A bold chimera of birds, bolts and brains.
Nocturnal Birding takes flight from the nest of San Diego one-man band Tristan Shone, better known to fans as Author & Punisher. Author & Punisher, indeed – this record speaks with the conviction of a vengeful deity looking down at its defiled world, throat razed with mourning and rage. It is a dark, abrasive, intimate journey in the bloodletting clutches of Shone’s talons. Probing a drone metal jackhammer into the listener’s ear canal, he drills at his captive’s skull until their strongest passions and most repressed grievances spill out like a sunset gradient of white matter and blood.
“Meadowlark” forebodes the half-hour odyssey to come, a slow burn painted with grinding electronics and chugging guitars. “Titanis,” a collaboration with Indonesian experimental group Kuntari, weaves tribal percussion with spacious synthscapes and a squelching, acidic bassline. Nocturnal Birding immediately renders itself an auditory cyborg, mashing the organic with the mechanical. The blend is not totally seamless, and that is to its benefit; instead, it is raw, adrenaline-inducing, abstract and certain of little more than its sheer animalistic power. But make no mistake, this is a masterfully produced project, able to balance layers of overdriven madness without the loss of form or clarity.
“Mute Swan” and “Black Storm Petrel” (respectively featuring Couch Slut’s Megan Osztrosits and French industrialists Fange) take on dual modalities of head-splitting mania and unsettling rest, fluctuating between the two in a dizzying Mutt and Jeff routine. These tracks ring much like a well-paced horror film, suspense and intensity orbiting about each other like a vicious one-two punch.
The riffs on Nocturnal Birding are primal, uncomplicated and often repetitive. Such is the essential minimalist principle of metal, one that guitarist Doug Sabolick (the first permanent addition to Author & Punisher’s lineup) understands well. His work on tracks like “Rook” is understated and intentional, conveying metric tons of indignation in very few notes. Few, but brutal – one could describe it as musical water torture to which the listener inevitably finds themselves quite masochistic.
The bird lands on its closer, “Thrush.” “Thrush” thrashes the thinnest boundaries between voices, smearing the human with the avian and robotic like a dystopian Frankenstein. Shone’s vindictive screams reach a timbre indistinguishable from an overheating machine while birdcalls transpose onto synths and strings. A moment, then, is to note how conceptual Nocturnal Birding is in its adaptation of birdsong, whether by way of sample or interpolation – how unusual of a premise it is, and how beautifully it is incorporated throughout the whole album with the peace of a bird’s serenade dubbed over a man and a guitar screaming for their lives. It is impossible to not appreciate that ambition.
Author & Punisher invites one to look up at the feathered bird and the aluminum airliner, and envy the freedom to fly like a winged beast of flesh or metal. To pick up a guitar or a homemade analog synth and let it all out loud in the hopes that a wave of splenetic sound may soar as high and fast as the plane or the peregrine. Adam, android, ashy thrush – Author & Punisher, indeed.
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