Bleep

Wolf Eyes spawned a fire in the band’s early years, with a highly prolific release schedule that has yet to die out over two decades later. Their Drolls series is what lit the match: twenty volumes of ultra limited handmade tapes, numbered in the tens and released between 2001 and 2006 on John Olson’s American Tapes label. Prized among collectors, archivists, and day one fans, they were once “likely lost for good”, and now Disciples compile the first five volumes into an indefatigable gauntlet of noise and free improvisation.

Chirps, caws, and tweets are amplified in the iron echoes of jackhammers and steamrollers sawing throughout these tapes, influenced by Droll Yankees Inc. (former Rhode Island record label, now birdfeeder manufacturing company) who released folksongs, spoken word comedy, and “mind blowing rare non-speech weirdo records” of nature and animal sounds during the 1960s. The energy of those curios is shattered into throttling loops and gales, and stretched into a state of eternal shredding across extended runtimes.

Sputtering noise delves right into the heart of Volume 1. Lumbering scrapyard percussion stomps with mighty force, anvils of turbulent bass drop, and tornadoes tear up muffled vocals. Silver shards of cymbal crashes lead into the hard industrial rhythm of ‘Edit A2’, guttural with screeching, scorching feedback and jets of harmonic noise. The anchoring beat eventually morphs into total freeform, replaced by scribbling highs and lurching lows, and a flurry of uppercuts punching with concrete force. The next few volumes manipulate psychedelic steam whistles and hypnotic train track rhythms, while ghostly sirens call into the rumbling depths of sludged out conversations.

Some of Wolf Eyes’ heaviest and most abstracted material is unearthed in this devotedly made Box Of Drolls.