Adam Lehrer/Safety Propganda
Craig Clouse is perhaps the only artist I’m interested in that the experimental music literati (whom I loathe) still write about. Not easy to remain interesting when the most boring losers alive try to drag you into their little niche tastemaking apparatus. But Craig remains so by doing whatever the fuck he wants. Nevertheless, was thrilled to hear him back in the DWG junk noise rock register. A palette cleanser and a bruiser.
albinobone
Why do I love this album? "Love" might not be the right word. Selecting a favourite track from this album is like selecting a favourite bowel movement. Admit it, they all feel good. But it's a private appreciation, and you want to wash your hands afterwards. Music that gives you pink eye if you're not careful.
Somewhere between the literal meaning of psychedelia as the revealing of the mind, and the literal meaning of apocalypse as the tearing away of the veil, this record stands, pulsing, totally blown out. Phase Corrected may be Shit and Shine at its nastiest and most brutal, but it is also––and by virtue of that fact––Shit and Shine at its most transcendent.
Craig Clouse, aka Shit and Shine, has been called a genius and a maverick by the Wire. And the Quietus says he’s “uninterested in the self-imposed restrictions of genre.” From danceable electro-psychedelia to grinding, confrontational noise, Shit and Shine has, since 2004, made a practice of evading genre conventions. And the same goes for Austin-based Clouse’s explorations via USA/Mexico, his project with King Coffey from Butthole Surfers. But there is a common thread here, a sense of consistency that speaks to more than just bucking tradition. In fact, in all this experimentation and genre-bending, Shit and Shine seems to be meditating on and celebrating the very existence of the underground.
The meditation and celebration continues on his latest full-length, Phase Corrected, an LP commissioned by The Garrote. Clouse wields glacial, staggeringly heavy riffs, industrial drums, and electronics that sound as though they’ve been put through a meat grinder.
Or perhaps it all sounds like it’s coming from the basement.
One can practically smell the cheap fog machine and the bodies milling about, maybe writhing. But like the most transcendent moments that can be found in the midst of milling or writhing through sweaty basements, propylene glycol coating the nasal cavities, Phase Corrected stands out as something literally psychedelic, perhaps literally apocalyptic. Phase Corrected is the sound of that moment, in that basement, when everything becomes either just too much or just the perfect amount, the moment when a complete saturation of the senses becomes an absolute falling away of everything else.
EU/UK version at Riot Season Records with a variant cover.
Garrote version available in limited quantities at Evil Greed in EU/UK
credits
released March 25, 2022
Guitar + Vocals - Craig Clouse
Most Drums - Aadm Our Hatley
Mastering - James Plotkin
Art / Design - Joshua Ford
supported by 28 fans who also own “Phase Corrected”
Another gross collection of noise rock that sounds like your speakers are disintegrating. There were some tones on this one that almost made me feel physically ill. What a great album! Levrikon
supported by 26 fans who also own “Phase Corrected”
As usual, Kirby manipulates various interwar records to fit a cavalcade of emotional states: blissful (B1, E8), tragic (D2, D5), frantic (E1, E6), and just plain horrifying (F3, G1, H1, K1). gjoe52
Tempering dystopian electronics with Morricone-esque set pieces, the UK psych soothsayers' latest album is also their most dynamic. Bandcamp New & Notable Feb 28, 2019