joe colley
psychic stress soundtracks
(afro2029) CD

Failure, self-loathing and abject monstrosity continue unabated as the primary themes for Joe Colley's electro-shock minimalism. as with his previous, equally impressive Desperate Attempts At Beauty, he shifts through a seemingly endless supply of antiquated electric gear and forces these dilapidated machines to grind, crush, whirl and twist under conditions they were not originally designed for. On Psychic Stress Soundtracks, Colley astutely transcribes the machines' smouldering march to oblivion, granting them the emphatic capacity for pain and the recognition of existential despair. The ozone smell of melting circuity lingers above the nervous Geiger counter clicks and toxic hums of his electric dynamos. Colley is a gifted, if sometimes under-appreciated composer whose successes rely upon the manifestation of the paradox of building something extraordinary out of junk.
- Jim Haynes, The Helen Scarsdale Agency