Troy Schafer – Untitled #2

When Troy Schafer unleashed the first volume of his Untitled series, I was immediately enamored with the music’s frenetic pacing and enigmatic palette. Untitled #3 was a shift in direction, yet remained appealing to me: there was a conceptual bridge to the first outing that belied the series’ anonymous nomenclature. This cassette, purportedly the second in the series, is similarly engaging: a cyclonic cloud of power electronics, opaque string escapades, field recordings, guttural and screamed vocals, samples, and other sonic ephemera. Schafer has applied a narrative to this cut-up pasture of sound: it “conveys an aestheticized recounting of the daily relationship between a lone recordist and a damned urban soundscape.” One can only imagine the artist wandering the streets of Chicago, embracing the taut fiber of his own muscles, or lost in the electric pathways of his mind, collecting and archiving material to be tossed into his cauldron for assembly into another masterpiece. I have yet to hear an individual with a vision both as clear and as singular as Troy Schafer, and don’t believe that it is possible for the Earth to bear the weight of more than one Schafer-like being. That’s perfectly fine with me, as long as the sounds continue to emanate from his corner of the universe.

Untitled #2 was released by the Black Horizons label and is available both from their site and Schafer’s own Bandcamp. Grip now or forever hold your peace.