I don’t personally know Wes Willenbring, but something tells me he’s not very optimistic. His latest release, <em>Weapons Reference Manual</em>, gives off the vibe of something once menacing that time has turned sad, like a rusted scrap of Soviet-era metal. Even the vaguely flamenco-esque guitar that opens “People Disappear Every Day” is subsumed by creeping drones of unrelenting static. There’s a strange comfort to the resignation this music implies, a familiarity with the Pyrrhic spoils of modern warfare that depresses and troubles the listener in its own right. Think Neo giving a sign of relief as he watches The Matrix be switched back on. It’s defeatist and realistic, at once accepting and mournful of death and other tragedies. This might explain the rather bleak track titles; in addition to the aforementioned “People Disappear Every Day,” we’re treated to such delights as “Consequences of Recklessness,” “The Worst Part of You is the Best Thing You Have,” and disquieting final track “Ashes.” There is no life after death, Willenbring seems to posit; our modern tools of oppression and combat (the titular “weapons,” I presume) have made sure of that. The question then becomes: how much life do we really get to experience *before* death?

To the San Francisco-based artist’s credit, <em>Weapons Reference Manual </em>is not a painfully harsh or even jarring piece of work. Its noisy drones seem to be following some long-established ritual and thus don’t feel the need to jolt the listener into submission. Case in point: that flamenco guitar returns on “Consequences of Recklessness,” using the song’s entire three and a half minutes to teeter on the edge of some great, implacable anxiety. This time around, it survives the invading drones for most of the song; in the end, however, it succumbs to an assaulting wall of feedback. Willenbring’s ability to weave such narratives into the often monolithic tapestry of drone music is what makes <em>Weapons </em>such a special release. This is not life-affirming work, but it feels necessary all the same. This is life-<em>reflecting </em>work, and the images it conjures are of our own creation.

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