The infamous Aphasia/E H I split tape. E H I was something of a “lo-fi industrial” noise project by Brian Noring of Des Moines, one of many projects on his F.D.R. Tapes label; a related zine, Friends Of The Draft Resistance, was my introduction to noise tape culture in 1993, containing an interview with Rectal Pus that prompted me to write to Jason Hodges at Chaotic Noise Productions.
E H I’s half of this is “noisier” than the other E H I tape I have from this era Under The Rails, involving more effects and tape manipulation applied to Casio sounds, and it’s a good listen.
As for Aphasia, probably the most interesting thing about it is the crazy personal history of Adam Gadahn in the years after this, what with joining Al Qaeda and all. His side of this split is more musically interesting than his earlier work Delirium: 7 Hallucinatory Interludes (the contents of which were also later put online as Music Of A Terrorist), but that’s still not saying much. Gadahn’s chief instrument here appears to be either a distortion pedal or tape saturation, in conjunction with general tedium. Where you can identify instruments, they’re employed clumsily; other parts sound like random mouth noises made into a microphone. To be fair, he was probably all of 16 when he made this stuff.
