GRID

Decomposing Force

The New York trio doesn’t change their formula, but they escalate in terms of intensity. They’re still improvising, taking queues from free jazz and sludge, but the monolithic dirges that once were, have become manic assaults of off-kilter drum patterns combined with bass and sax lines drenched in barbwire feedback.

In their relatively short lifespan (three years since their self-titled debut), the New York trio, GRID, have not been ones to drastically change their formula, but they certainly don’t repeat themselves. Their 2017 effort had them giving life to bass-heavy, shapeless structures that reverberated with nasty feedback coming from a sludgy bass and sax, rendering these loosely built edifices as impenetrable as a magnetic cataclysm; the result was abrasive and meditative, as if The Thing had joined forces with Sunn O))).

In between their debut and their most recent release, was a brief collaboration with No-Wave legend, Lydia Lunch, which had a similar approach to composition, but it was less focused on the overtones emanating from high-gain frequencies, instead, GRID held back to grant Lunch’s raspy voice a place under a smokey spotlight; and now, for their sophomore album, the trio escalates in terms of intensity. They’re still improvising and taking queues from free jazz as well as noise and sludge, but the monolithic and almost immobile dirges that once were, have become manic assaults of off-kilter drum patterns with an even nastier tone for the bass and sax.

While still keeping their track list on the short side, GRID don’t hold anything back when it comes to the impact these uncontrollable beasts will have on the listener. Matt Nelson’s saxophone always leaves a ghostly trail of barbwire reverb and every note emitted by the bass guitar gets buried underneath layers and layers of hissing fuzz. This dynamic gets harsher and harsher due to a simple trick the trio used during the recording sessions: by placing the bass and sax amps facing one another, the feedback each instrument emits bounces off of each other, creating a shrieking racket that gives the songs a crushing and piercing quality.

“Brutal Kings” opens the album with regular free jazz dynamics: a sax spirals out of control as the bass and drums move as a disoriented person anxiously trying to find their way through a dark room. Up until the middle of the song, most of the instruments’ timbre is left intact, but it eventually becomes more and more distorted as the frequencies keep clashing; its sudden stop at the end is just a brief rest, as “Nythynge” continues to sink us further into abstraction. Electronic manipulation cuts the sax’s flow into bits and trails while the rest of the musicians make their best effort to fill our the empty spaces, and since they both want to do it at the same time, the result is a thick, uneven wall á la Balázs Pándi with Merzbow and Keiji Haino.

The last two tracks carry the same weight as the ones in the debut album -especially closer “Cold Sleep”- with glacial pacing and a cavernous, ample bass tone that encloses the sax, making it sound like if it’s screaming for help from the depths of a crumbling cave. “The Weight of Literacy” is actually a highlight because of how it successfully mixes the manic with the lethargic, and while the album could have benefitted from keeping the initial momentum it was successfully gathering, Decomposing Force is still highly engaging due to its undeniable power and the interesting sonic textures it manages to create through its chaotic approach. Even if it doesn’t represent a significant change, this is what GRID does and if they do it so well, why change?

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