Thurston Moore & John Moloney Caught On Tape Full Bleed

Thurston Moore continues to make his beloved late-career dad noise, this time bringing along New Dad America artist John Maloney, one of the many provocateurs behind Sunburned Hand of the Man. Together they offer nine tracks that lie somewhere between one of Glenn Branca’s attempts at formalising the no wave genre and a doom metal band’s sound check. It should be called While My Guitar Loudly Howls: Moore’s improvisations constantly recede into groaning, hard-spun moments that hurt more than any of his feedback ever could. He basically wants to be Stephen O’Malley but with the option to play more than one chord.

Maloney’s drumming lives large, of course: you don’t spend that many years in Sunburned Hand of the Man without being able to create a cacophonous haze with your instrument of choice. As if anticipating the angular and dissonant works Moore has waiting in line for him, his percussion works through droning, repetitive rolls and lots of little cymbal flickers.

The chaos actually feels a little pre-meditated, to be honest: both artists were expecting each other. It might be its staunchly instrumental nature or the fact they’re essentially crafting free form noise for an hour without consulting each other, but ‘Full Bleed’ is one of those fine avant-garde records where it feels like nobody’s there, that this music has just created and reproduced itself. Which is cool. They could probably make more interesting compositions, though.