A few days ago I watched a film called Wake In Fright (Australia, 1971). It is a psychological thriller about a guy who descends into madness after losing himself among a group of Outback townsfolk living on the extreme edge of civilized society. It's a place where the beer flows like water and people are permeated with an edgy, lost desperation. A brutal, hard existence. And it features Donald Pleasence, who is nothing short of amazing.
As I listen to the agitated industrial music of Horizontal Hold by This Heat, I am reminded of the anxiety and distress I experienced during parts of Wake In Fright. The music starts off like some kind of messed up washing machine grinding and thrashing against a basement wall. At 0:41 there are these little picked guitar noises accompanied by a low hum, then at 1:00 the whole noisy washer thing starts and stops over the next 30 seconds. At 1:37 a clanging aluminum shard rattles away and the dryer tries to start up. There are skeletal guitar notes, and brief periods of respite, like after the 4:30 mark. From around 4:54 until the end, we are dealing with a big ball of screechy mousetraps and teeth-gritting scrapes. Fuzzy static humming...I think someone needs to call an electrician.
I don't quite know what it all means, but it also reminds me of trying to watch channel 44 on the old tv and having to hold the vertical knob in order to try to keep the screen from flipping. Maybe these guys had a problem controlling the horizontal hold on their tv and this music expresses their frustration.
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