Headless Horse Head, “Tree Vein 1942”

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It’s probably safe to say that most solid noise tracks don’t usually establish a “feel-good” vibe. It’s simply not the nature of the genre. The last track from Headless Horse Head’s new record, Floating Bloody Treasure, out now on Lake Paradise Records, hammers home that everything needn’t be nice. Headless Horse Head is a trio made up of Drew Gibson (Katrina Stonehart, Baby Birds Don’t Drink Milk, Solid Melts), Jake Acosta (Teen River), and Daniel Wyche, all of whom are masters of disquiet.

“Tree Vein 1942” is a nearly ten-minute disjointed doom-filled march, perhaps grimly reminiscent of the atrocity and confusion of the titular year. A multitude of characters go into the disconcerting nature of the track: the timing, first and foremost; the unpredictable and anxiety-filled haunts of the deep tones; the incessantly swirling and nagging tendencies of the highs. A few tonal recurring constants appear and dissipate to ground something of a structure in the static-filled tumult, but the majority of it is sheer chaos, as though to form a gnarled hand with jagged nails, clawing upwards against your skin and leave nothing but queasy unrest in the pit of your stomach.