Taiwan Housing Project tames an unruly no wave racket into blistered, thwarted grooves, built of primitive, tom-rampaging drums, feedback addled guitar, the odd blurt of belligerent sax and the cavern-echoing wail of Kilynn Lunsford (ex of Little Claw). Mark Feehan, who used to trade atonal vamps with Bill Orcutt in Harry Pussy, is Lunsford’s main partner in these compulsive, compelling tracks, and though Harry Pussy is its own thing and resistant to comparisons, you can feel some of the same anarchic, female-rage-fueled explosiveness in Sub-Language Trustees.
This is Taiwan Housing Projects’ second full-length, and it feels significantly more focused than 2017’s Veblen Death Mask. Its noisy skree continues to unspool chaotically, both in Lunsford’s…
…rants and Feehan’s free-wheeling guitar abuse, but both are channeled into tightly constructed rhythmic patterns. Anchored by brutalist drumming (Kelly Keith, Adam Payne, Donald Bruno) and Cameron Healy’s fuzz-clustered bass lines, these tracks lock in hard; the foundation holds and makes sense regardless of the mayhem flying around it.
Consider, for instance, “Buy Buy Buy” which begins, literally, with three young girls in a high pitched scream, pure, ear-punishing noise for its own sake. Yet almost immediately, a warped, wah-wah’d boogie kicks in, the raw bravado of blues rock twisted and corroded into anti-matter, like ZZ Topp sucked through a black hole. Lunsford pushes off against this foundation in wild, wailed chants on consumerism; it’s like watching a diver bounce on the board, rebounding from the give in the hard surface. There are some untethered, unhinged intervals of sax (that’s Kevin Nickles from Writhing Squares) and guitar feedback, but the track works because these forays break out of something solid.
Even the most aggressive cuts pulse with shuddering swagger; the noise abrades the groove but never entirely removes it. Listen to how the thudding bass and drums cut through miasmic distortion in “Toxic Garbage People.” You fall through a hole in the world as it courses around you, yet it’s never hard to find a unifying, body-shaking beat.