The release show is June 19 at Blind Bob’s, and will feature Black Signal (Cincinnati) and Starfarer (Denver).
Starting the project in the mid-’90s, Krug handed out Halicon tapes to friends and strangers at parties and raves. He released an EP on independent record label Imputor?, but took a years-long detour to focus on his indie/synth/punk bands, most notably Brainiac and Oh Condor, while also creating Halicon material on the side.
Using the pandemic as a springboard, Krug released a series of archival albums and EPs, eventually catching up to present newly minted material, like the organic abuse of analog machines heard on “Relocation Spells”: music for transmuting chaos and dissociation.
“I just always had a hard time quieting my brain down and calming down and just not always thinking about a billion things at once,” Krug said. “I used to come home and put on the loudest, most insane music I could find. I could pass out to those things, like Nine Inch Nails’ ‘Broken’ versus something that’s kind of easy listening.”
He attributes it to the fact that it demands your attention because it’s sensory overload — not despite that, but because of it.
“Your mind can wander from one thing to the other,” Krug said. “Then you just wander from whatever’s on your mind.”
The opening vibrations of the new album’s first track, “Gold Leaf,” feel as though you’re heading into the liminal back alleys of a red-tinted steam plant, awaiting your worst nightmares that never quite arrive but are always around the corner. It feels simultaneously like an ‘80s horror score and unnerving hip-hop beats for the underworld, and maintains that duality until the album’s final moments.
With analog synths, a 4-track, rhythmic and hissing feedback loops, spaghetti-like patching, drum machines, and down-pitched oscillators, Krug experiments with noise, distorting and creating ambient soundscapes.
The melodies he plays are made with meandering hands or built up from evolving chords by triggering complementary notes at random intervals — which is to say that the six tracks on “Relocation Spells” exist in a very specific moment in time, and can hardly be recreated verbatim. There’s nothing permanent about it, aside from what’s captured on the record.
He’s currently in the process of figuring out how that translates to the live show.
The music of Aphex Twin, an IDM pioneer, originally lured Krug to experiment with noise. Marrying the beautiful and the pretty with the ugly and distorted, Aphex Twin blended contrasting variables into electronic dance music.
Krug also discovered Brainiac at an impressionable time in his life. The Dayton indie rock band made exceptionally catchy songs under the guise of gnarly, disparate noise. Krug cut his teeth on Brainiac’s music, calling them one of his favorite bands ever. He started playing with the band in 2014. Noise is in his blood.
“I just fill up my brain with sounds,” Krug said. “It takes me out of the present a little bit. Or puts me in the present… I don’t know which it is. But sometimes that kind of music is repetitive and hypnotic and all encompassing, and it can take you out of time.”
Halicon’s music overloads the senses and demands your attention. It makes you wander around in place, because it’s meditative music for the unquiet mind.
Brandon Berry writes about the Dayton and Southwest Ohio music and art scene. Have a story idea for him? Email branberry100@gmail.com.
HOW TO GO
What: Black Signal / Starfarer / Halicon
When: June 19
Where: Blind Bob’s
Cost: $10
MORE INFO: “Relocation Spells” sees release via Gamma Ray Gun Records on June 20. Silver cassettes are limited to 50. It can be purchased at halicon.bandcamp.com.
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