Black Matter Phantasm — Spiritual Retreat To The Holy Mountain
Before we get into the ‘walls’ with-in it’s worth mentioning the packaging for the physical release as it’s kind-of-neat. The half black & half white shelled cassette comes a zip lock bag, featuring minimal white black & red colour scheme- with the whole thing coming in a handmade shinny black pouch. All in all it’s a really neat & classy bit of packaging. It came in a edition of 18 copies.
Both tracks here are untitled, and the first sides wall brings together the following elements: a buffeting ‘n’ semi drumming low-end, a tight & crisp textural pattern, & a selection of thinner buffeting ‘n’ battering sub-tones. The whole ‘wall’ works very well with it’s detailed textural blend, yet never sounds too experimental in it’s unfold, so ‘wall-purists’ will be happy too. The whole flow of the piece is bothersome & brutal, yet the textural details & their patter-nation suck you in, meaning it’s nearing forty five minute runtime seems to wiz by.
Flipping on to the second side, and this wall comes in at the slightly shorter 40.24 mark. It finds a compressed, though quite bothersome sounding stuck buffeting element- this is edged by a thin rolling-ball- bearing like crackle pattern. As the ‘wall’ progresses the buffeting seems to spread & muffle around it edges, as the crackle seems to get more split, getting less consistent & defined in it’s pattern. I’m not sure if either of these subtle shifts are occurring or not, but it's once again a rather captivating wall with the some fairly original textures at play. The only real change I’m certain of here is around the 24 minute mark, when the buffeting becomes a lot more battering, almost blunt drum like in it’s feel- also this element seems to become a lot tense & defined too from this point on.
Black Matter Phantasm is a project that seems to be improving in both its use of textures & wall- making abilities with each new release I hear. All in all Spiritual Retreat To The Holy Mountain offers up two wholly consistent examples of ‘wall-craft’, and it’s really worth trying to hunt down a copy of the tape version of this release as it is rather unusual in it’s look, and would sit well in any wall-noise fans collection.