Trans/Human – “Whistle”

Released earlier this month, The (UN)Expected marks Sheffield, UK’s Trans/Human‘s first outing on wax. The 3 track LP showcases the noise duo’s willingness to experiment with disparate collections of instruments with a view to creating something that sounds familiar, as demonstrated by “Whistle,” the record’s opening track.

“Whistle” begins with a badly buckled radio transmission of Boxcar Willie’s “I Love The Sound of a Whistle,” pre-empting the descent into whooshing static and frantic bell ringing that announces the arrival of the “train,” in actual fact one of the duo blowing roughly on a saxophone suspended from a coat rail. The track comes over like a bizarre tribute to the celebrated opening exchanges in Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West in which the director creates a veritable symphony of noise at a remote station as three gunmen crack their knuckles, catch flies and ready their weapons. There the whistle — and eventually a wailing harmonica — heralds the appearance of Charles Bronson’s mysterious avenger in an immaculately structured sequence of remarkable tension and sudden violence that ends infamously with two horses too many.

Trans/Human don’t side with ol’ Boxcar here. In fact, like the characters in Leone’s classic, they seem to regard the train’s coming as a serious encroachment upon their personal space. As Willie fades out in a frustrated fumble of static the duo engage in an almighty scrap to keep the steaming hulk out of town using a barrage of fractured, magnet-minced racket. The result is a thoroughly broke-sounding engine, left to hiss and sadly sputter before it eventually rusts and crumbles to echo somewhat menacingly in the ether.

The (UN)Expected is available now from The Audacious Art Experiment.