eat dead flies volume 1 (c60 from eat dead flies)
here we have a nicely packaged noise-ish compilation featuring a good deal of names unknown to me, and a few familiar artists. actually this tape opens with a short track by my own project, followed by a track by jason campbell, so it starts with a bit of familiarity anyway. obviously i can't comment on my own track, although i was a bit disappointed by campbell's 'harshtroniks 001', a continous harsh blast with very little variation aside from a bit of radio(?) broadcast buried in the static. made more disappointing since i know he can do way better. DBaCC offers  the sentiment 'public canings are funny' in the form of low low bass pulses and scraping, followed by the haters 'dirwyn', a surprisingly low volume midrange rumble with weird intermittent static bursts that seems to go on forever. although at higher volume there does seems to be slightly more going on, the track still drags and based on this introduction i can't get too enthusiastic about the haters. luckily this is followed by an interesting dark atmospheric track from ecclesiastical scaffolding called 'darkness III'; low, pulsing, swirling tones and half-heard sounds to catch the ear. goat follows with 'into the crypts of goat', a bit more aggressive though not overpowering in volume, somewhat random-sounding and interrupted at irregular intervals by a weird tone, like the amplified sound of a tape rewinding (maybe i've just been rewinding to many tapes lately?). not bad, but a bit long. closing out the first side of the tape is 'i once knew some bones' by BRXTNLE, an odd atmospheric track sounding like a manipulated field recording (is that some guitar mangling? laughter?) overlaid with high feedback, short and interesting, due in no small part to it's complete weirdness. 'induced phobia' by interference opens side two with whispers, scraping and other unidentifiable noises, definitely one of my favorite tracks of the comp. 'block' by christopher hill has what could be the amplified sound of a pencil writing on paper, or maybe rats scraping at the wall, over deep bass pulses, short and sweet, followed by 'cassiopeian interpreter V1.2' by penis amputee, layers of jabbering noise given structure by a slowly repeated muted crash, like a wave or a cymbal, descending into low end rumbling while the crashes meld into eachother. one of the few tracks of the tape to have any sort of a climax. cpi, 'rites of pan' is another layered track, a bit too busy to be really atmospheric, with it's irregular chirping and shifting background; not really harsh either, but very interesting. at the risk of repeating myself, swamp cooler's track 'failing to cope with life' features odd scraping over low tones, along with other noise. none of the tracks really sound all that alike, but the only way to really accurately describe whats going on in them is "scraping and low tones". it's better than the description sounds, although this track suffers a bit following the others as it does. FICSHe, however, offers up something completely different with 'thinking what', a slow, plodding beats and noises track with a melody of sorts provided by a alarm-sounding loop. a very foreboding and ominous track. seasons of dicontent present 'floating through the space debris', crunchy, reverberated noise and a sound that makes me think of a computer from a 1950's science fiction movie humming away to itself. closing the tape is 'whoremangler' by gruntgrutcher, which opens with the sound of a chainsaw and an odd (pitch-shifted?) scream, which turns into a brief, churning, chaotic grindcore-ish (distorted, beaten up and thrown into a blender) track over a stuttering drum machine. i had to rewind it three times to try to document what was going on, it's so short. nice way to end the tape, although i'm not really a fan of grind stuff. so, to sum up: ok first side is more than made up for by side two, nice, easy to read sleeve on glossy paper, and it comes with a fly glued to the front. do the math.