Adrian Rew - Slot Machine Music, Vol. 1 & 2: Field Recordings from Middle American Casinos (CS)

Adrian Rew's properly hypnotic cult classic 'Slot Machine Music' has finally been reissued and it sounds even more terrifying and prescient than it did back in 2013 at the height of the basement noise era. One of the best environmental recording records bar none - don't sleep. Back in 2009, PAN released its fourth album, 'Kenrimono', a set of recordings made by Greek sound artist Ilios at Japanese pachinko halls. The sheer density of it was as shocking and as intense as anything the noise genre had to offer, packed out with whirring, crunching and chiming resonances that took you to the smokey epicenter of the Japanese gambling world. And when 'Slot Machine Music' arrived a few short years later we assumed the sound would be similar; we were wrong. Initially dropped via Rew's own Ergot Records on CDr before the great Aaron Dilloway stepped in to handle the vinyl edition on his own Hanson imprint, the album seemingly grew from the Midwestern noise petri dish - but it wasn't an exercise in aesthetic posturing, using the racket of the modern American casino to mimic the intensity of a Wolf Eyes set. Instead, Rew was drawn to the experience itself, that's been meticulously designed by malign forces to guide behavior: those trapped inside the casino's four walls are seduced into spending more, losing more and returning to do it all over again. Rew didn't know much about the environment when he visited Cleveland's Horseshoe Casino for the first time in 2013 armed with an Olympus LS-11 recorder and a camera. And over four months, he developed a peculiar relationship with the culture, surreptitiously taping the soundscapes at various Midwestern locations - in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio and Illinois - while attempting not to lose too much cash in the process. And it's a warts-n-all set, with dialog snippets and outdoor ambiance giving us more than simply the dense mass of chimes and stings and themes that you'd hear on the casino floor itself. What Rew is able to do is create a snapshot of a time and place, capturing the sheer desolation of the casino experience and using it to drive a narrative that Robert Altman would be proud of. The first thing you notice is that each machine's sounds are in tune with the next; "game designers," explains Rew, "tune their machines to the key of C in order to optimize harmonic cohesion." So although Rew's recordings are full-bodied, they're never too chaotic or discordant. Indeed, if you check in for the entire record - 2013's iconic 'Slot Machine Music' and its 2014 sequel 'Slot Machine Music Vol. 2' - you'll be lulled into the same false sense of security that entrances casino regulars. It's almost like ambient music, packed out with tiny sonic details that some well-paid sound engineer-cum-neurologist worked for years to figure out. Guided meditation music? New age crypto-psychedelia? It's all here, packaged in neon-lit one-armed-bandits aimed to target the dopamine centers of aging boomers with money to burn. And the best thing about the recordings is that Rew keeps some of the chatter intact, so we can hear him tangling with casino security, or haggling with his slot machine neighbors over change. We can hear the cheers and claps as paltry sums are won while vast fortunes are lost. The best moment for us comes when Rew wanders outside Grand Victoria Casino in Elgin, Illinois at the dead of night, the crickets singing as the machines echo from behind grand double doors. A freight train rushes past and blots out any other sound, distorting the recording. It's a good reminder that although you might be able to hide from reality inside the casino, the Midwest will inevitably confront you with its rusted truth