Damien De Coene — The Sound of a Suicide Note
The black paint dripped CDR is presented in a black sprayed & dripped jewel case- inside this, we get a broken-off piece thick art-knife and a mocked-up anti depressant leaflet with the artists' name on. The release appeared in an edition of sixteen copies, and as of this review the label still has a few copies left for sale through their website.
First up we have “My Heart Is A Beaten & Abandoned Dog”. This opens with a blend of low-key rumbling like tank track bass tones, which are topped by more crust-bound tumbling tones which are closely mimicking the bass tones. As the twenty-eight minute track progress, we get the addition of a haphazard shifting sub-tone map consisting of slow-mo rip bound & tumbling texturing, onto slightly more rapid/ skipping scrapes. The whole thing feels akin to been stuck in a time slowed crave in- as the rocks & earth continual fall in half-time around you. At around the sixteen-minute mark, the pace and layers of the whole thing start to ease back- and by the end of the track we’ve moved to even more slurred pile-up.
Next, we have “My Previous Owner is Everyone around Me” this begins with a mixture a slowly hacking ‘n’ skipping bass tones- these are surrounded by smaller nervy & wiry jittering textures- these both act as a good contrast to the bass tones, and give the whole thing a feeling of both worming distress & low ebb finality. As the ‘wall’ progresses we get the addition of shifting sub-tone pops, snaps and thinner judders- that mimic the main desperate-yet- constant bass tone. Constantly you feel like the whole thing will crawl into its self & stop, but of course, it doesn’t until just over the thirty-five-minute mark.
Both ‘walls’ here utilize texture in a creative way- with both been bleak as hell, but they are different in their own right. The first feels like a rapid & inescapable decline into gloomy despair, while the second feels like the slowing dripping or seeping away of oxygen/ and or blood- which of course fits the theme.
Since he started releasing work a year or two back, De Coene has attempted to push what he’s doing with each new release in a subtle different/creative manner- sure his themes are oft-times hopeless & bleak, but he both tries to vary his theme focus & use of noise with each new release/ venture- and he's done the same with this release. Sure there have been a few projects doing the whole suicidal wall thing- but more often than not they have taken on more dense/ hope battering thick & seared wall craft. With The Sound of a Suicide Note he reins things right back to create two extremely harrowing-yet- bleak entrancing walls that make for a decidedly creative & different take on the sub-genre of suicidal walled noise.