Milwaukee power electronics maestro Peter J. Woods suggests listeners indulge multiple times in his latest full-length album, Today Is Horrible, to discern the depths of its socio-political critique. If his point is to disturb his audience much as he’s disturbed by the issues he addresses, Woods succeeds with some of the most disturbing experimental music of his decade-plus electro-acoustic manipulations. Unnerving as may be Horrible’s amalgam of sine waves, multi-layered drones, static, rumbles, squelches, crowd noise and bursts of silence, the six pieces are relatively subtle compared to some earlier Woods work. The music’s largely low-key nature reflect the insidiousness, paranoia and, simmering disquietude of the concepts he assays.
