28th June 2024
Christopher Nosnibor
There are many reasons I’ve long been drawn to the obscure, the underground, the DIY – and many of those same reasons are why I try, wherever possible, to use my platform to champion those acts who fall within these broad brackets. And another thing I endeavour to use my platform for is the broader topics which relate to the releases – because during my life, I’ve become acutely aware of just how personal a thing music is, both to artist and listeners.
I suppose I first really tuned into this when I was around the age of fifteen: I’d started getting into goth and alternative stuff when I was twelve or thirteen – back when the weekly singles charts and Top of the Pops rules, and the likes of Killing Joke and The Sisters of Mercy and The Mission would make incursions into these realms – and was getting into live music. None of my mates were into the same stuff, so my choices were, go on my own, or don’t go. I decided I didn’t need my mates, but I did need to see the bands. This essentially set the template for my life, taking a position of a willing outsider.
Not everyone gets to be so willing in the place they find themselves, and while Rip Space’s biographical info is sparse, there’s a clear sense that they’re here as much out of compulsion as choice, describing themselves as an ‘anonymous autistic Scottish multi instrumentalist’. They outline how ‘Thank These People is an EP inspired by the catharsis of overcoming otherisation, public humiliation and otherwise targeted acts of evil that resulted ultimately, in official diagnosis in 2021… So this EP is called Thank These People. We make lemonade from the lemons life gives us. And in ways, we can decide to be thankful for the lemons.’
It’s hard not to find this apparent level of positivity and optimism quite staggering and more than a little overwhelming, as I fight the personal urge not to frame my own experiences as, rather than ‘thank these people’, but ‘fuck these cunts’. Ripspace has already demonstrated that they’re a better, less bitter human being than I before I’ve even heard a note… And then I heard a note, and I love Ripspace all the more. Amidst a roaring blast of lurching, distorted black metal guitars and crashing percussion there’s that anguished vocal howl. This… this is the sound of rage, of fury. Thanks? Yeah, right. This is a throbbing middle finger. This is what you’re thinking, what you want to say but muzzle because you don’t want to rile your boss. Because your boss is a twat.
Thank These People contains just three songs, and has a running time of under ten minutes – meaning it would fit comfortably on a 7” in old currency (when a 7” cost a couple of quid, although I’m not about to embark on a nostalgia trip, not now of all times, when nostalgia for the time of £1 pints costs £350 a ticket).
‘The Green Ripper’ really captures the vibe of Touch & Go and Am Rep in the 90s, but with a keenly Scottish lilt, and transitions from spoken word to full metal fury in a blink. And you feel the fury as it seethes and rages and roars, a pure, splenetic outpouring. ‘Welcome to Mother Earth’ is a noise-rock math-mash thrash-frenzy, Metallica in a three-way high-speed collision with Shellac and And So I Watch You From Afar. Thank These People spits, roars, foams, burns. And I have to agree when they add that ‘also, the music video is really good.’
AA
AA
Aural Aggravation 