Fouke — Black Lake
Fouke has long been one of my favourites of Mr Ramirez’s many projects- because each release mangers to conjure up a brutal yet atmospheric vibe of the Big foot, or been stalked by one. And also I’ve been intrigued for many years by the legend of the Big foot, from it’s many sightings around the world & of course the many moives/docs about the subject.
This release seemingly takes it’s title from the 1976 US movie “Creature from Black Lake”, and the movie told the story of a group of fishermen that are attacked in the Louisiana swamps. When the word gets out that a mysterious Bigfoot-type creature was what attacked them, two researchers come to a small town to study and hopefully discover what the beast is.
Side A features just one track “Tsul 'Kalu”( which is the Cherokee name for Big Foot). The track starts off with a muffled mixture of night-time woodlands sounds, and an American man talking about believing in Bigfoot’s. Then pretty soon we drop into the ‘wall’ which is a great active mixture of brutal bass bound buffeting, mid-range juddering static races/ gallops, & this weird chattering animalistic texture that pops up time to time. Around the five & half minute mark we drop down to another very muffled recording of the same man talking about some one stalking a Bigfoot, but pretty soon the noise engulfs the sample again. When the ‘wall’ comes back in again it’s a more searing & rapid attack than it was before, with this galloping/ racing mixture of semi aquatic & roasting tones, which brought to mind a raging flight with a bigfoot in a body of water. By the 8th minute a billowing intense bass bound judder & roasting textured bound has over taken, and this has nice brutal skipping 'n' juddering mid-tone static lines going through it. Once again around the 9.30 mark a now total mangled tape recording sample pops up stuck in the ‘wall’, but this doesn’t last long & we return back to the roaring bass lined billow & static judder type ‘walling’. The rest of the twenty minute track finds Ramirez skilfully petering the ‘wall’ back to almost AWN territory, and then backing up again to raging/ battering searing walled noise attack- with this great churning ‘n’ stalking static grain running through it, this sounds like something ferreting 'n' roaming through woodland. The track finishers with more muffled recoding of the man talking about someone stalking a Bigfoot.
Over onto side B, and first up we have “Ape Canyon”, and this finds some very muffled interview or film dialogue with a hunter talking about his dog barking at night. Then at just over the minute mark the ‘wall’ slams in, & it’s a very urgent mixture of buzzing ‘n’ juddering mid-tone noise wall- that sounds like something huge been electrocuted & jerking on a huge metal rack. This track comes in at near the three minute mark.
Lastly we have “Return To Black Lake” which starts with another dialogue sample with a man saying ‘ I don’t want you Yankee boys saying one word about that creature, it just scared the devil out of my wife’ , then we’re into the ‘wall’ which is a highly urgent/ roasting mix of billowing flare like mid-range texturing that weaved with stalking ‘n’ jittering more white-out static texturing. The ‘wall’ starts to nicely ease back & shift down a gear, as if it might go ANW….yet it never does, but instead creates this nice roasting Continued descent.
So this is another rewarding, brutalizing & atmospheric slab of walled noise from the Fouke project. Sadly this sold out in the blink of an eye as it was only ltd to a scandalous ten copies….so it’s ether see if you can hunt down a copy on discogs, or hope one day soon some switched on label will decided to reissue the entire works of this great project.