York Factory Complaint- Remorse of Conscience 

Depraved sounds, dear jesus what is happening here? The sound of a concussion looped out indefinitely. Thug music, junkyard thugs. Squealing feedback loops, squalls of medicated clang. It's all here. It's going to be an all-night kind of thing. You are in the wrong neighborhood. 

c26 cassette  edition of 150. 

2011.   039.

$11 
outside of U.S.

"Another fine release from this Brooklyn quartet. They manage to bridge the gap between noise Improv and deep space breathing techniques better than anyone else I've heard. Helmets off to 'em."
-Byron Coley, The Wire Magazine, May 2011

"Adam Richards's House of Alchemy seems to be on the road to becoming a full time cassette pusher, Amen to that. This one by York Factory Complaint came along in a batch with a Chris Dadge solo percussion tape (which I will speak on at a later date) as well as an expansive split/collab double tape between Richards's Chapels project, Sleepwalkers Local and The Circle and the Point.

Never heard of this duo before the tape, though I've seen the name around a couple places since. The tape is kinda weird to write about because it keeps me at a distance. I don't really know how to get close to it or into it. Maybe the fact that it's an antisocial junkbag could be part of the problem.

The cassette starts out with some motherfuckin' rumble. As the side (titled "Asleep in the Arms of an Ocean" as if anyone could confuse this racket for a lullaby) moves forward it sounds like that some of this noise could be originating from percussion or guitar bashing rather than just inbred circuits. The tape is weirdly "musical." There aren't any melodies or discernibly intentional rhythms so maybe it really is just two dudes trying to peel the paint from the walls but there's a lively physicality to it buried underneath not found in all noise music.

York Factory Complaint are absolutely trafficking in no-fi, recorded-in-a-dumpster audio-garbage so the sound doesn't get anymore detailed when you crank the volume. Like it or not, the Complaint are giving you big, broad, abstract strokes like playing mud on your turntable. Their brand of impressionist noise obscures its artist, along with everything else really.

"Marked" is my preferred side, if only for the sharper, trebly bite it has. Various sources of feedback, forced to mingle, unwillingly breed making for bastards and bastards of bastards all clamoring over each other in forbidden instinct. The side isn't any less caked with shit than the previous (it might even be a little more unstable) but the claustrophobia of "Ocean" is gone leaving the sounds to exist in a strangely open territory. The funny thing is for all the "crumbliness" of it, the piece sort of seems in a vacuum. I'll throw some oxymoronically buzz words at it: infinite destruction. How can something be destroyed if its infinite? I don't know, talk to these guys...

York Factory Complaint, in my estimation, are somewhere between junk noise brethren like the Fossils family and other thicker, electronics-based harsh noise artists. Does that sound appetizing (or, more likely, vomit-inducing?) Well, come to the stable and let the House of Alchemy feed you until you burst."

-Auxiliary Out