There’s a corner of the internet, listed under demonbuster.com, that’s run by a heterodox Christian denomination known as the End-Time Deliverance Center. Alongside some seemingly practical advice (‘Candles – Don’t Burn Them; Get Them Out Of Your Home!‘), there are some harsher suggestions (‘Dolls, toys, and stuffed animals – better burn them too‘) as well as the downright bizarre (‘Diabetes – Squid like demons attack ten parts of your body‘). There is also a comprehensive list of malevolent entities which includes Boyce and Boice, the “Electronic Malfunction” demons that can ‘interfere with any electronic equipment, i.e., phone, computer, printer, automobile, etc.‘
Just how these demons manifest within your technology is unclear, though perhaps Rochester, New York-based recording project Occult Modem Settings has inadvertently taken a good guess. Latest release Something Died in the Wall sits at the intersection of the quotidian and horrific, blending lo-fi bedroom tones with devotional peals and ominous noise. Lead single ‘Doubled-Edged Convenience’ serves as the perfect example, its sincere ambient sound hammered flat by a depressed air, while an ever-present menace lurks in the form of distortion.
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The atmosphere holds across the record. Something like Talons’ should their equipment be possessed by our friends Boyce and Boice. From the haunted field recordings of ‘Good Ambiguity’ and the title track, to the malevolent static and weight of ‘Never Hear It’, Something Died in the Wall offers songs inhabited by something violent and strange. Though most unnerving is how the mood lands not as some aberration from everyday living, but rather the unspoken textures beneath its mask.
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Something Died in the Wall is out and available from the Occult Modem Settings Bandcamp page.