Å — Untitled I-II (Infinity series Part 4)

The Infinity series is a open ended and identical artwork based collection of releases put out by Uk based Sweet Soiltide. Each volume sees a different world wide HNW acts attempting ambient and experimental forms of walled noise. Part Four of this excellent series sees north/eastern France based  Å offering up their  own take on ambient or texturally drifting HNW.

As it’s title suggest “Untitled I-II” offers up two untitled tracks- track one is spot on the nineteen minute mark & track two is just over the thirty minute mark. “Untitled I” starts out as a thick yet forlorn rumbling billow, but as the track progresses Å masterfully and subtle shifts/melts into other thick yet at times half-awake masses of textural noise. The track stays fairly rumble based in the main, but there are thinner grains off jittering texture, slow yet blurred static simmers and more subtle textural detail moving here too.  At times it feels like the track is building up to exploded into hammering and intense slice of wall making, but Å keeps cleverly pulling it back from the intense brink. In the tracks last four or five minutes Å slowly but surely thins and fades the wall back until your left a stripped and stark sonic vista of low rumbling & tiny static jitters.

“Untitled II” starts off where track one finished with a distant and bleak rumble, though Å has shifted the rumble pitch slightly and stripped out tiny static jitters, and replaced them with distant storm battering textural repetition . As the track progresses the ‘wall’ seems to get more stretched out, distant and strangle restful in its grey and drifting textural expanse- you feel at times it may drift off altogether into silence, but it never does. Nearing the tenth minute a more pressing and tense judder starts to build in power and sonic presence, but just when you think it might over take the track and swing the ‘wall’ into all out tension filled & battering walled noise Å drops back into a wash of grey and drifting textured noise. Through-out the rest of the track Å alternates between stark, washed out yet rewarding grey textural drifts and sudden growth in more active and intense texturing- but these  active elements never fully take hold and we drift into walled ambience one more.

So all in all “Untitled I-II” is another great chapter in the Infinity series, and it shows Å as a great and atmospheric sculpture of textured noise. Like all the other parts in the series thus far totally unmissble and extremely consistent through-out.