Underground Experimental Excursion Edition 20: Sheer Anxiety - If You Want Blood You’ve Got It
Andrea Pensado and Chris Strunk are Sheer Anxiety, an electro-acoustic noise duo incorporating drums, bowls, wooden objects, electronics and voice. These recordings as the cover suggests are all live performances from 2018-2025, some of these I was lucky enough to catch in person. To myself, Sheer Anxiety has been a project that constantly is crossing the line back and forth between experimental music and performance art. Without including too much theatrics or props or anything of that nature, Sheer Anxiety uses sound and improvisation itself as a way to immerse listeners and particularly triggers my imagination to think about settings and situations that these tracks would fit. Moments of suspense throughout these tracks will leave you unnerved yet not disturbed or uncomfortable enough to press pause. Every sound on this CD feels like it was intentional to put before the next pattern and it builds up like a pyramid that’s waiting to collapse a few minutes later.
Noise projects that use less to create more always are profound to me, I love complicated setups as well however there is something meaningful at perfecting a simple setup to maximize every single aspect of your equipment and gear with specific intentions and ideas in mind. Most of the percussion from Strunk is just one drum and some bowls and blocks from what I know and while Pensado uses some effects on her voice it never is drenched in a psychedelic sound bath of pedals and synths. It feels intentional when the harshest points of the tracks come up rather than randomly which would have a different effect. This disc, while being a chaotic cacophony and embraces itself with careful dissonance. Please listen online and buy the CD if you can.
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