Walter Gross

WORLD PREMIERE: 

Popular music these days is so pleasant. 

I tend to fall into one of two lines of thinking as to why. There are the baser aspects of my soul that lean towards music's pleasantness being sprayed down from the heavens like some form of chemical pacifier. The government's auditory chemtrails. Then there are more rational reasons: people like shit to be pleasant, enjoy predictability, being coddled, held, told everything is going to be alright. 

I am not one of those people. 

I don't like to feel pleasant. It makes me nervous, suspicious, fretful like the other shoe hovers above just waiting for an excuse to rain misfortune down like acid. This isn't normal. I'm sure of that. But I'm not alone. 

Walter Gross, living in Berlin, Germany is with me. Based on the soupy effected churning sounds of "Fade to Facts" - the first single from Gross' brand new cassette, Genres, Gross is just fine sitting in the street, wallowing in the puddles, running down dew-wet, late-night streets. Gross is comfortable wrapped in noise, and discord. He revels in the clanks and whirs and static, realizing it isn't dissonance but reflection, both personal and societal. 

There ain't anything pleasant about it to someone who likes things to be pleasant. 

But to those who like our ears challenged, who find ourselves unamused by the standard entertainment tropes, who didn't watch the Emmy's, who have Dismaland as a vacation destination. Walter Gross is making music for us because he is us. He's not you - that's for damn sure! 

Genres is just this side of 20 minutes and the entire listen sways in scope, from the electric static vastness of outer space to a child pounding inside the gears of a machine. 

And I find that to be pleasant as FUCK! 

Get your filthy mits on the whole Genre tape right here: