Déjà Vu & Hana Haruna — Split

Here’s a two track walled noise split showing two different sides of the genre. From Kyiv, Ukraine’s Déjà Vu, we have a thickly crusty slice of churn ‘n’ jitter. And from Portland Oregan’s Hana Haruna, we find a blend of constantly purring low-end and eerier bouncing vocal ambience.

This is a digital release that appears on Portland’s Basement Corner Emissions label. For cover art, we have a detailed pencil drawing on paper of several reeds/ bushes. It certainly works as a visual representation for the second track, but not the first, but I guess it’s difficult to settle on a cover to illustrate both sides of a different-sounding split. Both tracks run around the twenty-minute mark

So first up, we have Déjà Vu's “No Rules”. Here we find a thick weave of juddering and churning mid to low-end crunchingly rolling textures. The ‘wall’ gives the impression of climbing up a fairly ragged rock staircase- but as you climb up and up, the staircase itself is steadily moving too. This is my first taster of this project work- it’s been active since late summer last year, with around fifty releases to its name thus far. Sure, this ‘wall’ is not revolutionary- but it’s entrancing enough & enjoy the shifting stone staircase quality of the whole thing.

Next is Hana Haruna's track “Deep Yapping Gateway”, if you're familiar with the more texturally creative/ambient-edged side of the wall noise scene, I’m sure you’ll be aware of this project. It’s been active since 2018, racking up two hundred plus releases thus far. The track here mixes together a steady rolling/ slightly grinding roast, with these reverbed/ echoed wordless voices. The ‘wall’ is a wonderful mix of rewarding textural roast and the eerily ethereal. As you’ve come to expect from this project, the track is a perfect balance between the textural yin and yang of the ‘wall’.

All in all, a most engaging and rewarding split, showing the two different sides of this most extreme form of sound art. And I’ll certainly be checking out more of Déjà Vu, and the Hana Haruna track is another great example of this project's mastery of ambient/ wall-noise crossbreed.