Another recent find though this group has been out there making an intriguing type of music based on repetition and simultaneous soloing. Sounds chaotic but there's a hell of a lot of form that arises and passion. This is the type of drone "electronic" music that I can see opening some pathways to interesting sounds especially when they have a couple of drums. As crazy as it is, this group played at one of the places I always go hear new and adventurous music, RhizomeDC earlier this year and it was captured on video in a way that presents it acoustically and visually in a way that seems direct and honest. Here it is:
Forget music that makes you feel no pain. What about music that makes you feel like nothing at all, that pushes and pulverizes you until every woe, hope, and worry disappears like dust? That is the marvelous strength of Water Damage, an amorphous collective of about a dozen Austin underground heads whose high-volume indulgence in repetition is a force both obliterative and purifying. They ride the divide between noise and rock, pounding out rhythms like a power trio caught on an eternal trip to nowhere, all beneath feedback streaks and microtonal bleats. In New York in the late ’70s, the Ramones at CBGB inspired young composer and avant-impresario Rhys Chatham to repeat an electrified E above drums until the overtones turned into a fever dream, the vision fulfilled by his Guitar Trio. Nearly half a century later, Water Damage have turned that challenge into an obstacle course with In E, their third and best album and a reaffirming testament to just how ecstatic and mighty minimalism can be.
In E arrives as four side-long tracks, each charging down a single alleyway without ever wavering, glancing back, or bothering to do anything more than shift in barely perceptible ways. “Nice!” someone seems to yell 15 seconds into “Reel E,” the phosphorescent violin and colossal rhythm section presumably pausing just long enough to check the levels.
And then, their marathon begins, blown-out bass and brain-fried guitar unfolding like an imagined ocean. The drums fall in line like a marching band, at least two kits shaping an ironclad pocket. But the bristled violin of Mari Maurice Rubio—who records as the great more eaze—slices through the sides of the beat like she’s trying to make an escape. And that’s mostly where the piece hangs until the band breaks down and Maurice outlasts the rhythm long enough to sail into this open void. Loud, relentless, unrepentant: Lock into that tug of war, and you may forget where you are, how you are, who you are. It feels fantastic, a rare mind eraser for our increasingly plugged-in times.
Water Damage unlock the same effect on “Reel EE” and “Reel EEE” with very different approaches. For the former, the rhythm section summons a rock band that’s about to count in to their greatest hit, but they simply sit there, repeating the meter and doubling the bass until it all blurs into a trance. Don’t expect it to change when the guitars finally arrive, either, their slow wave of serrated tones washing over everything like insoluble oil. It is a web of interwoven drones, with feedback, distortion, and fragmented chords cohering into sustained chaos. “Can textures alone make a riff?” Water Damage seem to ask. The Motorik march compels you to nod along whether or not you agree.