The Brooklyn Rail

In many of the stories of H.P. Lovecraft, small, seemingly bucolic towns hold dark and horrific secrets. About twenty-five miles up the Hudson River from New York City, a similar terror has been breeding. Valley Cottage is the home for Gridfailure, the apocalyptic musical vision of polymath David Brenner.

“My wife grew up here in Rockland County; we moved out of Brooklyn and up here in 2008,” says Brenner. “It’s quite ironic to list ‘recorded in Valley Cottage, NY’ in the credits for my records. It’s not quite Mayberry out here, but it is fun to create such grating tones in a place with such a comforting name.”

Gridfailure’s latest release is Shards In The Wire, a self-released solo endeavor with Brenner on synthesizers, bass, guitar, and percussion; Lovecraftian titles such as “Upheaval Of The Foundation” and “Panic Azimuth” and growled, processed vocals intoning grim visions like “Rapturous clamor / Rhythmic expulsion / Convex pulsation / Tumulus tectonics / Subduction’s machination.”

When asked if the name was related to the 2003 blackout, Brenner agreed that it had some impact and also noted various infrastructure failures since then as heightening his awareness of “how vulnerable and antiquated our power grid is… we see nearly no movement toward restructuring our overall power infrastructure. An EMP or massive cyber attack could hypothetically reset the US and throw the country into end-times turmoil.” Brenner also mentioned the disastrous effects of Hurricane Sandy as being a more direct channel to the work that would become Gridfailure: “I began writing lyrics by candlelight for a then-unnamed project which would eventually yield the Gridfailure moniker and foundational ideas for a new project, which, once merged with photos of a substation I had taken, just clicked into place for the formation of my debut album, Ensuring The Bloodline Ends Here, which I recorded and released in 2016.”

Even for those accustomed to “heavy” music of various genres, Gridfailure is a difficult listen, mostly for its abstraction. There are no pyrotechnic guitar solos for metalheads, no grounding beats for industrial fans. It feels like a soundtrack to the inner dread that has hung over the world for the past several years, whether that be political turmoil, social degradation or, most significantly, what Brenner calls “our collapsing ecosystem.” It is highly cinematic, but for a movie no one hopes will ever be made.

Brenner agrees, saying that his music is the equivalent of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. “I listen to a lot of horror film score composers like John Carpenter, Fabio Frizzi, Riz Ortolani, and so on. I really love how a score’s tension and release can affect movie sequences and set the mood for a film as much as, if not more so, than an actor or setting.”

Gridfailure is Brenner and Brenner is Gridfailure yet some of its/his music has been collaborative. He works on numerous albums simultaneously and also has discrete concepts he creates that can be used when appropriate later on. And when working with others, “I’ve got records that are fully collaborative projects with another artist/band where we fully split the writing, performing, and recording duties. I’ve got other records where I’m controlling the entire project myself, and I’ll have outside collaborators record contributions to what I’ve already got recorded. Often, I simply invite folks to take part and have them send something totally random that I’ll find a place for; I invite folks to try a new instrument or play in a style or approach that is vastly different from their usual output.”

His next project, to be released in early 2024, is emblematic of the latter approach: Sixth Mass-Extinction Skulduggery III, part of a five-album concept series, with over two-dozen collaborators including Steve Austin (Today Is The Day), Hazard (Les Chants Du Hasard), Leila Abdul-Rauf (Vastum, Ionophore), Graham Scala (US Christmas, Interstitia), Benjamin Levitt (Megalophobe), Clayton Bartholomew (Mountaineer), Mac Gollehon (Blondie, Onyx, David Bowie, Duran Duran), Lane Oliver (Yatsu), Jared Stimpfl (Secret Cutter), Jeff Wilson (Chrome Waves, Deeper Graves), Dan Emery (Thetan), and more.

Another facet that makes Gridfailure challenging is that one must push through myriad layers in the way of churning futilely in quicksand, expending energy and breath until finally submerging from view with only a couple of bubbles to show one was ever there. This is intentional, as Brenner notes that “most of my prior bands were faster and more rhythmic and direct—metal, hardcore, punk, and so on—so one of the primary goals of Gridfailure is to experiment heavily with tension and restraint with more hanging, droning elements.” Yet this is not music disgorged from a computer, as is the case with some others working in this milieu; to wit, several releases were live improvisations. Says Brenner, “I really don’t use writing programs or much tech for the actual creation of the music; it’s all quite primitive, just stacked with tons of pedals and gear…I usually record the vocals through massive effects pedal chains and layer the them multiple times; live I use two different mics, each through a half-dozen effects pedals including two looper pedals.”

With wildfires, earthquakes, superstorms, droughts, and other death-knells for physical life on Earth, and social media and artificial intelligence threatening our souls and minds, Gridfailure feels very much of this time and Brenner a cloaked harbinger of the unavoidable cataclysm.