Peter J. Woods

A Waste of Red Meat responds to the question “what does it mean to be human in the face of technology?” with a brief answer: exactly what it always has meant. To be slightly more specific, what we know as a human exists as an entangled body of tangible and intangible objects, institutions, forces, and histories. And the internet didn’t change that. We have always been these entanglements. The only difference now is that modern technologies have joined in.  To explore this idea, Peter J. Woods turns inwards. AWORM exists as a posthuman self portrait, a deconstructed analysis of the artist in a particular moment as a way to explore the concept of the entangled human at a broader scale. The compositions on the album engage this theme by refusing to present a cohesive narrative and instead breaking down the various technologies, ideologies, and objects that produce the artist. Everything from Woods’ instruments and the house that provided a place to record to the electricity that powered his recording devices and influential pieces of music that shaped his artistic practice become highly legible in this album. 

Taken as a whole, the works on AWORM produce a portrait of the artist within a harrowing listening experience akin to the unease felt in the uncanny valley. The album sounds like a mirror, slightly distorted and revealing more than the listener had hoped for. Recurring motifs build and fade in a tense auditory landscape until the last moments of the album, with repeated listens unveiling new details and hidden caverns that were only out of sight because we obscured them from ourselves. To this end, AWORM produces a cognitive or maybe emotional dissonance, feeling both distant and immediate, cold and familiar at the same time. 

In a sense, the album feels entirely human, in everything that term entails.