Sounds Like Hell is an irregular column on noise rock, doom and sludge.
There’s a sound that pervades the action/sci-fi flicks of the mid-1980s. It’s paranoid, chugging and pulsating, like some kind of futurist marching band of a technophobe’s nanotech nightmare. You hear it in the first Terminator when Kyle Reese is on the run — which is pretty much the entire movie — and in the street scenes of Blade Runner’s decrepit vision of 2019 Los Angeles. It’s the ringing of the open E on a barely distorted guitar and the oppressive howl of an cold and hollow synthesizer.
That’s the feeling I’m reminded of on “Internet Friendship,” a droning sound collage from north Washington duo SWAMP-DOG. It’s the kind of music that Bandcamp trawling is made for: unassuming and mysterious from a far-flung place, heavy on semi-coherent spoken samples, meditative and hypnotic and quietly brilliant.
