Alternately dubbed “bloop noise†and “a Nintendo DS that sounds like piss†by Newcastle bedroom label Monstera Deliciosa, Reunion Sacred Ibis is the searing work of Melbourne’ Cooper Bowman. With help from a distortion pedal, Bowman uses an old handheld Nintendo DS and its stylus to arrive at a primitive, caved-in take on glitch, noise, and chiptune. This 17-minute 3-inch CD, which comes shrouded in cover art by Michael Liestins from Cock Safari, ranges from harsh to beautiful while proving surprisingly listenable after some initial shock.
The disk is bookended by the bristling, interruption-laden “Pana-Wave 1′ and then “Pana-Wave 2′, which feels a bit more crumbling and mystical both. In between is “Forty Flying In Formation’, a seven-minute study in repetitive manipulations and modulations that finds an unlikely nest of melody and rhythm in its skewed patterns. The title track, meanwhile, is all harsh burn and gurgle, like a close-contact splash of acid. It gets pretty deep and busy before exiting in mid-throe, at times tapping an incidental bass throb and flirting with shards of what resembles channel surfing.
Even setting aside the novelty of how Bowman makes these ruptured sounds, Reunion Sacred Ibis is a project that grows more and more interesting as the tracks progress and we give them multiple listens. Bowman’s fragmented tones tingle, chirp, hiccup, and crash, hinting all the time at something like transcendence.
Doug Wallen
