Skjálfti is the noise project of Icelander Þórir Georg. Society of Witnesses is his first release on the recently re-vitalized Hundrað Prósent Plastík label (though hardly his first release – Skjálfti has been active since 2017), and right from the start it assaults the senses, a high-pitched whine boring a hole through your jaw like a demented dental drill, swiftly working its way through the bones and nerves and into the fleshy parts inside your skull as feedback clouds your consciousness and disembodied vocal samples chatter away, just distant enough that you can’t understand what they’re saying, the velocity building and building until you think you’ll go mad and then… dropping off into something new, a drone of sorts, but there are voices here too, and patterns in the sound, and now it’s building again, slowly, methodically until plateauing, achieving a level of consistency that almost feels… normal… until a voice, a new voice, beings, ushering new clashing soundwaves to scramble your brain. And that’s just the A side.
The B side opens with the tape-distorted-static of “You Learn From What’s Killing You”, and in this case what’s killing you is sound, or at the very least it’s killing the weak parts of the brain, leaving only the strongest, most base parts functional. “A Weakling’s Hurt” is perhaps the most minimalistic track on the album, though what that really means is it moves on a current of horror, of anxiety, of something just beneath the surface that you can’t see, but you know it’s there, waiting for it’s opportunity to catch you unawares. The album closes with the title track, more of a slow burn that brings the whole thing together starting with quiet dread before introducing a hot current, a burn like a tattoo-removal tool, tearing away the weakest synapses, cauterizing them, and leaving behind something new.
You can listen to Society of Witnesses digitally on the Skjálfti Bandcamp page HERE. The cassette isn’t on the Hundrað Prósent Plastík Bandcamp page (HERE), but you can message them to get a copy (I did so via Instagram).