Cassette Review: ZEBRA MU / PRAIRIE-LITIÈRE "Split"(Autistic Campaign)

[€4 - €6// Edition of 50 // http://autisticcampaign.blogspot.com/2014/08/ac27-zebra-mu-prairie-litiere-split.html // http://autisticcampaign.blogspot.com/]

This is my first time hearing both ZEBRA MU and PRAIRIE-LITIÈRE but being that they are on a cassette from a label that has put out cassettes by Nundata and Roadside Picnic I'm fairly confident it will be good before I even listen to it.

Side A is ZEBRA MU, which is an excellent name since so few artists have names that begin with the letter Z, and it hits you like a flurry of distortion.    Throughout this distortion there are clanks and rattles of pots and pans and silverware and all that I can think is that someone is having a lot of fun destroying their kitchen.    If I was in the habit of creating bad genre names (and I might be to some people, who knows) then for sure I would call this one "kitchencore" even though my very typing it right now fills me with instant regret and embarrassment    After some sounds of records scratching this side ends with the sounds of an amp being plugged into, but most of the movement seems to take place in the original tornado at Bed, Bath & Beyond.  

On the flip side we have PRAIRIE-LITIÈRE who seemingly replace the distortion of ZEBRA MU with sharp feedback.   There are plenty of high pitched frequencies that I think even our neighborhood dogs could sense from so far away.    They can go back and forth- these high pitched sounds- and they can just as easily come crashing down, sounding like a broken pinball machine.    For the first half of this (or almost that much time into it) I have the feeling that at any moment we're going to switch over into a hardcore song ala Nora or someone like that but we never do.   By the end, the highly pitched melodies become so back and forth that they sound more like sonar or some sort of whale sounds than anything else.

It is distinctively hard to like an artist such as PRAIRIE-LITIÈRE if your initial response to the music is going to be "Ow, my ears!" and as such this is not for the faint of heart, but I have certainly heard louder and sharper noises that have even made me cringe (I didn't even turn the volume down on this one, so it's mild by my standards which are probably way off from your standards though)    And I'm also just loving what ZEBRA MU is doing on their side and so this is just a great way to be introduced to one or two artists you might not know and be given the chance to get to know them and possibly grow to love them as I have.