living under a thin film

Brent Gutzeit / Nullpart - December 5

December 5 brings together two uncompromising forces in contemporary experimental sound: Milwaukee non-music artist Brent Gutzeit and the German formation Nullpart. A split-single in form, but unified in its sense of descent, erosion, and political unease, the release captures an aural topography where democratic values slide, bend, and collapse under pressure.

Gutzeit’s contribution, “Collapse,” unfolds like a controlled implosion in five shifting sections. Gloomy micro-pulsations open the piece, scattered like sparks along a frayed wire. Hiss and crackles accumulate, then give way to ultradense ambient surfaces that rise almost imperceptibly in volume. High frequencies drift in and out—at times nearly beyond perception—before the composition lurches into motoric convulsions, a final spasm of mechanical insistence. “Collapse” charts a dramatic architecture of failure, one slow structural giving-way after another.

Nullpart answers with “Backslide,” an unnerving continuum of audiochemical ambience. Heavily modulated textures warp and ripple in unstable directions; vertigo-sound with no stable center. The track feels like losing ground in real time—an undefined, uneasy drift punctured by dark psychomotoric pulsations. If Gutzeit documents the moment of collapse, Nullpart explores the disorientation that follows. The title December 5 remains deliberately enigmatic, a date suspended without context. Yet the political charge of the release is unmistakable: a sonic portrait of democratic erosion, a steep audio slope downward. These two tracks, taken together, map the contours of a world slipping away from its own ideals.