Max Nordile has a patented collage method. In this day, I almost hate to say it’s perhaps a distinctly American sound, like squawks from the rubber room. Although, this is sharply not a conversation between "Mattie" and "Hattie" concerning the "Wooly Bully" and the desirability of developing dancing skills (with no attempt made to synthesize these divergent topics). What you’re listening to is a tangled mass, a phone call from a scribbled area code, herking and jerking its way off the map. It’s catchy, it’s bent.
After it said so much to me, I returned to the record, and then again and again. “Thanks so much,” I said to it, like it is said in the divine hand of “Diligent Pores.” And once more I’m gripped into powerful clang at the intersection of joy, mystery & abrasion.
It is mercurial; an icy slip wherein the listener is absolutely unable to get the balance or footing to stand upright for all of thirty minutes. Building a Better Void is a jittering slob but a true testimonial to the San Pablo blocks of trauma-cracked sidewalks of Ishmael Reed’s Blues City: Oakland, brawling and husky.
I feel as though I “came to” inside this album, awakened from a black out mid-party – but whose? The details are lost to me now. I struggle to move but not to escape, like bearing witness to the stupid drunk deft hand of William Eggleston’s video phantasmagoria, Stranded in Canton, or hamming on quads ‘round the joyous, unhinged roller rink that is The Shaggs.
I want to call Nordile a junkyard James Cameron of aural thrillers, epic in scope, but he’s a poltergeist in the back seat, whispering spookies, in a vehicle we call Rolling Thunder Revue No. II. New fires to replace the bad ones. Freed punk. Friendly spirits. --Forest Juziuk, Detroit, 2020
credits
released July 1, 2020
played and recorded by Max Nordile in 2019 on Ohlone land, Oakland CA
mastered by Myles Boisen
released on Gilgongo Records as an LP Fall 2020
and on Independent Woman Records as a cassette Summer 2020
supported by 4 fans who also own “Building a Better Void”
Deep, mind-bending psych. I don't know how it was put together, but it feels very organic, like early Nurse With Wound. I could see Gordon, Dilloway, and Nace sitting among a pile of junk and miles of tape, splicing together this album piece by piece. Levrikon
These two sprawling 20-minute electronic pieces offer both crackling, otherworldly textures and moments of surprising beauty. Bandcamp New & Notable Jan 15, 2023