David Wallraf — Crudeltá Necessaria

While a picture may be worth a thousand words, we're still unsure about the word quantity of sound. The amount that can be conveyed with a simple sigh, laugh, moan, or groan is almost limitless, and this efficiency of communication is often overlooked. Crudeltá Necessaria is a short, effective, and evocative work that speaks far more than the run time suggests, being just shy of thirty minutes. Composed around a 4:1 ratio, the first side of the cassette flows between styles and structures a bit, building more tension and giving a better overview of Wallraf's sonic thesis. Opening with the meaty "Porcile," the mood is quickly set with haunting female choral samples played along side slow, industrial hits and ebbing feedback. "È Inutile. Niente È Più Possibile, Ormai." is next and a pretty quick hitter. Following the well placed feedback from the previous track, this one strips the mood for more of a grim assault. This continues but shifts in more of a horror score direction with "È Inutile. La Abisso In Cui Mi Spingi È Dentro Di Te." Starting heavily laden with noise, this piece slowly thins itself out and focuses on the high, oscillating feedback to carry the rest of the track forward. Bringing in a creepy aesthetic, this one adds much needed terror to the album. As a prelude to the side long "Petrolio," side A's final track, "La Nuova Periferia" ups the ante with the level of noise, industry, and run time. Plodding forth like a factory tour, the noisy, industrial clamor brings about an urgency that the previous tracks eluded to with their whistling feedback and haunting evocations. The field recordings overlayed here add depth as well as a torturous essence like the factory isn't all it seems. Utilizing the feedback as segue leitmotif, "La Nuova Periferia" builds back to a noisy crescendo before fading out and ending the first half of Crudeltá Necessaria. Picking up where side A leaves off, "Petrolio" fades into waves of cascading noise and industrial violence which make up the majority of the track/side. Wallraf takes these destructive layers and moves them to and fro, in and out of the mix, allowing more subtle synthesizers and "musical" elements to appear, giving a false sense of security. The waves of noise inevitably come back, in varying forms, to make their mark on the listener. With much of the piece based in droning layers, there is an engaging fluidity that keeps everything together, even when the sounds are pretty disparate. This attention to composition is what keeps Crudeltá Necessaria from being just an ordinary work of noise and instead a well constructed statement.