HYDEMAN, JOSH Madison's Fence LP
A stunning new album of jet-black synthdoom from Josh Hydeman, who you may or may not recognize as one of the guys from nudist power electronics creepos Twodeadsluts Onegoodfuck. Working solo, Hydeman crafts six expansive tracks of heavy, doomed synthesizer music on Madison's Fence that carries over some of the same dreadful vibes as his other, harsher project. The atmosphere here is a much more restrained one, though, the long tracks carved out of droning layered keyboards and buzzing black electronics, each piece casting a thick twilight gloom across the album. This permanent gloom really takes hold on the second track “Ash Covered Field", where Hydeman starts to weave in some heavy, murky guitar work that almost resembles a doom metal riff stripped of most of it's distortion, sent adrift over the thick textural buzz and gleaming obsidian electronics, like an Earth song permeated with wheezing ambient synths and industrial grit. That's followed by more synth-centric pieces where the eerie melodies cycle over and over, hinting at shades of John Carpenter's early film scores while at the same time infesting the corners of these tracks with seething power electronic elements.
This potent combination of doomed guitar crawl and black ambient synth continues on over to the second side, which begins with my favorite track on the album "Deadhorse". Again, it reminds me a lot of Carpenter's gleaming analogue 80's soundtracks, but with that glacial guitar clanging and creeping over those icy keys, it becomes something vastly more apocalyptic. The heaviest moment on Madison's Fence comes at the very end on the track "Volcano" when the guitars surge forward in a crushing wave of blackened Sunn O)))-style ambient sludge, washing over the faint swirling electronics.
A fucking fantastic blast of subterranean dread, highly recommended to fans of abyssal black electronics a la Wilt, Luasa Raelon, Angel Of Decay, and Theologian...
