Damien De Coene — Mourning Portraits III

Appearing in late April of this year- here we have the third release in Damien De Coene’s Mourning Portraits series- that sees this Spanish noise-maker offering up walled noise/ textured noise studies based around funeral portraits from the Victoriana era. This release originally appeared as a self-released tape, or digital download- sadly the tapes are all gone, so ones only option now is a digital download.

The physical edition of the release saw the clear shelled cassette coming in a monochrome sleeve. This featured two funeral portraits- one of a man perched up in his chair, and the other of two ladies stood up in all their finery. The release also includes a swatch of the old net-like fabric.
 
 
The two ‘walls’ come in at the thirty-minute mark, and the first is entitled “Daguerreotype Of The Deceased”. Here we find a roughshod judder- that features ragged rumbling edges, and around this De Coene lays clutter 'n' rattling sub-tones. The whole things has a nicely crude and rapid velocity about it, with the sub-tones adding in a rewarding feel of dusty cluttering urgency, which nicely fits the theme of the series.
 
Next and finally we have “So Life Like”- here we find a deeper, & more bluntly bassy ‘wall’. It’s built around a dense ‘n’ ripping clattering low, this is surrounded by a brooding tumbling haze- which is edged by a select of crisper cluttering sub-tones. Once again there is a crude-yet-rapid feeling here- but the blunt and murky edge adds a nicely uneasy feel to proceedings- so one could almost imagine one of the well dressed dead females either blink or make a sudden movement.
 
 
I enjoyed both of the ‘walls’ on Mourning Portraits III- but of the two I’d say the second stands out as my favorite- due to the more creepy/ brooding subtleties of the whole thing. To check this release, and the others in the Mourning Portraits series out in their digital form head over to Damiens Bandcamp here.