Listen to the first previews of John Wiese & Dean Spunt’s collabo LP on Drag City

Veteran noise master John Wiese (Sissy Spacek) teams ups with No Age drummer Dean Spunt for “The Echoing Shell”. The first singles showcase precisely edited material that jumps back and forth between hits from Spunt’s drumkit and a range of abstract sounds.

At first blush* this comes off as a classic John Wiese production in the vein of early Sissy Spacek releases (think Scissors-era): the rapid cuts from “musical” material (i.e., a drum kit) to noise sounds recreate the jumpy “rhythmic without rhythm” quality of those early releases. The first 2 tracks from The Echoing Shell — “Black Fruit (edit)” and “Fruit from Color Vapor (edit)” — are a fun listen and require repeated playing because they just flies by so quickly. Like Wiese’s many 7” releases you kinda just have to sit down and only focus on this or you’ll miss it.

It’ll be interesting to see how these tightly-edited two-minute clips will play out within the scale of a full-length LP. I suspect that these are just exciting bits that work well as “singles” and the actual album will have calmer stretches but it would be wild if it ended up being a very stressful 30 minutes of rapid cuts.

You can pre-order the vinyl from Drag City here.

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