When I recently saw a new post by the handsome UK-born Peter B., it did draw my attention immediately. I consider myself a modest ‘fan’ of some of this crazy guy’s projects, such as Carrion, Utterblight and Gold. That post I was just referring to, did pertain the album Sinner, conceived by a new project, which is called Gold Membership. It is, to my opinion, the successor of Gold (curse me, if you don’t agree, but I do not exactly care, haha, for main member D¥$FUNCTion is the sole entity who has the right to revise me). Whatever…
So, D¥$FUNCTion did create two elegies, called Action/Indulgence and Regret/Escape; both of them clocking exactly twenty minutes each, and gathered under the working title Sinner. It was independently and digitally released on January 7th via this new project’s own Bandcamp page under copyright of Positive Militia (also under supervision of Mister Beswick). On January 31st, it got sort of re-issued, if you want to, via Gates Of Hypnos, a Polish label that did, and does, work very close with D¥$FUNCTion and his projects. The owner of Gates Of Hypnos, by the way, who is a noisician as well, did collaborate before too with his mighty Sado Rituals project (cf. splits with e.g. Carrion and Gold).
This said, a swift word about the artwork: a modified fragment of a picture (taken by some Jean van der Meulen), representing a lake with flying and swimming flamingos, colored in tinctures of dark and shady-greyed pink shades. For some reason, it has an erotic expression (or am I just a dirty mind – a great philosopher on BC mentioned: ‘This is filth. People who enjoy this are animals. You'd have to be some kind of pervert to appreciate this...’), but I guess that, somehow, it does fit the sonic concept.
From aural side, I do not think that the result differs that intensively from several previously released Gold recordings. Both of them suggest devastated visions of ruined, destroyed factories where vile creatures dwell around, animal and human, corruptly translated into walls of ugly sound-texture; with ‘ugly’ defining the questionable fairness of sweet deformity (I hope you’re still with me…). Action/Indulgence is a collage of monotonous yet unstoppable rumbling drones, erotically-screaming female voices that depict both pleasure and pain – pornography indeed is a main theme once more –, unidentifiable buzzing (field-recorded stuff like, I do not know, thunder and rain?) and a whole scala of other additional sounds and sonic noises. It’s confronting, invoking, disquieting, as well as attractive and inspirational somehow (no, not the pervert side, though I can imagine that [oops, time for some self-censorship…]). Regret/Escape delves deeper into the putrid pits of decomposing remnants, coming with a sound much more industrialized, and offering totally wicked samples from vocal calls and broadcasting, ring-tones, field-recorded bleeps and other digital stuff. The all-overwhelming wall of Death Noise Industrial (why not?) in combination with these real-life sound effects surprisingly results in another tempting, appetizing play.
Don’t take it too seriously. This material reflects, absorbs and expresses depraved emotions and pernicious feelings of lust, irony and disgust at the very same time.
Track 1 = Ambient Porn Wall
Track 2 = Psychotic Industrial Death Electronics
https://goldmembership.bandcamp.com/album/sinner
https://gatesofhypnos.bandcamp.com/album/sinner
https://www.concreteweb.be/reviews/gold
https://www.concreteweb.be/reviews/gold-0
https://www.concreteweb.be/reviews/gold-1
https://www.concreteweb.be/reviews/gold-sado-rituals