Fuzznaut Premiere New Single “Haunting Mantra” out This Week
Pittsburgh one-man drone outfit Fuzznaut will release the new single Haunting Mantra on Friday, Oct. 30. It is a crowded pre-Halloween release date, to be sure, but one expects few among the multitudes will so effectively convey the paranoia and uncertainty of the right-now in which we’re living. Part X-Files soundtrack, part post-metallic atmospheric sludge tonality, part pure exploration, the 8:40 work from guitarist Emilio Rizzo follows the 2019 debut Fuzznaut EP, Form is Emptiness (review here), and though it is comprised of material from the same sessions, it feels less specifically Americana-gothic than the prior offering. That could be an affect of the way in which the song was built up from already-recorded pieces, but either way, the somethingelseness works to its benefit.
A clean creeper of a guitar progression — bass, drums, vocals, keys, etc. need not apply — if offset by dense distortion that carries a home-recorded feel as if to emphasize the notion that some projects were just made to exist in an age of quarantine. Rizzo isn’t out to put on a technical show, but there is a precise feeling to the tempo at which “Haunting Mantra” plays out, and the track’s title serves double-duty as a mission statement. The arrangement is of course sparse, but too restless ultimately to be minimal — Rizzo gives himself away as a writer of riffs in an underlying sense of structure to the track — and you can read in the track info below that the guitarist is playing toward notions of tonal weight and creating something “heavy” in the sense of heavy rock or doom while bringing that to a sound based on drone. Such stylistic aims don’t necessarily account directly for the mood in “Haunting Mantra,” but neither do they dismiss it.
It is perhaps the experimentation in “Haunting Mantra” that most resonates, at least in terms of concept, and the fact that Rizzo is willing to pull pieces apart and remake them in such a way only holds promise for things to come from Fuzznaut as his palette continues to expand, even if that just means working with different effects, loops, etc., to create varied atmospheres. One way or the other, the track is indeed a work of heaviness, and you can hear it premiering below ahead of the glut of offerings out this weekend.
Please enjoy:
https://soundcloud.com/user-365433666/haunting-mantra-master-2020-09/s-KfTW6DMjKiO
“Haunting Mantra” is an 8 + minute sonic experience of echoing riffs and reaping heavy fuzz. The music bursts between lurking feelings of dread, and elation. These atmospheres take hold with pounding intensity. The original pieces were set for “Form Is Emptiness” sessions but were deconstructed and reformed to provide this current offering of earth-shattering tones.
Release Date: October 30, 2020
Music By FUZZNAUT recorded at Strega Sana V2.
Mixed and Mastered by Viking Guitar Productions
