Jim Haynes – Scarlet

Jagged bursts of strobe lights. Cackling radio signals bristling with interference. Sawtooth patterns of tactile noise. Torn flesh. Scabbed wounds. These are some of the building blocks to Jim Haynes’ Scarlet. This crucible of unkempt rhythm and noise-pulse turbulence was decomposed and sutured together from the various sources of electromagnetic and psychic detritus into an unstable mutation of sequential error. The eight tracks of Scarlet stand as vastly radical and obsessive variations on the theme of repetition through trauma. Each of the tracks may have begun with the same system of building blocks, but quickly spiral into disparate orbits, time-lag accumulation, tunnel-vision mania, schizoid detours, amplified seances, and teleological endgames. This strategy of rupture and release was first noted on Haynes’ 2012 album The Wires Cracked, but has become all the more unhinged here on Scarlet. The analog tone generation and shambolic futurism harken to an earlier era of industrial immolation, with Haynes’ echolalia of Le Syndicat, Mika Vainio, and Martin Rev stridently tracing and electrically bleaching the forms of those antecedents without the benefit of drum machine, sequencer, and whatnot. Bruitisme, indeed.