Panzer Division Lou Reed

Those familiar with Sunroof!'s other recordings may be more than a little startled by Panzer Division Lou Reed. Matthew Bower's previous explorations into uber-drone music have been very, um, pretty. They have woven themselves from wispy elements of feedback and open-chord tunings, allowing sustain pedals to shift almost imperceptibly for minutes at a time. The layering and editing of these tracks created the kind of peaceful float that only an over-drone guitar could when mirrored through a bank of effects. This time out, there is an unmistakable hint of aggression in the mix. Sure, drones go on seemingly forever, but the clamor of drums and power-arced chords and single-note feedback drones that literally sound like planes on a battlefield bring to bear something far more ominous, even though the beauty is still intact. These four selections begin to formulate something from the title: the aggression of war, and the irritability of Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music — a classic regardless of what one thinks of it. As the drums begin to roll and kick about halfway through the 11-minute "Slow Plateaus #1" (there is a number two), the guitars actually increase in volume and in chaotic whirl, resembling the voice of a screaming woman. It's tense, messed up, unsettling. That's doubly true of the sonic mayhem in "Etoile Sauvage," where the drones lie under the surface of industrial feedback; pure toothache-inducing noise. And so it goes. "Slew Plateaus # 2" actually seems to begin with a riff, but then deconstructs itself, and those invading airplane sounds begin again in earnest and this time the cut is 17 minutes long with punctuated blasts of white noise that feel more like what's happening on the ground in Basra than a CD. Maybe it's a protest record, an anti-war statement, maybe it's a reflection on the Panzer attacks during WWII, maybe its art. Whatever it is, once through is enough.