Label: Helen Scarsdale Agency – HMS050
Format: 10 x Cassette
Box Set, Compilation, Limited Edition
Country: US
Released: 22 Nov 2019
Genre: Electronic
Style: Experimental, Noise, Industrial, Drone, Ambient

Mammoth 10 cassette compilation housed in a wooden box ft submissions from Neutral, Pinkcourtesyphone, Fossil Aerosol Mining Project and more more more!!!! (NM.NM - with all bits).

if anything, ‘on corrosion’ is a monumental project - a 10 cassette anthology housed in a handcrafted wooden box and featuring full albums from kleistwahr, neutral, pinkcourtesyphone, alice kemp, she spread sorrow, g*park, relay for death, francisco meirino, fossil aerosol mining project, and himukalt. the collection also stands as the 50th release for the helen scarsdale agency, an imprint founded in 2003 and dedicated to post-industrial research, recombinant noise, surrealist demolition, existential vacancy and then some.

the overarching theme of this compilation refers to that of jim haynes, the agency’s founder and the curator for ‘on corrosion.’ entropy. disintegration. collapse. decay. yet, from the beginning of the boxset’s production, the focus was directed elsewhere, with other artists invited to present their ideas, aesthetics, concepts, and strategies upon the theme at hand.

ten albums housed in a wooden box with a near seven hour running time, with texts provided by drew daniel, emily pothast, donna stonecipher, and jim haynes, and audio mastering by james plotkin.
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neutral is the no wave / anti-rock duo of dan johansson (sewer election, ättestupa, amateur hour, etc.) and sofie herner (leda, enhet för fri musik), both with deep connections to the swedish noise scene. as neutral, the two smear voice, guitar, organ, and smoldering noise into narcoleptic songs that rewire the strategies of dome by way of gate and mars.
‘lågliv’ translates to ‘lowlife,’ an apt metaphor for neutral’s subterranean murk and shambolic discontent that they languidly manifest as a punk dourness emptied of all rock ’n’ roll theatrics. desperate, demolished, and dejected.

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kleistwahr is the solo project of gary mundy, the legendary power electronic and noise-rock musician who is a founding member of ramleh and runs the highly influential broken flag label.
solemn drones and elegiac long-form passages gird kleistwahr’s ‘winter,’ which often chimes, glistens, and glows through a unhurried constructs for organ, synth, guitar, and electronics. yet mundy pivots throughout with triumphant explosions of shrill noise, redlined overload, and harrowingly anguished vocals from the great unknown. quintessential kleistwahr.

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pinkcourtesyphone is the pseudonym for the los angeles based minimalist richard chartier. under this moniker, chartier indulges in an emotional torpor through his hauntological compositions for forgotten dreams with an opiated grandeur and subtle application of certain nostalgic camp.
‘shouting at nuance’ glances back to chartier’s earliest works that were recorded onto tape, with allusions to decay as an unrecognizable reconstruction of past works, whereby his ghostly ambience becomes a dub of itself, echoing back a dispersion of drift and drone into a feedback loop of disintegrated memory.

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francisco meirino is an swiss experimental musician and polymath, exploring the tension between programmable material and the potential for its failure. such investigations take place through modular synths, tape manipulation, emf detection / disruption, field recordings, and various home-made electronics.
‘a collection of damaged reel tape loops’ culls those eponymous loops from a found set of reel-to-reel tape which meirino systematically mangled (buried, crumpled, soaked in water, scratched, etc.) and worked into composition. accretions of surface noise, textural sibilance, and muffled distortion pile into dense masses of sound amidst the elliptical repetitions of the ghostly song fragments that broadcast from the original tapes.

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alice kemp is a british artist articulating a broken and illogical syntax of the subconscious through trance states and as she puts it, “erotic mourning.” she has performed extensively, occasionally as an associate to the schimpfluch-gruppe of swiss extreme aktionists.
it is a rarified violence that the kemp invokes on her ‘9 dreams in erotic mourning.’ something disfigured. something fucked. something left behind. the subject matter of her investigations are deliberately inscrutable as she grotesquely amplifies a moment of terror, or fear, of sadness through pockets of piano melodies broken by psychoacoustic noise, razor-cut silence, ghastly vocalizations, crushed acts of physical aggression, and buckets of high-pressure suspense.

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at the onset of fossil aerosol mining project’s ‘hydration disequilibrium,’ a detuned fragment of a sickly sweet disco-muzak melody broadcasts from the past as an ugly reminder that not all things from previous decades should be treasured. upon this necessary reminder, fossil aerosol continues their case for chronicling the residues from disintegrated media and the utterances of a zombified past.
since the mid-1980s, fossil aerosol mining project has excavated the refuse from the late 20th century wasteland of america. moldering audio tape, cracked vhs cartridges, and damaged 35mm film have proven to be a rich source material for their hauntological suites of deconstructed media samples and gauzy hypnosis, often reminiscent of their occasional collaborators :zoviet*france:.

she spread sorrow is the work of italian industrialist alice kundalini. in her sparse and grimly atmospheric applications of noise, tone, and electronic sequencing, she spread sorrow expresses a volatile emotional core that speaks to abuse and repression with an unblinking candidness.
kundalini’s signature whispered vocals once again beckons her audience closer on ‘orchid seeds.’ kundalini states that the album, “is about 5 different women of my family. each track is about one of them with their difficult story and strengths. my family is totally destroyed now, no relation between anyone, but in the past there was a strong tradition of women with interesting personalities” this sibilant allegorical history comes into focus amidst a claustrophobic and cinematic pall of dark ambient blight and death industrial torpor.

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g*park is the long standing schimpfluch member marc zeier, whose cryptic assemblages manifest through technically precise yet psychologically strenuous strategies of musique concrete and controlled noise.
‘nosode’ follows his impeccable ‘gour,’ ‘sub,’ and ‘reuters’ albums with a dislocation of source material from human voice, piano, and field recordings into disfigured utterances, uncomfortable passages of creaking wood, bone, metal, etc., and whipcrack punctuations of sonic violence. zeier locates these razor-cut activities against deathray drones and blackened shadow.

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relay for death is the noise project for the twin sisters roxann and rachal spikula. their hermetic works consistently reflect a bleak nihilism, all the while carving an autonomous space for survival as the rest of the existence crumbles. previous works have been published by hanson, no rent, and rrrecords.
‘mutual consuming’ is a dire piece of isolationist thrum, spectral caterwaul, and heavy gloom through an oblique and abstracted coupling of electronics, noise, and ominous field recordings. as immersive as thomas köner’s haunting ambience but fully entrenched in the industrial meditations of mb.

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himukalt’s ‘torn asunder: the half girl’ was born of tragedy in the wake a relationship that failed. just as she manifests the amplifications of desire, rage, anxiety, and despair from her previous works, himukalt’s ester kärkkäinen navigates the territory of spurned love through a demonstratively personal if explosively detrimental take on power electronics and heavy industrial electronics.
the nevada based artist began himukalt in 2016 as a vehicle for her noise constructs and crude programming that found references to puce mary, anenzephalia, and atrax morgue’s mörder machine. since then, she has maintained a manic schedule with releases for malignant, found remains, total black, no rent and now this return to helen scarsdale who published her first cassette.

Tracklist
Lågliv
A1 Neutral (10)– Enhet
A2 Neutral (10)– Röda Sten
A3 Neutral (10)– Sömngång
A4 Neutral (10)– Punkt
B1 Neutral (10)– Ganska Lågt
B2 Neutral (10)– Också
Winter
C1 Kleistwahr– Winter Part I - We Sense It Through The Even Snow
C2 Kleistwahr– Winter Part II - Rust Eats The Future
D1 Kleistwahr– Winter Part III - The Solstice Will Not Save Us
D2 Kleistwahr– Winter Part IV - Everything We Loved Is Gone
Shouting At Nuance
E1 Pinkcourtesyphone– Problematic Interior 3 22:48
F1 Pinkcourtesyphone– Alternatory 27:08
A Collection Of Damaged Reel Tape Loops
G1 Francisco Meirino– Untitled
H1 Francisco Meirino– Untitled
9 Dreams In Erotic Mourning
I1 Alice Kemp– All Is Crushed All Is Perfect
I2 Alice Kemp– The Headless Saint
I3 Alice Kemp– A Gold Blade To The Back Of The Head
I4 Alice Kemp– Song For Unnamed Things
J1 Alice Kemp– Corpse Garden Practices
J2 Alice Kemp– A Small Act Of Violence
J3 Alice Kemp– Alles Ist Wie Es Ist
J4 Alice Kemp– The Painting In The Chapel Under The Stairs
J5 Alice Kemp– Charnelling
Hydration Disequilibrium
K1 Fossil Aerosol Mining Project– Not Intended As
K2 Fossil Aerosol Mining Project– No One Listening
K3 Fossil Aerosol Mining Project– Beneath The Rails
K4 Fossil Aerosol Mining Project– Playing The Instrument As It Decays
L1 Fossil Aerosol Mining Project– Disequalibrium Segment
L2 Fossil Aerosol Mining Project– Only The Green, Blue, And Black
Nosode
M1 G*Park– Die Sitten Verwildern. Die Gerechtigkeit Ist Obdachlos.
N1 G*Park– Alles Ist Im Fluss. Die Pure Alchemie.
Mutual Consuming
O1 Relay For Death– Intone The Morph Orb
P1 Relay For Death– Terminal Ice Wind
Orchid Seeds
Q1 She Spread Sorrow– The Solitude In The Giant House
Q2 She Spread Sorrow– Star
Q3 She Spread Sorrow– She Didn't Care
R1 She Spread Sorrow– Queen Of Guilt
R2 She Spread Sorrow– The Fortune Of Others
Torn Asunder: The Half Girl
S1 Himukalt– Fucking Bitch
S2 Himukalt– Cruel By Most Estimations
S3 Himukalt– I Was Never Here
T1 Himukalt– Absent
T2 Himukalt– Don't