Damien De Coene — Purposely Spreading

Purposely Spreading is a C60/digital download that finds this Flanders based noisemaker severing up two side long examples of slowly shifting textured noise, which have a decidedly grim weathered quality to them. The release has just come out and is available at presently direct from the artists, with a download version appearing in a week or two.

The plain black tape comes presented in a single side fold-out grey tape cover- this features a blurred & hazed woodland picture, with nicely fits the grimly lulling tone of the tracks with-in. It came in an edition of five copies, and there are still some copies left so drop a line to here to get hold of one.

For the last two years or so have De Coene has been carving out his own fairly distinctive take on either gloomily textured noise, grimly grinding wall craft, or stark drone bound noise matter. He’s often looking at ways of pushing his work in different & new directions, and with Purposely Spreading (maybe a Covid references?)- he’s doing it once again, as both sides here have a wonderful windswept ‘n’ slowly hazy quality- which I’ve not really heard much before in the genre.

Both side long tracks here are Untitled- the first sides opens with a fairly loose blend reduced rolling rip ‘n’ compressed hiss,  which feels akin to watching bands of grey fizzing static moving across hazed ground with a blank sky in the background. As we move on the hissings textures are certainly the most consistent thing here- but ever so often we get either clusters of low key rips or dragging blunt clutters occurring, but these never break the central & constant loops of lulling hiss.

The second side starts off a bit more rapidly buffeting in its attack - as we get a fairly tightly weaved selection of low-to-mid tone rips 'n' shreds. But from the outset they are surrounded by more hiss bound stretchers- and as the track progresses these slowly/ break-up the pace down of the rips & shreds- with longer drifts of grim hiss & muffled bay occurring as we move further along. And by the fourteen-minute mark, we’re deep in constantly churning muffled hiss, which is just edged by slight jumps of rip/ judder bound noise- at points these feel like they are starting to pick-up pace/ strength- but De Coene keeps hazing/ pulling them back again.

In conclusion Purposely Spreading shows De Coene once pushing the textured noise genre down creative paths- with both tracks having an entrancingly ghost-bound weaving ‘n’ wavering quality to them.