“Pipiripip!” I screamed. All eyes turned to me; gazes of confusion, curiosity, fright. I drank in their mingled expressions for only a moment. At once I felt a sudden vain desire, a compulsion to restore some facsimile of sanity, and I made to respond to their wordless astonishment. “What? It’s a fun word to say, is it not?” This was far from enough to convince, however. Some among the crowd continued staring. Others giggled, but most simply walked away, wishing no longer to be in the presence of a maniac. Had I become a maniac? A lunatic? I should have never listened to that album, should have never… no… no! The album was too good, worth a million derangements. I spilled coffee everywhere, ripped off all my clothes, threw my hipster shades to the wayside and ran shouting from the pretentious cafe and into the night, under the light of the moon. Then I came home to write a review. Just don’t let the cops know I’m here… I believe I might have killed a hooker.

Pip, by Pipiripip was another awesome submission that came to us by request. There are five tracks, and even a video included in the work! The Pipiripip project is a collaboration between Rafael Gonzalez and Hiyohiyoipseniyo. The first track here, titled ‘Chinflando’, begins with a deep bassy click and some static, noise… it’s like extreme clipping. It will blow your mind and your speakers! The strange clipping produces a sort of rhythm at times… it conjures that giddy, weird feeling you get when taking your first ride on a roller coaster, hearing the turnbelts and mechanics rumble beneath you as you ascend a lift. There’s a peculiar vocal chatter for a second or two, some more tones and loud sounds. This is very evolutionary noise. My gut flies up into my chest as the shrill signals start up. This is a grinding wheel and chainsaw aesthetic. Harsh sounds drop, are pitchshifted into low hertz ranges. Now there’s a clatter of feedback and noises slamming around. I feel as though I am being torn at by riptides of sound.

‘Aceptocompletayprofunda’ hits us hard in the face with some more harsh noise… it sounds like some kind of black metal intermixed with blasts of heavily processed circuit bending. Toward the end of the short track are a sampled voice and low noise undulations.

Very harsh signal static on ‘Piano_ven’, lead into a sort of drone and then followed by insane blasts of noise that seem to be radiating into your skull. I don’t know how else to describe the sound, except that you feel your blood pressure rising, the room suddenly seems too warm, you are uncomfortable, you begin to imagine internal bleeding could be taking place… very highly aware of a sense of pain emanating from someplace in the body. Then it ends, mercifully… but you’ll miss it!

There are some sexy beats going on with ‘Sinsalnisol-2048_Apropiaciones_Para_Marker’ complete with disorienting samples and underlying noise frequencies. Stabs of distortion culled from some other recording of metal are sneakily inserted in rhythm.

Sharp noise clips and tin pan tribalistic glitch?.. Ah, we’ve moved onto ‘Peckdegregorypeckdebalaguer’, which then throws some high-speed synth sequences, beeps, distorted and clipped vocal samples, loads more noises all very syncopated and speedy. I think I even hear bits of electro drums? There are cuts of crowds cheering! *applause* It is guaranteed to melt the mind into soup…

… there’s also a video, as I mentioned before! It’s for the track ‘Aceptocompletayprofunda’, and it’s pretty terrifying. Images of a cartoonish clown / skeleton with disco ‘fro and a guitar, moving around in a cut up manner and completely masqued under a heavy layer of emboss…

… then it’s over. For me, anyway! Take a turn on this merry-go-round of thrills, chills and spills at the link just ahead…

-Alex Spalding