POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. — Seminal noise outfit GÜNT has reunited with its original laptop and founding member, sources close to the virus-riddled 2003 Compaq Presario confirmed.
“It’s great to have our OG PC back,” GÜNT frontman Mark Phaneuf said. “After years of not returning our emails, we thought reuniting was a lost cause. Turns out the Presario’s battery was just dead! But once we tracked down the laptop at a pawn shop in Yonkers, paid twice as much to buy it back than we sold it for, then found the right power cord to recharge it back to life, GÜNT picked up right where we left off — making inaccessible, avant garde harsh noise wall recorded straight to cassette and released in impossible-to-find quantities.”
Lloyd Perkins, the veteran Geek Squad technician hired to refurbish the laptop, had never filed a ticket quite like this before.
“I reinstalled that laptop’s operating system four friggin’ times because I thought the audio files were corrupted,” Perkins said. “Come to find out the sound of roadsaws, bird chips and leafblowers were exactly what the band wanted recovered! Then instead of paying me, these cheapskates put me on the list for their reunion show. It’s at a laundromat! And apparently one song is just a microphone left inside an industrial dryer filled with quarters. Me and my lady can’t dance to that!”
Daniel Polanski, host of noise podcast Dan Is The Bastard, welcomes back the laptop but with reservations.
“For the casuals uninitiated with the multidimensional aural complexities of harsh noise wall, getting the Presario back in GÜNT is akin to the Smiths reuniting with that pedantic twat Morrissey,” Polanski said. “Sure, they’ve created their best work together. But The Prez has also proven to be by far the most unreliable and temperamental member of the band. One minute it runs hot, the next it freezes under pressure. It’s fallen asleep and even straight up quit once midperformance. And it’s also notorious for frequenting a lot of unprotected networks, if you catch my drift. Personally, I prefer GÜNT’s purely analog works to their digital oeuvre. But nonetheless, this is a watershed moment for the 8 to 10 fans of the most superior subgenre of music ever committed to tape and/or CD-R.”
At press time, the reunion performance was hailed a triumph despite the Presario’s AIM chat constantly going off throughout GÜNT’s set.
