Here's a theory: John Wiese's mechanistic obsessions, his deliberate inhumanity as an artist, explain his need to collaborate so frequently-- with rock acts in particular. Former and current partners Sunn0))), Wolf Eyes, Cattle Decapitation: these are bands who explore sound from the complete other end of the spectrum, wringing sweat and pushing air with big amps and analog equipment. On his own, Wiese will edit his granular, computer-based synthesis to its own death-- literally the sound of a Max patch disintegrating. His act, unlike, say, Merzbow, or Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock's CD packed in shit, is not an attempt to overwhelm the listener. Wiese often doesn't allow for the idea of a listener at all.
His music is alternately seductive and impossible: seductive because it begs you to follow sounds that are entirely foreign, to listen intently to a new language. But also impossible: sometimes Wiese's sound takes over the room, and you want that room back.
So there are few acts more suited for collaboration with Wiese than Chicago noise-hippies Metalux, who build their own wobbly sound off processed vocals and jagged rhythmic bits, garbled and uneven noise from a world closer to our own; they are constantly audible as creators in a way Wiese rarely is. Exoteric manages the magical noise trick of making over the familiar-- the over-heard, the raw and evocative-- into a kind of tangible environment. On the first track alone, the trio morphs vaguely Geography Channel aboriginal mouth-harp boings into something more akin to frogs croaking laser-blasts, turning circles while pedaling on sticky wheels. Together, the detritus of a thousand previously unmade connections form a new kind of whole.
Wiese will take sounds that are essentially nothing-- clanking, jackhammers, statics, waves, patterns, phasers-- and bind them into a pounding rhythmic logic that the Metalux girls play call and response with. "Esoteric Four" bleeps and moans a super-minimal squeak that repeats ever so imperceptibly, like a really long floor pattern. "Esoteric Five" has a middle passage that will play hell with listening equipment, a sub-audible thrust that plays by rattling the speaker cones as much as making sound come out of them.
Wiese tells a story about this collaboration. Out on their last West Coast tour, the two women who are Metalux stopped by Wiese's apartment to record Exoteric; they wired up, began to jam, then bam! Faulty connectors shorted, and a lightning bolt burst forth. Something like this, by the end, also happens on record. "Esoteric Seven", the final track, is a quiet storm of gauzy tape-slowdowns and tiny stuttering clouds of crunchy static. Metalux throw bolts of distant, semi-tonal exhalations through Wiese's widening circuits and it's genuinely beautiful. These guys should start a band.
