Austin Sound

This month in our Outside Austin blogswap, we hear from the Skyline Network in Houston, who tunes us in to the corrosive potentials of Rusted Shut’s new EP, Hot Sex. Outside Austin is a new monthly feature in which we check in with two of our favorite Texas blogs to hear what’s hot in their scenes, with the Skyline Network reporting from Houston and We Shot JR keeping us up to date on the Dallas/Ft. Worth scene. Be sure to check out their sites to stay on top of what’s happening, because the music don’t stop at Austin City limits! Rusted Shut will be unloading at the Beauty Bar here in Austin this Saturday, November 15.

RUSTED SHUT - Hot Sex EP (Dull Knife)
What can we say, it’s Rusted Shut. Over the course of their long career (and surprisingly shallow catalog), all manner of music writers have fallen over one another to come up with the right combination of nails, broken glass, paint thinner and nausea metaphors to describe the bleak massiveness of their noise-as-composition approach to the sonic arts. And while our contribution to that pile would probably be “like setting a can of matte black spray-paint on fire, stuffing the business end up your nose, and then huffing the explosion,” we feel what’s always been missing from discussions of Rusted Shut is not the music, but it’s basic household utility.

Here in the United States, we are generally obsessed with the role of chemistry in cleaning. Nearly all of our cleaning products, even those that are dubiously labeled ‘unscented’ fall in a distinct palette of smell residues that trigger some neuron or another in our mind to indicate yes, this surface is clean. When you walk into a space that reeks a science-y smell you say “someone cleaned the bejeebus out of this room” and not “it smells like they may have missed a spot.” Some article in some setting that we read lately but now cannot locate (plagiarism avoidance insurance), talked about the rise of microfiber cleaning cloths in Europe, and how they can achieve nearly the same results without using any more dubious a liquid than water. But here in the States we’re not so keen cause we NEED THE SMELL. WE LOVE THE SMELL. It’s not the cloth’s size or embroidered sporting franchise that makes the cleaning so impressive – it’s the tiny (micro even) lil extremities that get all mavericky on the dirt and bacteria. It’s the ultimate home-care example of how the force of cumulative subtleties can be anything but.

And that is sort of how Rusted Shut works on us. Even when we lose sight of what the larger compositional picture is here (or even faith that there is one), we tend not to notice as we’re often most affected by the little sounds that bounce around the wash. So, in a sense, while Hot Sex is about as subtle as Metal Machine Music played through a jet engine, it wet willies the same deconstructavist subtleties pleasure node that gets us all giddy for Pet Sounds. Plus, surely no single piece of cloth, no matter how micro it’s so-called fibers, could be as great a home-maker’s helper as Hot Sex.

Got some of your delicious queso hopelessly caked onto the bowl that you served it in at your office potluck? Simply hold the ceramic up to the speaker and watch those OH NOZs melt away. Have a roach infestation? Just open all your cabinets and closet doors, crank up the midrange, and leave the house for two hours. Soap Scum in your shower? Just put down the beer can for a sec and activate the hi-fi. Bratty Panamanian dictator who won’t get out of your embassy? Check. Hinge on the barn door that’s rusted shut? Do we even need to respond to that one?

So while it’s tempting to think that only someone like The Nothing from The Never Ending Story might find Hot Sex an appropriate soundtrack for doing the dishes, every post-rock noise mullet Rachel Ray worth their home-ec classes knows that a little Rusted Shut goes a long way. Recommended.

Hot Sex, which is from the same series of recordings that resulted in Rusted Shut’s acclaimed Rehab LP is available from Dull Knife Records. The band is scheduled to destroy Beauty Bar within the first 15 minutes of their show on November 15th.

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