Chris Irregardless - Worn Down To The Rope

 Released: July 31

As a purveyor of strange sounds, I was a little surprised by the latest release from Florida-based Chris Irregardless. His album previous to this was a rather noisy and intense album in terms of dynamics and arrangement. Conversely, Worn Down To The Rope is far more subdued and slow in many parts, though there is still a fair amount of organized cacophony to be heard throughout. Much of this organized cacophony comes from some rather unusual bell and chime type of sounds. 

The first two tracks feature this pretty heavily, with “Static in the Garden” starting out with a persistent bell, clanging moderately as windswept soundscapes rough and wail softly in the background. The track that follows, “Sweet Meteor of Death 1981,” adds to this with the addition of an old-school phone ringing sound, like a very old one. The windswept soundscape is not present here, instead replaced by a haunting and soft pad in the background. 

From this point, the bells disappear for a bit and the more soft atmospherics take center stage. Soft pads with haunting auras and sparse percussion on “Continuing Washroom” make for something that occupies a slightly uncanny space between horror and fantasy as the wooden block-esque hits make a persistent but somehow unnerving rhythm. The bells and chimes make a return on “Heat Heat Heat” in a rather inconsistent way; the rhythm is unsteady, the sound fades and reappears, it hesitates and hangs in the air at times, the whole time sounding ever so slightly off.

While all of the atmospherics of this album are impressive, it’s the use of percussion that really shines through. It functions only to heighten the haunting tones and airy textures, rather than to ground them to something. If anything, it further deteriorates any perceived tether that the sonic environment has, pulling it more and more into increasingly abstract territory.