Exit the void for 44 minutes and step into a dream. The fifth Merchandise record is called A Corpse Wired for Sound. Ever in flux, the Floridian trio who once proclaimed “become what you are”—Carson Cox (vocals/electronics), David Vassalotti (guitar/electronics), Pat Brady (bass)—have offered another disarming testament to that statement. Corpse is yet another rebirth.
Following 2014’s After the End—a full-band effort recorded by Cox in his closet—the band stripped back to its core. Filmic and poetic as ever, Corpse is the culmination of a long-distance collaboration between Cox and Vassalotti, of endless overdubbing, sampling, and mutation. Crucially, though, it also the result of Merchandise’s first-ever journey into an actual recording studio, one in Rosà, Italy. There, the trio collaborated with an Italian named ICIO. ICIO emboldened Corpse’s impressive architecture of hard drums and searing melodies. The night-music of Corpse was recorded half in the studio and half home, in Tampa as well as Cox’s new adopted bases of New York and Berlin. Formed nearly a decade ago—galvanized by Tampa hardcore and inspired by its miscreant noise—Merchandise are now a band untethered by geography.
“The last few years have been more of an experiment than an attempt to be a formal band,” Cox says. “We’re back to thinking and composing as an intangible musical thing.”
