Chuck Steak — Gold of Nubty

Gold of Nubty severs up two slices of dense yet jumping ‘n’ jittering walled noise from this Massachusetts based project. The digital release has a full runtime of just shy of eighty minutes- with one fifty-minute wall, and a second nearing a thirty-minute wall.

This release appears on Uk’s Death to Dynamics, who in recent times have become one of the prolific, but interestingly consistent labels within the scene. The cover artwork is a crude coloured pencil drawing of a demon-like figure with a scythe holding a grey severed head and surrounded by chop up limbs. The release can be found here. 

The Chuck Steak project has been active since 2018- releasing to date coming on for twenty releases. I recall hearing/ reviewing their work in the past and feeling somewhat underwhelmed by what I heard then- so it’s nice to report the two tracks here are of much better quality.

First, out of the gate, we have “AU79” which slides in at the 50.02 mark and is the longer of the two tracks featured here. It opens with a tightly taut blend of the following elements- crisp crunching jitter, cluttering static grain flow, and some smaller jumping sub-tones. These create a nervy yet encasing ‘wall’, which nicly wraps you in its manically jittering flow. As we progress on seemingly more gritty clutters appear first, then later moments of mid to high pitched static play- which at points has some pitch-shifting going. Towards the end, things pare back some to mixes of cluttering static hacks, grainy skips, and dragged-out glitch rips. As far as I can make out all of these, largely subtle shifts, are actually occurring- and not a trick of the ‘wall’.

The second track is entitled “AUGOld”, and this slides in at the 29.18 mark. It starts as a blend of skipping static grain and lightly fuzzing noise haze. As it progresses it sounds like there are more layers of similarly ranged static skip ‘n’ jump sliding under the first batch, though I’m not sure if this is real, or just a sonic illusion. Also, as the track moves on, I’m making out smaller grain skips occurring, as well as crisp like folds and drags occurring- again I’m not sure if these are real or not. I’d say of the two tracks, this is my favourite- due to these elements- and I rather enjoy how the whole thing keeps to be seemingly slowing, then speeding up again.

Gold of Nubty is certainly much more compelling and rewarding than previous work I’d heard from this project- so I’ll be keeping out an eye for new work from Chuck Steak down the line, and if you enjoy jumpy-yet-densely textured wall craft I think you’ll too enjoy what we have here.