Place of Rescission is the solo project of Philadelphia-based musician K. Schaaf. Schaaf's first album under the moniker, Collateral Gore, released in early September, and I discovered it when he posted about it on Reddit. I gave it a listen and was immediately captivated. Collateral Gore sounds nothing like most of the bands we cover here, but it undeniably dark and heavy. Cobbling together elements of post-punk, classic industrial music, free jazz, dub, and more, the sound of this album is sinister yet rich, unsettling yet warm and alive. It's unlike any album I've heard this year, in large part because Schaaf built custom "noise boxes" like the one above to create the soundscape of the album. 

I had to learn more, so Schaaf and I have been emailing back and forth about his music all week. Below you'll find an edited transcript of our conversation, along with a photo gallery of his creations and a fascinating video of them in action. 

First of all, I find this album really fascinating. I hear a lot of different influences and styles in it, but I would love to hear how you describe its sound.

You know, I truly have no idea how to accurately describe the overall sound. I think that maybe I’m not alone(?). So far, it seems other people are also finding themselves in that same conundrum. I think there are certain elements that I can single out and to which I can comment on their overall sound or what might have influenced them a bit. Okay, bear with me; I’m going to get my air quotes ready here. Like… oh that part sounds kind of “early industrial or mechanical.” Or that part has some sort of “post-punk awash in noise” thing going on. Or that part is really “dub-influenced but also weirdly dark and menacing.” Trying to describe it in an easy-to-digest way though, as if it were some cohesive amalgamation? I may have to throw in the towel on that endeavor. 

At no time during the writing or recording process did I ever really consider whether anything fit within some grand objective that I was working towards. I just wanted to make sure the material came out sounding fully infected by whatever is inside my head. I guess though it’s easier to take those risks when it’s you and only you at the controls. I’ve found that when I’ve been in bands in the past, it’s easier to get wrapped up in the whole “what’s our angle here” kind of approach. But I guess some of that also probably comes from age as well. The older I get, the less I find myself caring about whether anyone else is going to find value in anything I’m doing. I know that’s not a new concept, and it may sound contrived or cliché to say that. If I had put an album like this out in my early twenties, I probably would have been a little more concerned with those things that don’t really even occur to me at this point in my life.  

What is your musical background and what other projects have you been part of?

My main instrument is the drums, and that’s what I’ve been doing since I was about 10 years old. I also play guitar and bass guitar. But now that I’m thinking about it, I’m pretty sure it’s been at least 5 or 6 years since I actually played the guitar. I don’t even own a guitar anymore, and spoiler alert - you won’t find a single guitar on this album either. I do love playing the bass though, even though I’m probably considered a novice as far as skills go. Besides drums and bass, I did also play a variety of other instruments on this album including synthesizer, clarinet, theremin, and a variety of percussion like tambourines, chimes, xylophone, steel tongue drum, etc. And if the voice is also an instrument, well, that was me too. I also built a number of what are referred to as “noise boxes.” 

For the uninitiated, a noise box is basically just an enclosure that has an instrument cable jack built into it, a contact mic affixed to the interior of that enclosure (which picks up vibration as opposed to sound), and random noise-making objects affixed to it. I’m typically channeling the sounds of these noise boxes into a slew of effects pedals that make them sound manipulated and often unrecognizable. And once it comes out the other side, it may sound like an atmospheric synth, or the ambient environment of an abandoned warehouse, or a broken guitar being thrown into an industrial meat grinder, or something similar to a waterphone. For anyone confused by that last one, the waterphone is an instrument that many may not know by name but have definitely heard before if they’ve ever watched horror movies. One track on the album that features my noise boxes most recognizably would be “Dial Tone Sundown.” The entire rhythm section on that whole song is done with noise boxes. And they’re quite naked on that song, as opposed to being saturated with effects.

As for the second part of your question about other projects that I’ve been a part of: there have been a few, but not much recently. My life has taken some twists and turns over the years, and certainly a hiatus or two before landing wherever it is I currently am. I grew up in the areas in and around Phoenix, AZ and lived there until my mid 20s. During my time in AZ, I was always in one band or another. My first real band played street punk. In the late 90s and early 00s I was in a crust punk band that morphed into a technical hardcore band which resulted in one CD and one split 7”. Around this time, I was also simultaneously doing a solo electronic project which kind of had a glitchy drum and bass sound, and that project resulted in three albums. The next I was in had a sound that was kind of hard to define, but perhaps “gloomy indie rock with a sometimes-danceable vibe” wouldn’t be completely out of line. Then life did what life sometimes does, and my then-girlfriend and I had a child. Not long after the birth of our daughter in 2006, we decided to move out east to Philadelphia, PA.  And this was the de facto end of my time playing in bands, even though I didn’t fully know that at the time.  

While in Philly I was just doing the family thing. I didn’t really play any music for years.  Fast forward to around 2021, and I finally started playing with other people again. My buddy Steve and I formed a project where we were doing improvised performances as a sort of “live scoring” to old movies as they played on a projector screen nearby. We did movies like Plan 9, Haxan, House on Haunted Hill, the original Nosferatu, etc. Our performances were always at the record store that my buddy Steve runs in Wilmington, DE (shout out to Jupiter Records!). That project went on for a relatively short duration before coming to an end. Then after a couple years of nothing going on musically for me, I started my own project in early 2025, and that would soon become Place of Rescission. 

What was the inspiration for Place of Rescission?

The inspiration to start Place of Rescission ultimately comes from a few things. But mainly it comes from the experience of loss and the mental health struggles related to all of that. It’s probably safe to say that the seed was planted sometime around 2021, at which time my then-wife and I were going through a very difficult dissolution of a 20 year relationship. But this wasn’t when I started the project; It was just the event that started getting the wheels turning in my head. A bit later I was then in another relationship. And this one did have some positives, but it was also chock full of psychological struggles. This was the relationship that I was in during the majority of the writing/recording process for this album - but it ended around the time I was finishing. Besides all of that archetypal “relationships suck the soul out of you leading to immersion in remedial creativity” stuff, it also just seemed like the stars had aligned with regard to the logistics of it all. My daughter was out of high school, working, and eventually moved out. So all of a sudden I had a lot of free time. And coincidentally, my work/life balance was becoming much easier to handle than it had been during the previous 15 years or so. So I guess you could say it was really just that I had a lot of demons that needed to be exorcized, and things in life just came together in a way that allowed me the opportunity to do what had to be done.

How did you go about creating the noise boxes? Did you build the boxes with specific sounds in mind, or were you unsure what they would sound like until they were completed?  In other words, did the noise boxes shape the songs, or did you have specific sounds in mind that you created the boxes specifically to achieve?

I think that the spirit behind these noise boxes comes from my affinity for in-house created sounds. As the old saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention. I knew that for Place of Rescission I needed to create all of the sounds myself; I had no interest in sampling outside sources. The thought of being able to create totally unique sounds was intriguing to me. And I don’t necessarily mean “totally unique,” as in, they sound like nothing you’ve ever heard before. I just mean it in a way to say that these sounds technically never existed elsewhere before, just because they were crafted organically. Even if no one else would ever recognize all of this just by listening to my material, it still matters a great deal to me. I don’t know, maybe I’m just a weirdo.

It also really helps that within the normal duties of my day job, I spend a lot of time going to auto salvage yards. These yards are perfect places to find random scrap metal, unique brackets, car parts, whatever, all just laying around and long forgotten. I actually have a container in my car that I’m always adding junk to when I’m out working. And a number of these things have ended up being implemented in my noise boxes.

Typically when I build these noise boxes, I have no idea what they are going to sound like when I’m done. And truth be told, I have come to find out that some of these noise boxes don’t show their true potential immediately anyway. It often takes hours or days of experimentation before you realize what you can actually get out of them. And I would have to say yes – the noise boxes often dictated how the song was going to go. I never really built anything to achieve a certain sound I was after per se. But often I would start an idea for a song simply by manipulating one or more of these boxes while messing with the effects and would see where things went.

Are there any noise boxes that you tried creating that didn’t work out? Or is there no such thing as a failure in this process?

So far I haven’t made any full-on noise boxes that were unusable. But I have made some other similar devices that totally failed (more on that in a bit). I did have a few issues early on where I used the wrong type of input jack which created issues. I’ve also drilled holes for things that weren’t measured properly beforehand. You know, things like that. But I always improvise and adjust as I go through the process. But there have been a few total failures with certain items.  Besides the regular noise boxes, I’ve also made some smaller portable devices that take the same concept but give you more options to create different sounds. These are basically pill bottles that have the instrument jack on one end, and the contact mic coming out the other end – often with a magnet glued to the mic or to the pill bottle cap. With these little devices, you can grab anything you want and turn it into an amplified object by just placing the contact mic on the object’s surface. Because these use epoxies and magnets, it’s taken some trial and error to figure out which epoxies and magnets work the best. So a few of those had to be thrown away. In the early days there was also a slight learning curve with the soldering, but it’s improved a lot since then. It’s all part of the process.

Given how you create this music could Place of Rescission work as a live band, or will it stay as a studio-only project? Is there a way that you could alter the process to make it work live?

I would imagine it will just stay as a studio project, at least for the time being. But I suppose time will tell.  If I were to entertain the idea of one day doing this live, I think the biggest challenge would be figuring out how to use the noise boxes in a live setting, and doing it in a way that stays true to the sound of the recordings. As for the other things like bass, drums, vocals, percussion, and whatnot – that’s the easy part.  Well, as long as it’s more than me that’s helping with some of that. I guess I only have four limbs, right?

Who are some of your musical influences? The nature of your music inherently makes me think of Author & Punisher. Some tracks remind me a lot of The Residents, and others recall Throbbing Gristle. The track “I Did Not Know” reminds me of something deep in my memory that I haven’t been able to place, and your voice on “Pyrite” sounds a lot like Michael Gira of Swans.

Ah… Author & Punisher yeah, that guy is the machine-making god. I’ve seen some videos showing how he creates all of that stuff, and it’s so intriguing. The stuff I do is peanuts, or less than peanuts compared to him! I have never consciously tried to emulate anyone or anything with my own music. But I know from experience that no matter how much you try to fight it, your influences will likely show in one way or another.  And my influences stretch pretty far and wide.  

As an act of full disclosure, let me say that if I get to talking about music it can be very difficult for me to stop. So I’ll try and keep this part as condensed as I can to avoid totally going off the rails. My teen years were firmly entrenched in 80s/90s anarcho and crust punk, and I still listen to a lot of those bands like Subhumans, Discharge, Rudimentary Peni, Nausea, Dystopia etc.  I’m also big into 80s post-punk like Killing Joke, Gang of Four, and The Birthday Party. And yes, I do really like Swans (good call!) and cherish just about everything Gira/Jarboe/Westberg have done. I listen to a lot of early industrial and death industrial, so groups like Throbbing Gristle, Esplendor Geometrico, SPK, Atrax Morgue, and Brighter Death Now. I’ve been pretty deep into film scores for the last 10 years or so, and mostly focused on 70s/80s Italian horror and giallo scores by the likes of Goblin, Fabio Frizzo, Bruno Nicolai, etc. I also spin a lot of dub, which I find to be pretty therapeutic. Dub is like the musical equivalent of a quaalude to me - It just instantly helps me tune out the world. I’m into dub artists like King Tubby, Scientist, Horace Andy, Roots Radics, etc. Oh, and also some death metal here and there. Bands like Undergang, Gorguts, Corpus Offal, Cryptopsy, Bolt Thrower, that sort of stuff. Lastly, I’ll mention that I am also deeply in love with free jazz from the 60s/70s/80s, so artists like Sun Ra Arkestra, Archie Shepp, Peter Brötzmann, Milford Graves, Albert Ayler, and the like. I’d say that free jazz actually constitutes about half of what I’m listening to these days. So yes, the jukebox in my brain is a bit absurd as it seems.

Any chance we’ll see a physical release of Collateral Gore?

I sure hope so. Collateral Gore and the songs on it were arranged in such a way that it already has 2 LP length sides ready to go for vinyl. I’ve already had it mastered for vinyl with the hopes that perhaps that would someday be a reality. And I guess I should also mention that I already have the artwork and layout finished for the anticipated LP (not just the front cover). Ultimately though, I just wanted to release it digitally first in order to test the waters and see if anything comes of it. So that’s the stage we’re in right now.

Put me down for a copy! What has the reaction been thus far? When creating an album like this that’s such an exploration of your individual interests and proclivities, how much are you thinking about a potential audience?

So far the reaction has been quite positive actually. Before the mastering was done, I had sent a rough mix of the album to some of my closest friends so I could get their thoughts. And to those friends (you know who you are!), endless thanks be upon you. Their initial reactions to the material really helped me to see that contrary to what I had been thinking, maybe it wouldn’t just end up being an album made for an audience of one (me). And even though the album has technically only been out for a few weeks at the time I’m writing this, I’ve also received a lot of positive feedback and reviews from plenty of strangers in that short span of time. But I know that someone is going to call it garbage eventually… ha. While in the process of writing and recording though, I really didn’t contemplate what others might think of it. I think some of that comes from honesty and tempered expectations, sure. But also quite possibly there was an element of self-preservation or insulation to that approach as well. And above all, because the whole process was all so cathartic for me, I already knew I was achieving what I needed to achieve – even if the material never saw the light of day.

I know Collateral Gore just came out, but where do you hope to go from here with the project?

Oh, that’s an easy one!  And that’s all because where I go from here is already pre-determined.  I guess now is a good time to announce that my second album is already finished. When going through the writing and recording process, I had so much flowing out of me that I decided I should create enough material so that I can just pick and choose what I think is the best material for the album. The initial plan was to leave everything else on the cutting room floor. I ended up recording so much material that even after dropping a handful of tracks, I still had enough songs to fill two LP length albums. And so then it became a question of “do I split this up into two separate albums, or should I release a double album as my debut?” For numerous reasons I went with option A. I think that would have been ridiculous to hit the scene with a double album. Like, who do I think I am, Frank Zappa? But yes, the second album was all mixed and mastered at the same time as the first album. So at this point I just need to wrap up the artwork and then it’s ready to go. I’m thinking I may release the second album in early to mid 2027. And now that the first two albums have been finished, I’ll likely be starting on number three in the near future.

Let’s close on what is becoming my traditional final topic. This site (theoretically) is about both metal and fitness. What’s your relationship to fitness? Do you exercise regularly and if so what’s your go-to routine right now?

Yes, I actually do exercise a few days a week. I’m definitely no gym rat or anything, though.  About five or six years ago I took it upon myself to start running regularly. At first I was running in my own neighborhood, but then I got a treadmill and so now I pretty much just run at home while my dogs stare at me. I try to get some exercise in three to four times a week. My routine is extremely basic though. I do 50 crunches. Then I run two or three miles. Then I do 50 more crunches. That’s it. And this summer I have also been walking my dogs a couple miles after I do those exercise routines, weather permitting of course. So I guess that’s also technically fitness? I used to do some work with weights and exercise bands but I haven’t done that in a while. I really need to get back to that, so thanks for helping to remind me!

Given what we’ve talked about so far I suspect I know this answer, but do you consider making music as part of your mental wellness or self-care routine?

Yes, absolutely. Place of Rescission has already done things for me that I haven’t been able to do by other means. Getting it all out has helped me out immensely. Music is therapy for me, and it always has been. That goes for both playing and listening. I really cannot imagine a world without access to music and its healing properties. Who doesn’t love a song that gives you permission to feel how you’re feeling? Or music that acts as a conduit to a place of understanding while you work out something deep within your mind? And back to the exercise thing, that also has a lot of restorative benefits for me. Both body and mind. I know I’m physically healthier because of my exercise habits, which of course is a good thing. But in many ways it’s the psychological advantages that I find most rewarding about having a fitness routine.  I can’t even begin to tell you how many life-related problems I’ve worked out in my head while I’m running. And oftentimes it’s the same problems that prior to my run I was not able to focus on enough, or even at all. So yes, to tie it all together, I can completely understand why you have a site dedicated to both music and fitness.  

Thank you so much for the opportunity to talk about my music! Keep up the great work with the site. I’ll be along for the ride!

Place of Rescission's Collateral Gore was released on September 4, 2026