Peter J Woods – Afterthought 3″CDR

FTAM

This little 3″ clocks in around 17 minutes, but oh, what an intense 17 min it is. Afterthought presents a varied array of sounds, ranging from musique concrete, power electronics, spoken (screamed) word, and drone. I was lucky enough to also witness these works live as well and to have this as a document is just the icing on the cake.

The first two tracks are around 7 minutes, with the opener “Inanimate Portraits” bring a bit more ambient fading in with some singing vocal drones forming a weaving web of delayed melodies. It isn’t long before a blast of noise interrupts this lasting for a few minutes. The production here is decent and the nosie is quite dynamic and well executed. The noise eventually fades into some mangled cut-up vocal sounds which close off the track. We’re off to a good start.

“To You At Last” is the strongest track here commencing with screamed vocals and no other sounds. It feels quite intense having to focus solely on these non-amplified vocals but it isn’t long before a subtle experimental rhythmic loop sneaks into the mix. As an ominous hum overtakes the audio space the vocals reappear now in true PE form with feedbacking distortion. Quickly things disentegrate into a strange slow motion freeze frame of dampened voices, odd melodies, and subdued industrial clangs and bangs.

Finally, as a special treat Mr. Woods has included a Slogun cover “Suspect Unknown” which is an assault delivered in full force. A raging wall of noise with distorted and delayed vocals behind it. The wall of noise is perhaps just a touch weak, but combined with the vocals it forms it reaches a heavy level of thickness. Further more, it is combined with some feedback in the latter half of the track which fills in any gaps that were in want.

Definitely a sick little 3″ here. It’s discs like these that remind me why exactly people are still releasing these, because you have 3 great pieces like this and they fit right on one disc, no wasted space, no fat to cut off the edges. The tracks are dynamic, and what stands out here very clearly is the heartfelt delivery and concepts that are delt with. Something that just doesn’t seem to come across quite as clearly in a lot of power electronics and noise.

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