When Providence producer Davey Harms began releasing music, originally under the name Mincemeat or Tenspeed, he was a beat-driven outlier in the 2000s noise scene. Armed with only a looper and a phalanx of distortion pedals, Harms triggered pugilistic flurries of locked-groove beats. Dan Deacon was an early champion, telling Pitchfork in 2007 that Harms is “my favorite performer right now.” But when Zum Records boss George Chen spoke to the site in 2010 about releasing Mincemeat’s breakthrough, Strange Gods, he admitted that “hardcore noise people might not be inclined to include [it], because it’s fun and has a beat to it.” A decade later, Harms hasn’t changed his approach, but the noise landscape has undergone a tectonic shift towards club music. With his new album, World War, Harms taps into both contemporary noise and techno, combining their feverish energy in a thrilling, off-the-rails collision.
Like Providence contemporaries Lightning Bolt and Container, Harms’ music is built on aggressive repetitions that amplify subtle variations. This quality intensified after Harms began releasing music on Hausu Mountain, the genre-melting Chicago label whose founders Maxwell Allison and Doug Kaplan were among Mincemeat’s early fans. On 2016’s Cables, released under his own name, Harms loosened his pedal-only set-up without compromising that barreling intensity. On Soundsystem, a 2017 follow-up credited to World War, Harms broke further from his comfort zone with dynamic rhythms to compliment his expanding instrumentation. Appropriate for an album named after one moniker and credited to his other, World War takes the best qualities from each release and produces a leaner, meaner fusion. At under 28 minutes, it’s Harms’ shortest and most potent release yet.
World War snakes and soars over six tracks like the strange creature on its cover, half B-52 bomber and half Beetlejuice sandworm. “Dealer’s Choice” kicks into gear with thudding bass notes and an onslaught of drums, until a whining synth slithers into the frame. Harms’ favorite method of gradually piling on noise and polyrhythms persists, but with a small adjustment of trajectory, he manages to land in new destinations. “Position True” reaches in-the-red altitude only to navigate new peaks and valleys: Rattling drum loops and noise hit early, but by the halfway point the song reorients around a spartan synth rhythm as focused and insistent as minimal techno pioneer Robert Hood. Still, there’s nothing wrong with hammering a beat into oblivion, and on “March of the Hoopleheads,” every brittle drum hit and grinding synth only provides more gas for the 4/4 juggernaut. In spite of the harshness, it sounds designed to tear through a techno set.
Harms compliments World War’s bracing first half by entering his spaciest territory yet on its B-side. “Knowing Hand” adds trembling, tabla-like percussion and hovering synths that sound like a swarm of UFOs, while “Little Brother” builds to a loping techno groove that’s pleasantly loose compared to its tightly wound neighbors. The best surprise is closer “Survival,” a polyrhythmic swirl of spindly synths made all the more dramatic by its lack of momentum. After building pressure its entire run, World War finds a surprising payoff in this delicate final flourish. Harms’ cult classics hinged on endlessly ratcheting up the tension; World War shows he can refine his style while still searching for a new extreme.
