Long unavailable to all but the most fervent and patient of collectors, this pair of cassette releases were unleashed in the late 70s before Martyn Bates founded Eyeless in Gaza with Peter Becker. Now compiled as a two-disc set, Migraine Inducers and Antagonistic Music showcase a primal aesthetic, damaged sound art preserved on grainy tape recordings. The discs might not feature anything so grating or destructive as their names might imply, but Bates' work, viewed in the context of the era of its creation, is still pretty heady stuff; one can correctly suggest, of course, that Bates wasn't the only purveyor of this bedroom experimentalism, but his output here was likely cited by many a contemporary listener to be the source of a headache or two.
There are snippets of melody on these discs, but the majority of their contents are of a noisier nature: proto-industrial oscillations and groans, the alarm-like effects of repetitive tones, and rough, lo-fi excursions into a distorted brand of musique concrete. There's a varying sense of purpose about the album; at times Bates seems to have worked on a particular approach and honed it its purest form, but at others one can sense a vibe of more haphazard experimentation, with sounds arranged seemingly randomly. The work with a more obvious arc of intent is Bates' best, while some of the more unhinged segments fall into ineffectiveness when combined with the quality of the recordings. When he's on, though, Bates' melange of instrument mangling, tape manipulation, and various other bits of sonic construction has a strong sense of atmosphere, especially given the rather simplistic mode of composition that is a constant through much of each disc.
When the murkiness of the recordings is used to his benefit, Bates' sonic experiments are engaging and enveloping, though it would be a mistake to assume that the appeal of the release of Migraine Inducers/Antagonistic Music has only to do with the sounds therein. The discs' liner notes mention how much of a rarity these albums were when originally issued on cassette, even to contemporary collectors, so the number of those in possession of the tapes must be a very select few. However, as the crowd for damaged sound grows larger and larger, a spotlight is often thrust on even the most obscure of artists, and the rarity of this music, now available in an attractive gatefold sleeve (also available on reissued vinyl), is sure to be alluring to many listeners. These are long unheard sounds, and while their reissue decades later isn't likely to be the source of many grand revelations, Beta Lactam deserve kudos for digging this stuff up.
