The Von Einem Tapes is bleak, brutal, lofi, and made in Thornbury, a northern suburb of Melbourne. Yet the world from which the name of this project and thematic content comes from is much furthur away, in another city in another state: Adelaide, South Australia. It’s because the instigator of these dark muscular soundscapes, Mark Groves (Dead Boomers/True Radical Miracle) hails from Adelaide and spent his teenage years there, and the Von Einem murders were common knowledge at the time, and in fact at the time Adelaide was hailed as the murder capital of Australia.
Bevan Spencer Von Einem is a convicted child murderer, rapist and suspected serial killer from South Australia, and it’s his case and crimes that Groves embodies with his sound. Much of the lyrics seem to come from Von Einem’s Wikipedia page, and though in the main they’re unintelligible, you can pick out the odd word like ‘psychiatrist’, “vice squad” or “filthy” from amongst the deep narcotic monotone, and it only exacerbates the feeling of dread. Groves’ electro acoustic throbs of difficult sound are inspired. He’s crafting these dark industrial environments, sounding at one moment like field recordings of manufacturing, the next like deconstructed cracked electrics, and at others time almost like dark ambient music – yet even during the most difficult moments there’s a curious and welcome cohesion. These are the kinds of sounds that you expect would eventually explode in a kind of blistering, writhing mass of distorted noise, as it’s sound that possesses a threatening full bodied kind of strength, yet Groves doesn’t opt for anything that obvious. Even if the ingredients are abrasive Groves finds ways to arrange the pieces so despite the visceral, overwhelming and difficult nature, enough is happening with the mix that your focus shifts, and you begin to realise how much is going on under the hood. It can be visceral, but it’s also fascinating.
This is a double cd, featuring 30 pieces of experimental sound art, a dark kind of brutal industrial concept album that gathers together material released between 2011 and 2014 on a bunch of small run cassette labels. It makes for uneasy listening. It’s difficult but immersive, where drones, slabs of static and shrill elongated pitches collide under periodic disengaged spoken word. This is the sound of nightmares, of metal against concrete, cold dark hallways and an unrelenting wind howling.
There’s something about Groves’ desire to cloak the project using all means at his disposal, from the black and white cd cover photography, to the true crime nature of Groves’ inspiration behind the project, to the bleak nature of the sounds and even the decision to print the disturbing lyrics. It’s hardly subtle but the confluence of all these elements is really effective and quite chilling. This project is foreboding personified.
