Anonymous Masturbaudioum — Recto-Verso
Staring in 2009 Anonymous Masturbaudioum first started as Harsh noise project, but within the last years has moved on almost purely walled noise focused. All of the projects work is themed around Nylon/feet/leg fetish, and it’s fair to say along with The Rita, Anonymous Masturbaudioum is the most creative, worthy & skilful within the fetishistic focused sub-genre of walled noise. Compared with many HNW acts the projects discography is fairly small, taking in around thirty releases- but it’s definitely a matter of quality over quantity, as pretty much everything I’ve heard from this project is great- and Recto- Verso follows this trend, turning out to be one of the wall-noise highlights of 2018.
The album takes in ten tracks- and these all run around the five-minute mark. The first five tracks are simple titled Recto, and the second five are titled Verso- so as a result when reviewing the tracks- I give them numbers for ease identification. This release is a near perfect example of creative wall-noise making, so this makes it kind of difficult to chose highlights….but I’ll try. "Recto 2" finds a highly Moorish-yet- disorienting blend of three constantly rushing textures, which are meshed by this jittering & judder off pattern- we have a rolling furnace like roar, a crisp feasting, and a hacking crackle. "Recto 4" brings together these searing sways of flaming crackle, hissing static squeeze, and these occasional weird & muffled bellowing tones which sound like compressed vocal textures- all to make a track that’s both ear slicing creative & kind of unsettling. "Verso 1" initially carries on with the vocal elements in a more pronounced manner, as we get these strange raspy & disturbing male vocals appearing over a chopping & slicing industrialized wall- before we move into a shifting canvas of galloping & splitting static, rolling roar, and cascading chopping & feasting noise. "Verso 4" is a mixture of down & dirty grainy bass roll & roast, insect-like chopping & feasting texturing, and sudden creative textural flourishes. While the final track "Verso 5" is a wonderful ear scalding & a fiery dense blend of searing rushing, rumble bound churn, and hiss clutter.
Sadly Recto- Verso is now completely sold out in its physical form from the label- so a digital download is the only option at present. Let's hope down the line, this along with a few of the projects other classics releases like last years excellent three C60 set Nylon Encasement get a reissue, because if there’s any project from within the walled-noise underground that deserves to be heard by a wider audiences then Anonymous Masturbaudioum is one of those projects.