, heavyweight sludge and dubbed out post-punk xperimentalism from the talented mad heads that make up the Wolf Eyes crew.
Served with a 16 page A5 stapled booklet and pressed to clear vinyl in reverse board colour printed sleeve, with Studio Tape-Echo on visual nice-up duties.
This is some seriously heady stuff. In fact, once you enter the combined sound world of this collection, and have traversed from Short Hands and Time Designers skeletal rhythms through U Eye Trio's zonked industrial head charge, and landed yourself in the soundscape of the Michigan Red Squirrel (yep) then you'll realise that the worlds that come together on this comp are vast, but the one thing that still lends it (a somehow still seamless) coherence, is perhaps this fine thread of barely contained madness, which seems to run through each track in more, or less subtle ways, and keep us intrigued.
The side effects of listening to this record can be really quite medicinal. So get yourself locked in somewhere comfortable, make a cuppa, roll one up, whatever it is you gotta do, but make sure you pay attention, because this concoction of human // guitar feedback, unorthodox drum sound and warbled love songs play out kinda like a Spaghetti Western on Ayuhasca - in other words: fully odd, but highly enjoyable...
"A selection of private press 45s featuring Nate Young, John Olson, Alex Moskos, Gretchen Gonzales, Aaron Dilloway & Raven Chacon. These collaborations between the core Wolf Eyes crew and friends was originally self-released as a series of super-limited 7” hand painted box sets, but now the core ‘hits’ have been compiled by Disciples for wider consumption.

Wolf Eyes' history with collaboration goes back almost 26 years. From the first Wolf Eyes w/Spykes concert that led to Olson joining the band to Smegma, Braxton, Richard Pinhas, Merzbow, Marshall Allen, and many more. Wolf Eyes has continued expanding musical ideas through collaboration and Difficult Messages is the first compilation of this practice.

Many of the bands on 'Difficult Messages' exist inside an assemblage of a mail art tradition. Most of the music was made remotely and this allowed for deeper exploration into styles that might have been too uncomfortable to attempt face to face. Short Hands finds Nate Young, and Alex Moskos exchanging bass and guitar fragments with Olson’s reeds and tones overtop sculpted into odd rock songs. Wolf Raven touches on harsh electronics and pushes forward into postmodern ideas of composition. Time Designers is a duo of Alex Moskos and Nate Young using hacked drum machines and a 'design' approach to organizing sound. U Eye finds Olson and Young alongside longtime collaborators Gretchen Gonzales and Aaron Dilloway for a scrape and tape session recorded by Warren Defever. Stare Case is Olson and Young in a non-Wolf duo. Perhaps the only 'rules following' project these two have EVER had. The collection of audio tracks could be looked at as an exquisite corpse: a method by which a collection of words or images is collectively assembled. With this method over thirty tracks and four hundred paintings were created. "
Cover painting by Olson and Young. Zine text by Moskos, Olson and Young.
Layout by Studio Tape Echo.
Mixed and mastered by Warren Defever at Third Man, Detroit.
Cut by Kassian Troyer at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.
Sequenced by Disciples.



Phone Intro


Short Hands-Dank Boone


Time Designers - Passive Tempos


Gretchen - Locked Rivers


Stare Case - Lost Head


U Eye Trio - Courted Reverb


Short Hands - 3rd Night Tax Edit


Animal Sounds - Michigan Red Squirrel


Wolf Raven - Tulsa One


Universal Eyes - Tense Lapse


Invisible Thread - `Feedback