Dead Body Collection — Dead Body Parts
For the uninitiated Dead Body Collection is the harsh noise wall project of Serbian based Aleksandar Nenad. The project is one of the most prolific, unforgiving & grim of the world wide HNW scene. Since August 2009 DBC has put out over sixty releases & counting. The projects sound is offten very dense, bass heavy, overloaded, fixed, macabre & brutal in it’s atmosphere.
Before we dig deep into that sonic side of things lets talk about the box & the packaging for this set. The 5 tapes come in over sized A5 white vinyl box which features suitable sickening & grim full colour artwork. The front cover features nine little snapshots of decaying & diseased body parts against a black background, with the BDB logo & the box sets title on the top & the bottom of the front cover. On the back cover there’s a picture of the end of a discoloured & dirt mortuary wall with a pair of dead & decaying feet in the top half of the picture. Inside the box the tapes are laid out with three tapes on the first side of the box, the two tapes on other side. The tapes feature white labels on each side of the tapes, and these feature blood red lettering of each dead body part each side is named after. Then to finish off the packing there’s a single sheet of white paper listing all the tracks contents & when it was all recorded- once again this is all in a blood red ink. The ltd edition version of this set also featured a t-shirt….but sadly I think that edition is long gone.
So onto the tapes themselves- each of the five tapes features two side long tracks, so there are ten ‘walls’ in total here each lasting to or near the forty five minute mark. All the material here is taken from between September to November 2009, and this is the earliest of the HNW material that Dead Body collection recorded.
First-up on side A of tape one we have an track entitled “Spleen”, and this 'wall' is an urgent mix of what sounds like the slightly sped-up recordings of flies feasting on a decaying corpse texturing, churning cold TV static, and this is underfed & weaved by a slightly slower ‘n’ stretched out judder or blown-out throbbing tonality. As the track progresses it seems to get more dense & surrounding, but in reality this is a fairly unmoving slice of HNW. At times the track reminds me of the small static textured yet detailed & dense walls of projects like Skönhet, yet there’s a quite grim & sickening air present here that is not found in such projects. So this ‘wall’ is a great start to the set as it surrounds you nicely for its complete running time in cold, detailed & dense static texturing.
Onto side B of tape one & we have a track entitled “Bladder”. This tracks ‘wall’ starts out as a great mass of slightly swirling ‘n’ murky static that seems to amass around you in a semi uncertain yet wide circular manner. As the track moves towards it’s 5th minute things seem to semi firm-up(or maybe your just getting used to the ‘wall’ feel), and one can make out a several layers of juddering tone that’s tipped/ weaved by this small crashing static tone that sounds like muffled & digitised loop recording of the sea crashing in. As the track goes on the digitized seashore crashing element seems to rise higher up in the ‘walls’ mix, and this nicely builds a feel of slightly muffled yet building & sadistic tension. Through by just over the mid –way it seems to have lost it edge as the whole ‘wall’ seems to become slightly more sludge bound & descending in it’s feel. The rest of the track sort of see-saws between the more building & descending feel- yet the ‘wall’ always remains firm & dense through-out. All told this is another rewarding ‘wall’, and I do really like the way DBC is subtly altering the tracks textures for maximum brutal atmospheric effect.
Onto tape two & on side A we have “Lung”, and this mixers together a boring at times almost tribal drone that’s over raged by this battering ‘n’ crisp rapid juddering & jittering tonalities. The rapid juddering ’n’ jitter textures do shift & alter ever so often giving one the feeling of been on some sadistic conveyor belt that has different tools of torture attached to it- yet the track never shifts totally away from it’s juddering meets boring template. So I guess it’s best to call this track active & often agitated tribal industrial licked HNW.
Over on side B of tape two we have “Thyroid” and this track’s ‘wall’ is built around a muffled, ragged & lo-fi bass judder that’s underfed by swirling small static slight ‘n’ sway. To start with the track brings to mind a huge billow beast that’s been held under water- the beast is in it’s last struggles to get to the surface & air. As the tracks goes on the billowing ‘n’ juddering gets more downwardly raging, and the smaller static elements become more circular and descend- as if the beast it been slowed pulled to in it’s water grave. The tracks ok, but it does start to drag a little around the twenty to twenty five minute- so there’s an effective set of textures here they just lack focus & depth to keep you hanging on until the end.
Onto tape three & on side A we have “Tongue”, and this track continues to deepen the lo-fi vibe of the “Thyroid” track. The wall is built very muffled mixture of rumbling drum like billowing & caustic hissing juddering. It feels like a very screwed & muffled mixture of looped drum parade and airport/ helicopter recordings. It truly is a very brutal & ear searing track, though it does rather lack any of the grim atmosphere or murderous tension that DBC is know for, it also becomes tiresome fairly soon. Again some neat textures & ideas, but its just lacking slightly in execution.
Over onto side B of tape three we have “Uterus”, and this track is built around bass drilling ‘n’ juddering static tonalities that are joined together into slightly ghosted yet brutal haze of noise. DBC has built the ‘wall’ so it feels like the drilling ‘n’ judder tones are constantly pummelling & battering into you. This track nicely makes up for the slightly underwhelming last two tracks, as it pins you to the floor with it’s continual drilling ‘n’ boring bass singed walled noise attack & it never seems to lose it’s power/ brutal addictiveness.
Moving onto tape number four and on side A we have track entitled “Eye”. And this track is built around low rumble drone currents that are overcut by cold ‘n’ repetitive slicing tone- imagine walking through a slow constantly rumbling earth quake in the middle of Antarctic and all around you the ice is slowly cracking, slicing & breaking. The ‘wall’ here brings to mind the colder & chilled HNW of the Sarajevo based Smrznik project- yet DBC does add some of his own grim identity to the track, with the listener feeing like there slowly but surely geting more & more engulfed with chilling yet moorish bleakness.
On tape four side B we find the track “Liver”. And here we get a ‘wall’ built from a mixture of rumbling ‘n’ static slicing tones- DBC pulls together three or four layers of noise to create this engulfing & unstoppable textural battering. I really like the mix here between the more meaty rumble and small slicing static here, and it gives one the feeling of falling through a machine full of 1000s of continually slicing blades. Again this is another worthwhile track, and you certainty find your self getting sucked into the ‘wall’ nicely over its running time.
And so onto tape number 5 the last in the boxset- side A’s track is entitled “Intestine”. This track is based around a mixture of juddering caustic rolling thats coated & seared with pummelling tonalities, sudden grating fan belt sustains, and almost groove based static jittering. I’m not really sure you can strictly call this track HNW, maybe at a stretch active wall noise- but to me it’s more like harsh noise that has some walled tendencies & a very overloaded industrial vibe to it. The tracks ok, but nothing too special.
And lastly on side B of tape five we have the track “Teeth”. And this ‘wall’ is built around a mixture of juddering ‘n’ boring noise that’s swirled and bayed by these small swirling & muffled grains of static noise. The tracks ok, but it rather lacks the wow factor- again it feels like there some neat textures here but they’ve not really been built together for optimum effect & engrossment.
So to sum up “Dead Body Parts” is certainly a very brutal, lengthy, yet at times fairly varied (with-in a mainly fixed HNW framework) collection of walled noise. There are some really effective & compelling slices of HNW here, yet there also some rather underwhelming & uninspired slices of HNW too- but on the whole the more rewarding & worthwhile walled noise out weighs the not so great stuff.
So if you’re a fan of DBC’s work this is with-out a doubt a must have item, as it sees him experiment with different takes on walled noise to find his own sonic identity. And if you’re a genreal fan of mainly fixed & dense walled noise this is also worth picking up, as there really are some great & hypnotic slices of HNW on offer here.