Foul — Bolt
As with most of the releases on this excellent California based HNW label the tapes cover is sliver metallic/ black foil printed. With this tapes front cover featuring a rather bleak looking photograph of a winter forest and its leafless trees, with what looks like some form of viewing platform in the middle of the woodland.
Side ones untitled track kicks in with a very thick, pummelling and tight wall of static that’s underfed by a constant storm roar. As we move into the tracks second minute the split between the two tones becomes a little clearer and the tones often switch position from front to back of the mix. The storm roar really stays on much the same path, but the wall of static element has become more looped, twitching, slicing or sucking in and out in it’s feel- this element really sucks you deeper and deeper into the tracks hypnotic yet dense & seared grain. The whole track brings to trying to cross a wind battered moor that lit by moonlight and smells strongly of death, and which ever way you look it all looks very similar. I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for Foul’s thick and darkly unrelenting wall making, but this stands as one of his of one of his most moorish and addictive slices of HNW yet.
Over onto side two and we have another side long and untitled track. This ‘wall’ starts out with a more muffled, crude and fast battering wind like tone that gets more battering and stark as the track goes along. Underneath this main tone is a roaring & muffled, and is sails at times quite haphazard under the other tones. The tracks path is really built around the growing then receding of battering wind static tones. It brings to mind walking through a series of concert tunnels with the wind battering outside, and ever so often you walk past either a crack or a large hole in the structure where the whipping wind snakes in. This sides tracks not as hypnotic as the first sides track, but it has more of a harsh atmospheric spirit about it which is a nice contrast to the swirling and locked battering charms of the first sides track
So “Bolt” finds Foul offering up another two appealing, dark and thick walls of HNW matter. Certainly the first sides wall is one of the best things this projects ever done, but side two's track is none too shabby either. Pick this up before there all gone!