Crash At Every Speed — Head On Collision

“Head On Collision” is a four CDR set of recordings from this fairy long running high signal feedback based HNW project of Texas noise legend Richard Ramirez. Each disc here features a single near on hour long track of static texturing/ or thinner layered yet sometimes shrill tempered walled noise.

This project started back in 2001, and has amassed around twenty five releases that take in CDR’s, Tapes & splits. All of the projects work is themed around car crashers & road accidents. The four colour labelled CDR’s come in a four disc DVD case, which features overlaid collage type artwork of car crashers, cars in flames, and cars in scrap yard. Also featured is a glossy inlay card featuring the track listings ect, and this once again features the overlaid car/ crash related imagery.

On disc ones track is entitled “Crash Victim 1”, and it comes in at the fifty four minute mark. The track’s ‘wall’ is built around a thin yet constant  mass of slightly muffled static. Over the near on hour track  Ramirez alternates between interlocking seas of uniformed crackling static & burst of off-pattern static based noise making. The off pattern moments taking in : more urgent jittering trails,  distant/buried ‘n’ churning radio like harmonic squawking / baying pitches, more rapid lines of crackle, & split stereo channel static crackle.  The track is both soothing in a drifting off into TV static manner, yet it also keeps the mind stimulated with the textural shifts. It’s a pleasing enough example of static textured based noise making, through I did feel it could have been chopped down to say the half an hour mark, as I found my mind wondering towards it’s end.

Disc two is taken up by “Crash Victim 2 “, and this comes in at the just under the forty nine minute mark. The track is a rather more urgent slice of wall-making compared to the first track, and it find’s Ramirez bringing together a continuous billowing/ whistling  alarm like tone, a looped shuffling/ juddering static muffle, and one or two jittering steam like sub-tones. Theses elements are fed together into a smarting yet hypnotic ‘wall’ that stays fixed over its just shy of fifty minute runtime. This stands as one of my favourite moments of this set with its shrill yet oddly enchanting feel.

 

“Crash Victim 3” takes up disc three, and comes in at just over the hour mark. And this starts off  built around a thin circulating haze of static which is pitted with slowly shorting on/off jittering tones. As the track progresses the hazed element seems to shifting to slow static rain like repletion & the jittering elements seem to become more hypnotic- so you get pulled deeper & deeper  into the strange electro jittering/ static hazed atmosphere of the track.  At the 53 minute mark we get a sudden shifting in to just  rumbling/juddering  static texture, which seems to be  get more rapid as it goes on yet it’s so slowly fading & fall into it’s self too- it most effective & quite odd in it’s feel. Again this is another very entrancing track.

Lastly we have “Crash Victim 4”, and this comes at just over the fifty two minute mark. The track built is around a  single, sustained & shrill noise texture which has these feasting ‘n’ crackling static sub-tones around it.  Around the twenty five minute mark the sub-tone's start to become more battering & billowing in their feel, which adds a more pronounced feel of urgency to the track. In it’s last few minutes the sustain pitch is replaced by a slow juddering on/off shorting texture, which is under fed by a thin repetitive crackling haze.  All told it’s an ok track, through I did feel the first part of the track didn’t really have enough about it to hold ones attention for it’s near on half an hour unfold.

All told this is a nicely put together collection of long form mainly static based walled studies- with two of the discs been most effective( 2 & 3), and  other two been slightly less effective through still worth a listen( 1 & 4).