Fouke / Is / The Rita / Vomir — HNW

This four-way  12 inch vinyl split offers-up a track a piece from some of the most respected, innovative and know names with-in the worlds HNW scene. We have a track  a piece from: Richard Ramirez’s( who needs no introduction if you have even brief knowledge of the scene) bigfoot obsessed project Fouke, Canadian HNW & Harsh noise legend The Rita,  French Unrelentingly harsh & black bag wearing Vomir, and lastly Chicago's Is and his interesting use of Harsh noise textures.

As usual with everting on this great Italian based label the black on black vinyl comes in the distinct silver ink on black card slip sleeve, which this time features just the letters HNW on the front and the labels skull and moth emblem on the back. Inside  the sleeve we find a simple, but effective white paper and black text inlay which features the track details on one side, and then on the other side three simple blocks of solid black colour similar to the type used for releases put out by Scottish HNW label The Order of The HNW. So a very simple, stern and powerful bit of packaging for the brutal/unforgiving tracks in side.

First up on side one we have a track from Richard Ramirez’s Fouke project that’s entitled “Jonesville Monster” and this comes in at just under the eight minute mark. The track is a thick, highly persistent and brutal sonic downpour of heavy rainstorm sounding static textured ‘wall-making”. It nicely surrounds you in a grim and rain drenched Bigfoot type vibe- like your lost in some cold and very wet pine forest trying to hide from a slowly stalking Bigfoot beast. Through-out the tracks pace is quite fast and locked with some very slight grain sweeps going on through the tracks near on eight minute runtime.

Secondly on side one we have the IS track that's entitled “ Pivot” and this comes at dead on the nine minute mark. This ‘wall’ is a flowing & rolling mixture of roaring ocean like tones mixed with smaller uniformed looped static jitters- both tones a not that dissimilar from each other in tonality or pitch. As the track goes on IS adds in slightly different  grain make-up to the small static textures, but this is the only really change through-out most of the tracks length. It only becomes a bit more long judder bound in it’s last few moments. So a nice thick & impenetrable track, though it rather lacks the more original & distinctive sound source elements you get in a lot of IS best work.

 

Over onto the second side of vinyl and first up we have The Rita’s “Ripped Until They're Toeless Stockings” which hits dead on the ten minute mark. The track has a similar approach to his work on the “ The Voyage Of The Decima MAS” album, as the tracks built around groups of quite spaced-out to densely arranged noise tones, and the appealing sonic landscape The Rita makes from them. There are two main tones present here: a bigger ripping/juddering tone and a smaller lower almost underwater sounding circular scraping tone- these The Rita takes from being dense crowds to quite stripped and spaced out patterns. It’s another interesting and distinctive take on HNW from this project.

So lastly we have Vomir’s “Why Are We Here? Which is the shortest track here at just over the six minute mark.  This ‘walls’ quite a fast pace mixture of stuck juddering, locked skipping static with a slight wondering under roar. It’s a nice and fairly detailed slice of ‘wall-making’ that gets rather hypnotic. It’s a very nice end to this split.

So “HNW” is another distinctively presented and quality bound release from the always great Urashima label- really if you have even a passing interesting in the scene this is a must have item!