profligate: videotape

The retirement of Noah Anthony’s Night Burger alias (as effected through his fade-to-gray RIP statement, Burnin’ Fast) dovetails fluidly into his latest / greatest burned-mind industrial vehicle, Profligate. Named for a Night Burger track off his What Happens Next? tape on Deception Island, Anthony’s new musical operational model retains the eerie bleakness and concrete atmospheres of his previous project but sculpts them into more maximal, dynamic constructions. Videotape is his vinyl debut, and lays out the agenda with stark, menacing clarity. The title track is a pummeling ascent of chugging drum machines, flatliner synth electricities and strobe light sequencer details—a digital bloodrush to the head one can (almost) dance to. “Conditioning Trench” rides a buzzing, dystopian bass-pulse strafed with vintage Roland claps, while a paranoid synth melody runs through a dubbed-out void into an exquisite vanishing point. Shadows of Sandwell District-ish negative techno flash forth here and there, but it’s refracted through a rawer, more physical post-noise basement worldview. A bracing, refined debut by a long-flickering light in American underground music.