Damien De Coen — Elisabeth Förster-Nietzche
Elisabeth Förster-Nietzche is a new C90 release featuring two side long slabs of walled noise from Spain’s Damien De Coen. Each is grim, hope-battering, and brassbound example of the form.
It’s a self-released affair- with a handmade edition of ten copies. The clear C90 features on each side identical colour pictures of a group of cowboy-hatted women doing a workout. This picture is repeated on the sleeve's front cover, and inside we get a picture of a bald-headed man in a chair- with a brown leather-like body suit on, with both arms outstretched. Doing a quick search online we find out Elisabeth Förster-Nietzche was the sister of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche- so an intriguing selection of imagery/ themes for the release.
There is no text on the sleeve/ tape- so I’m guessing both of the side-long tracks are untitled. So, the first side track brings together a constant rolling ‘n’ ragged bass drone- this is edged with crisply rushing static subtones. Together these elements create a hope-numbing wash of sound- bringing to my mind a constant and unchanging journey through a grey/half-lite landscape on a dusty and hand print-smeared train carriage. As you sit with the ‘wall’ your mind picks out seemingly sudden rushing skips, and more cluttering touches to the drone element- but in reality, these are all tricks, and the track is very much set for its sidelong run.
The second sides track is centred around a set murky roll, which is tensioned by bitterly buffing subtone flits. Once again it feels like one is travelling- but this time it’s through a relentlessly cold rain-lashing storm, as you sit in the ageing and ragged fabric seat of a car. The ‘wall’ is more on the droned-out side of the form, with once again the whole thing becoming nicely grimly numbing over its length. I’d say this stands as my favourite of the two- though both are worthy examples of bleakly numbing wall-craft.
It's always nice to hear new work from Mr De Coen, and especially when it’s in a physical format!...if you fancy scoring a copy of this there are only about half of the copies left- so drop a line to damiendecoene@hotmail.com