Snake Milker is the work of Melbourne artist Shane Jesse Christmass who has previously also recorded experimental music under the name Mattress Grave. Christmass is also an author with his recent work Acid Shottas published by the Ledatape Organisation last year. He also did a Cyclic Selects for us about a year ago.
Whilst electronic in nature, the first piece ‘Milk Sugar’, takes on a Kosmische feel with a repetitive, rhythmic metronomic sound which may or may not be guitar, over which all manner of clutter can occur such as the most rigid percussion you’ve ever heard – yet whilst it remains in place it reassures our ears and everything will always feel hypnotic. Before long this dies away and we’re left with general vaguely atmospheric sounds, perhaps some kind of ill-defined field recordings. It feels like the end of the piece and it continues for a long time – perhaps too long. But then some session drumming kicks in abruptly without altering the general clamour of sound, and when a throbbing bass arrives it quickly becomes the spine of the piece. This again this provides a platform for Christmass to deliver all kinds of experimental weirdness over the top – which he does without ever breaking the momentum. And so ‘Milk Sugar’ continues, peaks and troughs, a singular piece that refuses to inhabit the same sound world for too long.
Towards the end we’re left with the remnants of the previous sounds, a dense soup that builds and evolves with all of the ingredients colliding together, a post industrial throb that slowly peels away its layers to reveal another mesmerising rhythm. And it’s a real pattern for Snake Milker, where low-key mutant dance music is never too far away from the experimentations. Milk Sugar is a series of suites; pieces build up, evolve, hold and slowly dip away making room for the next. This happens about four or five times.
The second piece, ‘CIA Jeeps’ is a kind of warm mechanical throb from the next room, which Christmass approaches like it’s industrial techno, with washes of thin synthetic hisses washing over it periodically. Again that word comes to mind: hypnotic. This is an exercise in long form experimental hypnotism. Then comes the robotic funk. Where ‘Milk Sugar’ traversed a wide expanse, ‘CIA Jeeps’ is considerably more focussed and considerably more musical, eschewing the noisy industrial washes of weirdness for longer and more sustained moments of rhythmic hypnoticism.
