Review Summary: Hide the kids. Prepare the earplugs.
It takes courage and determination to rip through your own soul to grab whatever remains of a painful past and pull it out like blood spilling guts, so everyone can see them. But the time comes, sooner or later, in any shape or form, and for Kris Esfandiari that time is now, and NGHTCRWLR is her vengeful spirit.
The restless artist fronting sludgegaze stalwarts King Woman as well as her own dream pop project, Miserable, stomps new grounds with this new project, a deafening powerhouse of harsh noise, industrial and trap to create the perfectly unsettling scenario for her raucous live performances.
HiSeq_Let The Children Scream, while still being an ear splitting, tinnitus inducing release for those who enjoy that kind of fulfilling punishment, is an album that manages to marry chaos and distortion with some chilled snippets, all led by her unmistakable voice. Her low, beastly screams, akin to her singing in King Woman, can be found in tracks like "HiSeq_3 Daymare" or in the title track, while her most melodic, gazy singing wrestles white noise in closer "HiSeq_ 7 Moxofosoleesa". For the most part, Kris fuses ambient passages weaved with beautiful melodies with the most tormented, brain spanking noise beats she has ever conceived, reminiscent of artists like Pharmakon or Gazelle Twin, with only a few confusing moments like the children choir of said title track.
Like the craft of the artists mentioned above,
HiSeq_Let The Children Scream suffers from the same issues that prevent this and those artist’s works to be experienced in full. It's a project that relies heavily on its visual aspect. Watching white eyed Kris Esfandiari move around the crowd like a fuming demon while she harass her audience spitting verses while dark tecno blasts through the speakers is not the same experience you will have listening to NGHTCRWLR while cooking dinner to the beat of “HiSeq_6 Nation Under Creep”.
Still,
HiSeq_Let The Children Scream is an important album for fans of Kris Esfandiari, because it shows a totally new side of the artist, her most extreme incarnation up to date. NGHTCRWLR is Kris Esfandiari's frustration with political and religious establishments made flesh, an anger that has been part of her since forever and that here surfaces as a purifying fire in album format. With new works for King Woman and Miserable in the horizon, Kris Esfandiari is posed to have a busy year ahead, but for now you can delight in her nocturnal trapcore from the commodity of your home, or even better, be part of it if the occasion draws close. Don’t bring your kids though.
