Antisocial Block/Phantom Cadaver/The Sle — Split
The projects featured here are: Antisocial Block- which is one of the projects of Osijek, Croatia based noise maker Marko Jović ( also of Xtematic & Asimonde). This project started at some point in 2013, and has so far amassed nine or so releases which take in CDR, digital & tape releases.
Phantom Cadaver- which is the new project from the Kansas City noise maker whose behind the more fixed HNW project Abyzm. This project also started in 2013, and so far has put out around 3 or 4 cdr releases.
The Sleeping Quarter- which is a Uk based project, & this once again started in 2013. So far the project has put out around five split cdr/tape release, and one stand alone CDR release.
Up first we have Antisocial Block’s “Rêves Morts Amour”. This track starts out with a fairly thin wall which mixtures together two or three layers of buzzing & grainy sustained noise, with-in a minute or so more searing mid-range tones start to slowly slide into the wall- for some reason this sonic move rather brought to mind images of vast red hot splinters been slowly forced under a giant toe-nail(a bizarre image I know, but that’s what it brought to my mind). As the track carries on the tones slowly but surely get more searing, dense, & thick it their feel, and this creates a nicely expanding & encasing feel of taut wall noise extremity. All told this is a most effective, fairly original sounding, & slowly torturing slice of walled noise- it's a great opening track too.
Secondly we have Phantom Cadaver’s “Corridors”, and I’d say this is most textural shifting of the three tracks here. This track opens with a taut & raging mixture of rapidly juddering noise tones, which are a searing blend of roasting rumble & taut chiselling noise. By the 2nd minute we've shifted down to a thinner & line crackle jitter loop which has a meaty purring feel building up in it’s guts. Then at the three minute mark the searing wall dense-ness smashers back in with a mixture of mid-range fan belt slipping & low-range rapid /meaty juddering- the mid range element dies down soon so we’re just left with the thick meat-ness, but fairly soon the ‘wall’ thins down again. The remainder of the track finds PC moving between searing & dense attacks, and more stripped down yet slowly intensify moments. And each shift offers up a slight different sounding textural wall make-up, through the track doesn’t really stray too far from a fairly set selection of low-to-mid( and sometimes high) ranged textures. As active & shifting walled noise goes- this is rather effective & rewarding track with each new shift offering up worthy textural detail.
And lastly we have The Sleep Quarter’s “Throating M.A.S”. To start with it’s built around a alternating mix of two dense textural settings- we have a muffled juddering ‘n’ jittering pattern, & a hazed ‘n’ woolly buffeting pattern. These two patterns shift back & forth ever few minutes or so, and as they shift you get the odd extra noise textural thrown-in- these are either a searing fizz, a raging buffet, or a caustic grind. As we near the mid-way point the shift in tones seems to get more persistent with the original patterns departing, and really at this point I think it rather loses it’s way. The track is ok, and the original two textures are quite effective, but for my liking there is a bit too much shift ‘n’ dart here in the secondly shorter tones in the first half of the track. And I really lost interest in the tracks second half as it moved more toward slurred wall-ish harsh noise.
So to sum-up the release- I really enjoyed the first two track, but the third track started off promising before losing it’s self in rather blandly focused wall-ish harsh noise. So it’s certainly worth picking up for first two tracks alone, and if you enjoy wall-ish harsh noise you may enjoy the last track too.