Dosis Letalis — Surroundings

Surroundings severs up two sides of sound craft that sits somewhere between subdued walled noise and ambient texturing- not extreme enough to be called all-out HNW, but too seared to be labeled ANW or low key static texturing. This C60/ digital download appeared on Brooklyn based Modern Tapes label in April of this year- coming in an edition of fifteen copies, which are sadly all sold out now.

Package wise the white shelled cassette is present in a small tin (like a tobacco tin) with stuck-on monochrome & murkily abstract artwork, and hand numbering. Inside we find a fold-out photocopied mini-poster featuring enlarged version of the cover artwork, a few stickers & download code.

If you even lightly dipped into the walled noise genre in the last few years, I’m sure you know Serbian noise wall project Dosis Letalis, who has been become one of the more prolific yet still quality bound projects to surface in recent times. With the  project's output moving between no-nonsense wall matter and more progressive/ experimental stuff like this C60. Featured here are two side-long tracks simply titled Surroundings 1 & 2.

So on side A we have “Surroundings 1” –this brings together a grainy trailing & slightly rattling texture, that’s underfed by a muffled circular drone tone and on top of this we smaller scratching ‘n jittering textures. It feels like your constantly been fed into a low powered & aged roller machine, that constantly feels like it will slow more yet never does. And as it progresses one becomes more aware of this higher-pitched tone hiss in the back of everything, which nicely edges up the tense/ tautness of the track.

Moving onto to the second side & we, of course, have “Surroundings 2”- and here we find a subtle simmering blend of the following textures- a fringe like juddering & purring low-end, a constant cicada-like feasting, and off pattern wiry snips & snaps. The whole thing seems to enchase you in this lightly buzzing & roasting sound world - almost akin to a high summer heat haze converted into soundform. There ‘s a nice blend of more pressing & gentle seared textures, and more flighty & thin fare- which nicely grounds one's attention yet at the same time pulls you in further so you can map the smaller details.

Surroundings is a nicely low-key walled noise release, that grows in both sonic depth & rewarding tonally clarity the more you play it. It’s great to see that even after being in the wall scene for five-plus years Dosis Letalis still has the ability to put out creative & original takes on the genre- it’s just a pity the release disappeared so fast, oh well it’s still well worth purchasing as a Download!.