Climax Denial - Sexuality Is a Curse.

Climax Denial – Sexuality is a Curse – IDES – Cassette, C32 – 2006.

https://www.virtueslabel.com

A1. I'll Lick Your Cum Off the Cement.

A2. When You Breathe I Wince, When You Move I Tremble.

A3. Swallow My Head My Shoulders My Arms My Hips My Legs.

A4. Bury Me In The Crypt Between Your Legs.

B Show Me What You're Hiding Under That Skirt.

 

Climax Denial is the refusal to let go to keep shit bottled up. Whether self-induced or inflicted by another. It causes suffering, but it can also make you stronger, it can also break you down to nothing… Climax Denial is catharsis and castration at the same time. Exotreic magazine, interview with Aldo V. 2007

In an age when I was getting further immersed in Industrial and its surrounding genres it was Chis Sienko’s article in As Loud as Possible magazine made me begin to seek out the work of Climax Denial. I even found Alex Kmet’s then seller name on Discogs and bought a few things off him, they were All My Loves Are Like Dreams and Sexuality Is a Curse. The urgency of the title ‘Sexuality is a Curse’ resonated to me on a massive personal level. It was released on Nicole Chambers IDES Recordings a small label that released from 2005 – 2010. IDES despite being interviewed in As Loud as Possible, it remained a mystery, the label did 17 releases and stopped, each one looks beautiful, Chambers had an amazing curatorial eye. Alex Kmet had been making noise since 2002 aged 17 in high school. Sexuality is a Curse was released when he would have been around 21. This was the golden age of social media and noise in the US, many of these artists toured frequently around the world, there were hundreds of releases coming out on a monthly basis. This was around the 8^th Climax Denial release and the 3^rd album after Basement Bruises and A Wood Rose for Little Love Knife (2005). Kemet explained to me; ‘I had only been doing Climax Denial for about a year when I did Sexuality is a Curse…, but it is seemingly the start of the more perverted/erotic/fetish themes compared to the 2005 releases.’ The inspirations for the album have been lost in time, in As Loud As Possible magazine in 2010, Kemet talked about his inspirations for releases around that time to Chris Sienko; ‘With very few exceptions, the tracks are about specific events in my life. Sometimes exaggerated, sometimes not. If I have to make up a character, it’s just myself acting out some masturbatory hallucination.’ I am left questioning what the inspiration for Sexuality is a Curse was as Kemet rarely gets too detailed in interviews about the specific motivations for a release, he will often just give a general hint.

Sexuality is a Curse was recorded in a farmhouse outside the city were Kemet lived for 6 months, many of the early Climax Denial releases were recorded here. It was recorded with a minimal set up of broken mixers, microphones and pedals. He has in the past described the time it could takes to record a release in As Loud as Possible: ‘I have gone months without recording anything at all, there have been releases that take months to complete and I have recorded releases in one day on more than one occasion.’ Kmet says the album was improvised in a couple of days and it comes from a time when the project was very prolific and the primary focus of his life.

Originally Kemet explained; ‘All the tracks were officially untitled. The words printed in the artwork are just lyrics from one of the tracks, but whoever uploaded the release to discogs entered them in as though they were track titles. I kind of liked it better that way so never made an effort to change that.’ I will go with this for the review of the work.  Side One begins with the hallucinatory I’ll Lick Your Cum Off the Cement, it shimmers, metal is hit in the distance and drones waver to blur the focus of the listener, deep threating rumbling noise lurks beneath this – it sets a sense of occasion to the work. Things take a nastier turn for When You Breate I Wince, When You Move, I Tremble. Uses a thick Harsh Noise Wall with a lot of drag and crackle, the vocal is authoritative but distorted so that it works as a noise flanked by the walls of dragging distortion around it. The whole track feels like an attack, the inaudibility of the vocal makes me feel as if I am drugged. A lone drone cut into by pitches of feedback wails accompanied by breathing sounds and contact mic abuse. A thicker wall of noise interrupts and drags itself to the end of the track. Swallow My Head My Shoulders My Arms My Hips My Legs begins as menacing drones signal an aggressive blast of sound, the vocal howls, buried in the noise as if gasping for survival, the sound is oppressed as distortion pulls us out of frequency, crushing the sound – feedback howls through everything to destroy the oppression. Due to this the sound gets bigger and the combinations of noise gel into one blasting symphony. Bury Me In The Crypt Between Your Legs moves into sad tones that bring us to the haziness of the opener, but use melody to demonstrate a level of musicianship that is hinted at in the intro and the use of noises to take over and accompany each other. This stops and moves into low level noise, deep drones accelerate with drones and shimmering keyboard melodies return to signify the side’s end.

Side Two is one long track Show Me What You’re Hiding Under That Skirt that begins with a female narrative talking about abuse. Thick rumbling distortion takes over and is allows feedback to interrupt and wail, this goes back and forth for a time. Both elements gain power with their return. With the bass roar now on full throttle the feedback wails lower like a vocal until the vocal returns, again it is noise which combines with the feedback to work together. Pressure is put on the sound to make it faulter and drag, this element is toyed with continuously. I question if this is double tracked vocals as Climax Denial does a lot of things with his voice, I have seen him jab himself in the throat to cut into his voice and abstract it. The build-up of sound is furthered by all of the elements gelling together as the track progresses this shifts to being a lone wall of bass roar that cuts out to signify an end to the work.

Climax Denial in 2024 I believe is influential on several fronts: firstly, as a veteran Power Electronics project of near 20 years, secondly, I believe one of his methods – burying the vocals within the noise is now prevalent amongst projects like Cremation Lily and Knifedoutofexistence and the influence on queer projects like Straight Panic (with whom he has collaborated), Doll and Distraxi (who collects Climax Denial).  Alex Kemet previously ran SexKrime Arts label, before that Violent Whatever and now runs the Virtues Label. Sexkrime was cassette and Cdr, Virtues does vinyl, CD and cassette all-in high-quality releases. This is an outstanding album that had a huge impact on me as US Power Electronics goes making Climax Denial a project that I still collect to this day.

Nothing and Nobody 2024 -25.