Musique Machine
Acerbitas

AcerbitasArduous Wall

[Muzikaal Kabaal — 2012]
Reviewed 9 May 2012by Roger Batty
“Arduous Wall” in  a 3 inch cdr from English walled noise project Acerbitas. Behind the project is one Michael Ridge- who is more known for his experimental noise project Zebra Mu, and also runs DIY noise label Quagga Curious Sounds.

The single ‘wall’ on offer here comes in at the 17.42 mark, and it finds Mr Ridge creating a densely churning yet fairly fixed wall of noise. The ‘walls’ built around a mixture of mainly mid tones with the odd rushing lower tonality here & there. The noise textures  here  are a   mixture of rushing,  aquatic churning, and fairly rapidly juddering tones. To me the track  rather brought to my mind some huge & endless turning ‘n’ churning water wheel in an old industrial mill. There’s something rather aged & a little primal about the ‘wall’ which makes the 1940’s /1950’s picture of  two poor children on the front of the release very fitting.

This is my first taster of this projects work, and I must say this is a very effective dense bit of ‘wall-making’, which has a nice rapid ‘n’ rushing feel to it. It’s great to see someone else doing HNW in the UK, as the scene here should really be a lot bigger than it is.