Dret Skivor – 6th October 2023
Christopher Nosnibor
It’s been a few months since we’ve heard from Legion of Swine, one of my favourite vehicles for the intensely prolific Dave Procter – because LOS are noisy, abrasive, and unpredictable, and I have fond memories of numerous demented performances and a couple of collaborative sets together. Even when sadly sans pig-head mask, having developed an allergy to latex, the gnarly electronic noise Dave cranks out is messed up and often times hurts.
Dave, and the Swine, are both highly political animals, and once again it’s politics which have spurred him to clack his trotters into activity and snort his disapproval of current affairs.
L.H.S. is accompanied by uncharacteristically expansive liner notes, which prove useful, and so I shall quote in full:
‘This release pays credit to Värmland folk who campaigned to create a better society and are represented by the letter LHS.
L is Selma Lagerlöf who was heavily involved in women’s suffrage and received a Nobel Prize for literature in 1909.
H is for Gerda and Mauritz Hellberg who were central characters in the right to vote campaign.
S is for Torgny Segerstedt who took a stand against the Nazis in his role as editor at Göteborgs Handels- and Sjöfarts-Tidning.
The image used in this release is a reminder of how the free market is way more important than people in some eyes.’
It lays it all out there, and reminds us how failure to learn from history is guaranteed to doom the future. Admittedly, the way things are looking now, we’re doomed one way or another and likely sooner than anticipated due to sheer greed and a refusal to face facts. In the face of this, there’s a part of me that feels as if complaint or resistance is futile, because we’re already fucked. But we need to go down fighting. We need to at least die trying, to know we’re did our best.
L.H.S. is the sound of the fight. It’s a fucking racket, blasting in from the outset with overloading distortion, cutting in and cutting out, a blasting overload that just hurts and is an instant headache. It’s the harshest of electronica which only gets nastier and more intense and insane as it progresses. By three minutes in, it sounds like someone smashing a bin lid connected to a contact mic, recorded on a mobile phone. The treble is high all the way, and the sounds are metallic, distorting, like someone tearing the door off a garage in a gale or something similarly deranged. And deranged it is, from beginning to end.
We’re in Merzbow territory here. And it actually hurts. Ten minutes in, there are some vocals, but they’re impenetrable shrieking derangement, buried in feedback, before things get really gnarly.
L.H.S. is nasty, and I absolutely love it. I suspect most won’t. It’s one to file alongside Whitehouse, Merzbow, and Prurient. It’s brutal, and as niche as fuck, and Dave knows it. Embrace the pain. This is something else.
AA
AA
Aural Aggravation 