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CD
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ASH 15-8CD
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$15.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 1/30/2026
There was no premeditated methodology in place when Swedish electronics manipulator Joachim Nordwall and American guitar mangler Aaron Turner decided to collaborate on an album together. Initial experiments involved Turner submitting improvised guitar compositions to Nordwall for dissection and reassembly. While these exercises yielded interesting returns, the project truly began to bloom when Nordwall pitched several beat-oriented tracks for Turner's perusal. Beginning from a place of structure and finding ways to corrode and disrupt the patterns proved to be a more satisfying tactic than molding chaos into something resembling cohesive form. And it was from this approach that Turner-Norwall's Malign Seeds album took shape. It's difficult to pin down the point of genesis on any of Malign Seeds' seven tracks. Howling drones of indeterminant origin rise and fall out of the ether, like a chorus of tongue-less beings searching each other out with song-like sonar. Melody is eliminated, rhythm is constantly ignored if not outright subverted, timbral familiarity is avoided at all costs. What's left is a hollowed-out shell of rock music -- the scrape of the pick across the strings without any of the harmonic information, the whirr and clatter of electronics without the placating carving away of unwanted frequencies, the rasp of the voice without the underlying melody, the warts and blemishes without the defining contours. This isn't just music stripped naked, this is music where everything but the marrow of the bones has been excised, leaving the listener with something meaty and very much alive. Whether the xenomorphic sounds of Turner-Nordwall's Malign Seeds represent the grisly meat or the scraped-out husk of the 21st century's niche permutations of rock music is ultimately an exercise in language. Perhaps it's the most basic incarnation of living matter -- primordial cells embedded with the code for a more sophisticated manifestation. Perhaps it really is just a shell -- the hardiest and most resilient elements of something that is ultimately fallible and prone to decay. Or perhaps the answer is in the name of the album itself -- a kernel containing multitudes for anyone patient enough to give it time to grow, or anyone brave enough to face the potentially malevolent force nestled within. Recorded in Gothenburg, Sweden and Vashon, WA, 2021-2024. Mixed and mastered by Scott Evans in Oakland, CA, 2024. Artwork and design by Savage Pencil.
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