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Friday Full-Length: Author & Punisher, Beastland

Posted in Bootleg Theater on July 24th, 2020 by JJ Koczan

The apocalyptic intensity conjured by San Diego one-man machine-doom/industrial outfit Author & Punisher has garnered praise far and wide over the better part of the last decade, and certainly the fact that Tristan Shone started the project over 15 years ago and has had a broad influence on the current heavy underground fascination with industrial sounds is a part of why. When it comes to artists and bands so hyped, as Author & Punisher has been at least since Ursus Americanus and Women & Children came out on Seventh Rule and more people began to experience it live, with Shone‘s homemade-or-at-least-workshop-made “drone machines” taking the place of instruments and serving rhythmic and melodic functions while he shouts into a custom vocal processor — quite a sight — my immediate response is to shut it out. The thing about most hyperbole? It’s bullshit. And very often it’s not so much about the artist involved as the person writing wanting to be ‘the one who said so.’ It is as much ego on the part of writer as it is plaudit of the work, and I think it’s gross. Total turnoff, and as a result, I’m less inclined to really dig into an album or whatever it is because, well, ugh, so chic.

Am I always right? Nope. But the thing about music is it’s not a race to be first to find a thing, and once a record’s out, it’ll still be there after the fever-pitch has come down a bit. There’s a certain freedom in being late to the party. Thus it is that I’ve recently taken on Author & Punisher‘s Beastland, which is positioned as Shone‘s sixth long-player (though I’m not sure how that count actually works). Issued in 2018 as a first offering through Relapse Records, it is a smartly-executed eight-track/36-minute collection that wastes neither its own nor your time, and Shone‘s connection to doom can be felt not so much in the audio itself — though certainly the sounds he makes are weighted, sometimes cruelly so — but author and punisher beastlandin the structures and traditions he’s following. As one might expect, there’s a good deal of influence from Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails to be felt throughout — and how Reznor isn’t beating down Shone‘s door to collaborate, I don’t know — but the lumbering tempos that punctuate most of Beastland, from “Pharmacide” and the shouty single “Nihil Strength” into the noise-soaked “Ode to Bedlam” onward, certainly offer a thread. Also a threat. Further, the fullness of sound and depth of the mix, Shone‘s vocals being alternately buried and at the fore, sometimes switching in the span of a lyric, as on “Ode to Bedlam,” which is the shortest inclusion at 3:29 and soon devolves into noise and drone before building back as a transition to the more melodic centerpiece duo “The Speaker is Systematically Blown” and “Nazarene,” both of which dare to be catchy and soaring in their duly-blown-out melody, more brazenly so even than “Nihil Strength,” the very beat of which is a hook unto itself.

And like a more traditional doom record, as Beastland moves into side B, the palette expands, from the angularity and atmosphere of “Apparition” into the closing pair “Night Terror” and “Beastland” itself, the former which dons a techno siren at the outset and moves into a steady hum and roll that cycle through and pull apart in a way that feels built outward from the false restart at the end of “Nazarene,” and the latter title-track which is more purely a work of ambient noisy chaos, still set to a beat as much of it is. “Night Terror” and “Beastland” both top six minutes, with the finale echoing Blade Runner in its echoing keyboard melodies like ethereal horns sounding, even as static grit underlies and Shone‘s voice follows the notes. Beastland ends with a churn and a plod that fades into what seems to be a last grunted exhale, which runs counter to the kind of inhuman(e) aural assault that much of the record has provided but is a reminder nonetheless that there’s a person behind the operation of all these robotics and all these willfully horrifying sounds.

If you’ve ever seen Author & Punisher, you probably don’t need me to describe what it’s like, with Shone surrounded by these machines of his own making, becoming the machine himself, etc., layers on layers of multimedia metaphor. I’m not inclined to add to the din of praise that’s been heaped on dude for the last however long — though by all accounts I’ve heard, he’s a nice guy, and the very, very least one can say of his work is that it’s innovative, and that’s before you get to the quality of the songcraft, which is palpable in a manner beyond whatever novelty of the individualized aesthetic — but the influence he’s had on others is plain to hear in these songs, and as bands and groups pick up on Shone‘s ends, if not the means, and hopefully adapt that to their own styles, that only stands Author & Punisher out as all the more singular. What strikes me about listening to it rather than watching it, though, isn’t the forward nature of the aggression. That’s there, sure enough, but it’s the methodical feel of so much of what Shone brings to bear. By its nature, you can’t really call Author & Punisher raw in how it’s made — it would seem just to require too much effort, as opposed to plugging in a guitar and letting rip — but there is a drive toward the primal in some of the underlying simplicity of the beats, that when you strip away all the surrounding and sometimes overwhelming cacophony, feels markedly and purposefully primitive. Organic? Maybe.

Maybe that’s Shone himself serving as the unifying presence in what he calls his ‘control room.’ Fair enough. Shone is set to tour Europe in January with Igorrr, though of course life itself remains a shrug-and-wait-and-see kind of deal for the time being, so Author & Punisher has opted to share videos from a recent tour opening for Tool instead. As to what comes next, if it’s more dystopia, at least I know whose records to put on.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

The mornings have become a challenge, though perhaps not as much of one as they could be. The Pecan has been waking up around 6:30, which feels like a gift. General process is The Patient Mrs. gets the puppy — Omi; now permanent title, short for Iommi — and I get him. She takes dog out, I change a usually-poop-filled diaper. Potty training is a process. Anyway, it’s when she comes back in with the dog that he gets super-excited, then the dog gets excited, and the energy feedback loop ignites. Once he’s cleaned up, he goes where he goes, and inevitably, he’s going for the dog. But he’s still two — that’s exactly how my wife and I say it: still two; it has been a very long year — and so can’t really handle it. He gets worked up, gets worried, then inevitably swats at or kicks at Omi and, yeah, that shit just doesn’t work for me.

Yesterday and today, she stayed in the kitchen while I made him breakfast before coming to work on this post, and The Patient Mrs. and I have been switching off one and the other. It’s easier to get work done with the dog than the kid, so whoever’s working has Omi and whoever’s got The Pecan has The Pecan. That’s her right now. I’ll go in the other room in a little bit and trade off so she can work, and she’ll take the dog. It’s not so cut and dry as all that — most of the time I give him breakfast since he eats better for me; I’m not shy about shoving food in his mouth — but it’s Friday and she knows I like to end the week early, so I am grateful for the chance to bang this out.

Dog’s asleep somewhere in this room. Kid’ll get a bath in a bit — I took a break from writing during the second-to-last paragraph of the Author & Punisher writeup above (could you tell?) and we went for a run, which now that it’s pouring rain, I’m glad we did — so I’ll handle that and hopefully The Patient Mrs. doesn’t get saddled with too much what we call “puppy time” and usually seems to involve chewed shoes, feet, or furniture, or peeing on the floor.

The key to little things — dogs or people — is wearing them out. Walks for the dog, runs for the kid. Fine in the summer, though I guess we made it through this winter, and plague-permitting we’ll make it through the next. I have a bit before I need to worry about it, anyhow.

I hope you and yours are well. I’ve been struggling with having put on a bit of weight, and trying to manage that while at the same time dealing with other stresses. All anxiousness immediately goes to food/body image for me, which, if I needed further proof of disordered eating, there it is. Didn’t need that proof.

So.

My father fell on July 3 and has been in the hospital since then, in Allentown, Pennsylvania. He’s 77, I think. He was planning to move from nearby his sister in North Carolina to Allentown to be close to other friends and live in a retirement community. This was a move I advised against voraciously and was ignored. My mother, same on one of the rare occasions they spoke. Ahead of his move, he was staying with a friend and fell backwards down a flight of stairs. Portrait of an old man, falling.

Okay.

Among my family — and given the further-than-arm’s-length nature of our relationship, this feels surreal to say — I am probably the one in recent years who has been most in touch with him. We communicate semi-regularly. We have nothing much in common beyond blood and name — though the older I get… — but we keep it light, avoid politics or discussion of my mother or sister when possible, and there you go. He’s shown increasing signs of dementia over the last few years — he forgot he met my son, for example — and since his fall has been what the hospital case worker described to me as “confused.” He doesn’t know where he is, doesn’t always know what year it is or who he is.

Okay.

Though he and my mother have been separated for the last 25 years, they’ve never officially divorced. Why? I don’t know. Holdover stigma? My mother, a teacher 11 years retired, has decent state insurance and has kept him on it all this time, but because the American healthcare system is fucked — something COVID has only aggravated — Medicaid can maybe go after her assets to cover the cost of longterm care, which he’ll need since he has to relearn how to walk, and this lengthy hospital stay. This week, we all got on Zoom with a divorce attorney. I was writing the Turtle Skull news post on Wednesday when that happened; it just finally went up today. It’s been a lot.

But okay.

Court appoints a custodian once it’s proved my father is non compos mentis, which should not be a challenge, and I guess everything moves forward at a snail’s pace there. In the meantime, The Patient Mrs. and I have started mortgage proceedings to buy the house we live in from my mother, who inherited it from my grandmother, so there’s that additional layer of something-happening over the last couple weeks, which along with puppy, kid, pandemic, fascism, on and on and on and on, has meant that, among other things, I was feeling too overwhelmed to put together a Gimme Radio show this week.

It’ll be back on in two weeks.

Okay.

I’m exhausted now, so I must be finished, and in any case, it’s time for me to trade off dog for kid with The Patient Mrs., who has more than earned that title during this period. My only regret is not calling her The Brilliant Mrs., because even more than her patience with me — which is ample — it is the continued light she shines that makes my life possible. I have said this before and will continue to say it until I die: she is the center around which my universe spins.

I hope you have a great and safe weekend. Please be well most of all, and thank you for reading, whether or not you still are.

FRM.

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