Fouke — Stenwyken
The project takes it’s name from the small US town of Fouke which is located on the Arkansas Texas Border and is most know for sightings of its Bigfoot like monster which was made famous by the 1970’s film Legend of 'Boggy Creek' and the tapes title comes from the American Indians name for the big foot-so we’re very deep in big foot influence through-out & as you’d expect this stretchers on to ‘walls’ of sound inside too.
Ramirez offers up here one long 30 minute track that is basically built around two tightly jittering, interlocking & rapidly moving elements; first we have a thick line of juddering crisp static, then secondly we have this very jittering & stuck metallic cluttering sound which at times almost sounds like a strange, alien & metallic guttural voice which of course could possible be that of the Big foot monster. Over the tracks length Ramirez keeps the two elements thick, tightly wound and a near impenetrable meshed wall of sound. There are no great shift or progression through-out the piece, though Ramirez does alternate each elements activities & looped movement quite nicely which keeps the track interesting & rewarding through-out.
As with anything on the Sugar Hill, Georgia based tape label Satan's Din the tape comes in a distinctive oversized white plastic box which brings to mind a smaller version of the clamshell VHS boxes form the 80’s. The artwork inlays on three sides of the box. And for artwork we have a black & white retake of the famous Legend of Boggy creek poster from the 1970’s of the Fouke beast running along a river with dense woodland in the background.
‘Stenwyken’ offers up another worthwhile release from the highly prolific & muilti project linked Ramirez; sure you can recognise this straight away as a Ramirez project, but there’s enough edge to the sounds he uses to make the ‘walls’ on offer here distinctively Big foot themed.