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KNOWSO- Pulsating Gore LP
With previous releases on Total Punk, Drunken Sailor, and Neck Chop, many of you know Knowso. Maybe you’re even familiar with Cruelster and Perverts Again, projects that share members and sensibilities with Knowso. As for the rest of you, some percentage will hear fifteen seconds of Pulsating Gore and decide it’s not for you. (You’re missing out.) Knowso is too quirky, too nerdy… they don’t rock. But if you have a soft spot for angular rhythms, they’ll pull you in. From there, Pulsating Gore has layers to peel back. Its music is intricate, dense with notes delivered quickly and precisely, layered into interlocking patterns that brim with organic tension. The vocals are not really singing, but memorable nonetheless… a kind of purposefully forceful, yet emotionally detached incantation. And then there are the lyrics, which quick-cut between cryptic images, cracked and fragmented slogans, violent premonitions, and austere documentation of drudgery, words and phrases repeating as their meaning throbs in time with the music. Much of the imagery comes from singer / guitarist / bassist / artist Nathan Ward’s day job as a trucker: roads, highway stops, caffeinated beverages, gory accidents, etc. The images have a darkly psychedelic quality, relating to Nathan’s preoccupation with the ideal of reality “glitching,” a topic Knowso explores both musically and lyrically throughout the album. Also informing Pulsating Gore is Nathan’s intense but ultimately futile struggle to unionize his workplace, with many of the album’s lyrics reading as abstruse but biting analyses of work, labor, and capital. Rather than topics for separate songs, these ideas float through Pulsating Gore’s music and lyrics like garbage in a gas station parking lot on a windy fall day. And that’s only part of the story, so strap in and let Knowso sweep you away.