"Burn" In the Unruly Fires of Ugly Twin's Polluted Noise Rock (Music Video Premiere)
Recently, I noticed a little Twitter drama over someone declaring cassettes to be “obsolete” — now, as with any and all internet drama this should largely not impact your life and be wholesale avoided at all costs. But the fracas raised an interesting duality—from a data storage perspective, the cassette is definitely obsolete. Limited data density, the need to rewind it, and its susceptibility to degradation makes it a poor candidate for attempting to authentically store anything, music or otherwise. However, its value as a musical medium is actually enhanced by all this—it’s a low-cost vessel for music that provides an intentionally imperfect and unoptimized way to transmit music to listeners.
Truthfully, some music just seems made for cassette, like Baltimore industrial noise rock trio Ugly Twin‘s upcoming self-titled debut (which is indeed receiving a tape release). It’s not a record that aims to impart a carefully calibrated set of frequencies with minimal distortion, fine-tuned in a pristine environment for maximum fidelity. No, Ugly Twin is a raucous, blown-out celebration of gloriously imperfect rock, a monument built from hissing, snarling blocks of indulgent noise. This ought to be cranked on a Goodwill-harvested tape deck, where the circuits regulating high and low frequency balance have long since failed and at least one or two buttons don’t work right. But, in a pinch, it also goes great with bizarre music videos, so here’s one for the band’s lead single “Burn”.
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True to its name, “Burn” kind of sounds like it’s being played from a stereo system on fire, always seeming to lurch along like the motor propelling its tape along is about to wind down any second and succumb to the flames. It never does, though, pugnaciously stomping along to the mechanical beat of a drum machine as fuzzed-out rhythm guitar and even more fuzzed-out leads conspire to drown out the track’s screamed vocals. Like the tires rolling down the ramps in its video, only much more pissed off, “Burn” is unstoppable and continuous.
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Ugly Twin releases November 22nd with a limited cassette run via Anathemata Editions.
