A Tapestry of Emotion and Experience
From the outset, let’s get one thing out of the way; this album is indeed three hours and twenty one minutes long. Pretty much any album at that length should have a label affixed to it reading, “self-aggrandizing trash” yet, through some incomprehensible impossibility, this album is sublime. No one should ever be able to make an album even approaching this length, the world collectively damned Chris Brown for his attempt at a long album (though that feels more than deserved) and most other albums passing two hours turn to a slog despite their quality in parts. Still, this is no mere attempt at profundity by Prurient; he is alone in the realm of noise music, an untouchable god with unmatched skill and a deft hand that has now been used to achieve the impossible.
Prurient doesn’t put together albums so much as he crafts experiences. Whether it be the panicked madness of Tiger Smells a Corpse or the cinematic fluctuations of Frozen Niagara Falls, each record masterfully weaves a tapestry of emotion and experience, in a manner that is far more effective than nearly all his peers. “Peers” of course is only the best descriptor available for an artist who is without equal in his chosen field, making any standard criticism of his work difficult simply for the sheer amount of clout and expertise wielded by the artist in question.
Rainbow Mirror begins with a whine, as many noise albums have, though maybe not quite like this. The noise is solitary, isolated, far off. It approaches like a train with a squeaking wheel, a car with a faulty axle, or the rising suspense as a stalker closes in on their victim. It’s the sound of losing a note, a pitch that plays once more in resplendent glory before exiting your ear entirely. It does not continue on in this way, “Walking on Dehydrated Coral” while unpleasant in title, is more a message than a song. Bass notes sting across the spectrum of the record, rattling and warbling with reckless abandon. By the time the quivering electronic pulse enters the mix at minute four, the listener has been relaxed into a jellied heap, unable to fully process any of the building chaos in the track. Any reprieve from chaos the listener felt during “Walking on Dehydrated Coral” will be violently swept away by “Midnight Kabar.” The track consists of what seems to be heavily distorted found sounds of bats or birds; the whole affair feels perverse, each sound has a touch of nature to it, but the life has been stripped out, leaving only cold, exsanguinated bodies in its wake. Portions of the track that feel more alien grow increasingly unsettling — synths bubble and tear like a somewhat down-tuned Merzbow track. As far as any listeners will be able to discern, it’s the sound of an alien mothership landing over a rainforest. Grumbling synth arpeggios soon join into the madness, increasing the urgency of the track, turning it from a sick observation to a life or death chase scene.
To continue to pick apart each track would be impossible to accomplish without writing a literal book. However, there are some standout tracks and moments that illustrate Rainbow Mirror. Some of these moments include the menacing build of “Chaos Sex” and the whip crack electronics and table saw samples contained within. A sonic menagerie that, when coupled with the hyper provocative title, brings to mind images that that are best left unwritten. These stomach rending thoughts only increase as the intensity of the track ramps up with hurricane-like bursts of static and found sounds that culminate in a cyclonic crescendo of eardrum-shattering aggression.
Other moments include the atmospheric glory at the center of “Falling in Water,” a brief moment of the album that could probably be shown to non-noise fans without much in the way of background or justification. The moment doesn’t last long, quickly giving way to another rattling cough of static, but for the brief instant it lasts, it consumes all of reality, and from there goes on to serve as the backbone of the track. There’s the stone-grinding drone of “Okinawan Burial Vaults” and the stringed opening of “Cruel Worlds” punctuated by piercing stingers of feedback, erecting a moment that remains almost outside of the rest of the record. The single (as if anything by Prurient could ever truly be called a single) “Naturecum” is a spiraling sonic assault, serving as a phenomenal entry point for those looking to break into the harsher, more unapproachable elements of the genre, though to describe any portion of this record as approachable would be a laughable error. Most of all, there’s the fact that this uncompromising instrumental noise record can hold attention even better than most movies that came out this year.
If listeners and reviewers were be honest for a moment, frustrating would be an adjective often be used to describe Rainbow Mirror — not frustrating for its length or inherent uncompromising nature, rather it is infuriating for its sheer brilliance. Much like a Dyson bladeless fan, no matter how long one looks at this record, the pieces don’t ever seem to add up, even though they clearly do. There’s hardly even a sniff of melody, the tracks are grotesquely titled and upsettingly long. Hell, the cover itself is off putting, but somehow fresh air still blows out the other end.
It bears repeating that this album is three hours and twenty one minutes long. Those that are counting might perk up, saying “But that’s longer than all but one Lord of the Rings movies?” Indeed, that statement is correct, and the fact that this album, a noise album, flies by with the same ease as “The Two Towers” should both thrill and aggravate fans of the genre. None of it makes sense, but all these irreconcilable pieces are jammed together to create an original Renoir.
Prurient is more than just good. He’s more than just someone who can craft experiences. Prurient transcends the self imposed boundaries of his genres, creating works of art that disturb and inspire those brave enough to approach. This is not the album to start someone on noise — it wasn’t built to gain fans. In the face of it all, Rainbow Mirror is an unyielding, uncompromising, and wholly unassailable masterwork, reserved only for the most dedicated and adventurous listeners of music. To pass this album by is a travesty in no uncertain terms. Every second within its walls expands the mind and pushes the listener further and further from their comfort zone. But this temporary unease reaps great rewards, and the experience is more than worth it.
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