Cory Strand and Gina Newman — The Walking Dead: Impressions
Even for a label that prides itself on high packaging standards, this is something out of the ordinary… As you may well have guessed, the set is a tribute to the television series, The Walking Dead, which depicts people trying to survive in the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse. You know the sort of thing. Here, however, freed from the temporal restraints of a film (the usual zombie format), the series is able to stretch out, and wander through the minutiae of situations. The everyday difficulties, and moments of ‘rest’, that a film might omit for dramatic reasons. I can’t claim to have watched every episode, but those I have were enthralling, and this set has made me go back and pick up where I left off. As with most of Strand’s work, the tape set investigates drone, wall noise, and the space between.
The first tape (dark green) begins with a side of deep drone, full of dread. It’s split through the speakers, and although it breaks into saturation, you can hear swirling melodies from the slurred strings (or synth lines) slowly playing out. After a more agitated passage, these suspended notes and drones rise through. The whole piece is dreamy, but relentlessly dark; there’s a yearning and a stillness, but still movement within. The crackle which coats the track is almost delicate, as if it were the very earliest stage of obliteration; this gives it a sense of precariousness. I think this first piece alone lives out many of the themes of The Walking Dead. The second side (none of the tracks are titled, the artwork merely giving their durations) is a frosty slice of submerged, glacial drone, with rhythmic undulations. At points it almost lessens to silence. There’s an unmistakable sense of emptiness and cold throughout, a ghostly wind blowing through deserted streets.
The second tape (light green) opens with a very nice, singing drone, which proceeds to distort into strained tones. It presents a balancing act between wall noise and drone, but at some points it’s arguable that both elements suffer for this. Often the noise element dominates, tempestuously, moving around like wind gusts, never still. Near the end, the skree swings from speaker to speaker, rising and falling, but finally it parts and reveals a beautiful, simple drone - something I would have been content to listen to for hours! The flipside does indeed indulge my drone desires, presenting a lovely, swirling drone. It’s spacious, but also full of haunting detail - there’s almost a melodic sense here. The piece is quite soft - lush, even - but also strong and unyielding. There’s a clear tension, a stasis and suspension that sustains the track. I also feel that, in stark comparison to essentially the rest of the set, the drone is notably absent of dread; instead, it feels like it has its sights set on heaven.
The first side of the final tape (pastel green) is a stinging, droning, noise work, combining dirty noise textures with buried tones and sounds. It features a stuttering, junk-esque sound, which I suspect isn’t junk at all. Although the piece starts with smothered, high pitch tones, at other points it sounds like there are odd drones or even electroacoustic sounds beneath the layers of skree. Sometimes they seem to soar into feedback, sometimes it’s akin to a churning church organ. Over the top of this, a speeding, scathing wall trundles along, smashing up everything it encounters. In some sections, this creates a slow modulation underneath, as the track glides in and out of bass surges. The second side has two tracks, breaking the pattern thus far. The first of these is a very accomplished, foreboding drone, subdued and unsettling. It has a rhythmic sway, and operates like a haunting fragrance in the room. Despite my lack of words on it, it’s probably my favourite piece here. The second track, and the shortest overall at seven and a half minutes, suddenly lets the outside world in, beginning with a folky guitar song taken from The Walking Dead’s soundtrack. The song, truth be told, does little for me, but Strand builds up a mass of reverb behind it, which is left standing when the song ends. This slowly drifts, hollow and subtle, for a forlorn ending to the set. Forlorn, but also somewhat disinterested, as if the view of a diffident universe.
This is a great set, varied but focussed in sound, and beautiful to look at. At this point I would normally be telling you that it is ‘long gone’, but I was shocked to see that it’s still available on the Altar Of Waste site… Some of the pieces in the set really are nice - certainly some of the drones could have gone on forever - and the whole package is full of the care and detail that’s associated with Strand’s label. There are perhaps no tracks that really plough into harsh obliteration, but instead there’s often a dialogue between noise and drone that explores the boundaries of each. It’s not necessarily an ‘easy listen’. However, it is a rewarding one, and there are copies left…