Dosis Letalis/The Ide of Earth — The Unceasing Scars

Here’s a short split on the ever-dependable Black Ring Rituals, run by Brandon Wald, who is himself behind numerous projects including the brilliant Support Unit. As stated, it’s a short tape with about ten minutes of material each from Dosis Letalis - a name very familiar to me - and The Ide of Earth - a new name to me. The Unceasing Scars comes wrapped in a collaged inlay which reminds me of a dystopian sci-fi Rudolf Eb.er - lots of flesh mutation and manipulation.

The Dosis Letalis side of the split features two short wall noise tracks, titled ‘Rip-Roaring Pt. 1’ and ‘Rip-Roaring Pt. 2’. The first of these draws on the stuttering noise style often associated with The Rita, with large chunks of gritty noise lumbering though the speakers in patterns that nearly attain metronomic rhythmic qualities but which always falter before a rhythmic pattern is achieved. I always find this a brilliant effect, equal parts entrancing and frustrating, suggesting patterns to the ears and mind that can be predicted - before jolting the mind back to square one. The second piece, ‘Pt. 2’, continues this approach but now the timbre has changed - more precisely the timbre of the gaps has changed, with a slightly resonant, room-like quality, on the verge of feedback. This raises the interesting question as to what my mind should be concentrating on, the noise chunks, or the sound in the gaps, since both now appear to carry equal weight, and beguiling qualities, in the sound field. I’m never the biggest fan of short HNW pieces on paper, but whenever I actually listen to them I do find myself listening in a different way and getting a lot from them - these Dosis Letalis tracks very much fit in that category.

The second side, featuring four pieces from The Ide Of Earth, offers us a different approach and sound world. The first track, and longest at nearly seven minutes, ‘Abysmal Murk’, begins in a very effective low-key HNW style, before becoming overwhelmed by a somewhat loose, saturated layer that isn’t overly satisfying, however this soon dissipates, leaving the original textures. These are nice, gritty - gravel to Dosis Letalis’s rocks - and they move around the stereo-field. The unsatisfying, almost synthy, noise textures do make returns, and this repetition, and the fact that the track is thus composed, does make them more interesting  - however, it’s the background layers that are much more intriguing. ‘Bone Tumbler’ is next and rattles by in less than 30 seconds, it sounds, and I suspect is, a bucket being smashed about through distortion; ‘In Love With A Wall’ then loops by in another 30-second burst, this time propelled by a looping percussive hit and a short, spacious synth melody, distorted to saturation. Both of these tracks don’t amount to much, indeed can’t amount to much given their duration, but that really does add to their qualities, working as odd little ‘over before you know it’ vignettes between the longer tracks and adding colour and dynamism. The final piece, ‘World Of Welts’, itself only just clear of two minutes in length, finishes the side in ragged glory, and seems to sum up all the previous tracks. Again built around a stuttering loop of noise and blown-out melody, the track feels much more layered and active than the preceding works, basing itself on a harsh stereo split with a loping noise loop in one ear and a truly harsh metal grinding noise in the other - a whole track made purely of this would be very nice, thank you.

The Unceasing Scars is a really interesting split, and limited to 40 copies, so worth grabbing a copy (or visiting the Black Ring Rituals bandcamp). Both projects take chances, whilst remaining fully grounded in harsh noise, and whilst we’re currently living in a glorious age for good old-fashioned harsh noise, I still feel that experimentation is often a rarity, and thus to be applauded. The second Dosis Letalis piece is particularly enthralling, and aided in that respect by its relative brevity in the world of HNW; The Ide of Earth’s refusal to sit still, sonically, and refusal to stick to traditional noise tropes, again aided by the shortness of the tracks, gives it a real quality. Definitely, a tape that will reward frequent relistening.