Gomeisa — Treatise
The Gomeisa project has been in existence since 2009 when it started out as more of guitar drone project, but it has morphed into more HNW territory. The projects the solo outlet of Winnipeg based Cole Peters.
Before we get onto the tapes themselves I must stop & praise the great looking & arty box set the four tapes come in. The outside of black tape boxset features screen printed black crape paper that features three or possible four layers of screen printing. This artwork takes in a ornate series of patterns and shapes that look like they could have come from an middle ages European church or an hand illuminated bible- these are printed in slightly metallic purple and sit under all the texts & pictures of the sets artwork. The boxset's text is printed in sliver ink using the old English font to deepen that old feel of the set. The boxes front cover features an old middle ages looking wood cut print of an angel and a star in front of it- the main angle woodcut print is in white, with stars out in white too but the stars inner colour is in a dark muddy purple colour. Inside the box we find an black thin card inlay which features the ornate shapes from the out side of the box. silver text is used to list the boxes sonic contents & on the other side of the inlay is another old woodprinted bit of art thats once more in the white ink, and it features a drawing of naked & bony sinners panicking & drowning in purgatory like water expanse. Truly Sam Stoxen, whose behind the excellent Phage tapes label and also designs & does most of the printing for his release, has really excelled himself to create this beautiful yet grim tinged bit of packaging.
So lets move onto the sets sonic contents which is just a impressive as it's packaging.Each of the eight sides of tape feature a single side long track, and each side of tape is varied, creative & often very hypnotic.
First up on side one of the first tape is “You Go To My Head”, and this offers up nice slice of slowed to mid-paced brooding bass lined juddering. The ‘walls’ built around a purring ‘n’ sinister noise bass drone that has on top of it an 'stuck drawer' like jittering ‘n’ juddering texture that’s static muffled & persistent- both these elements remain fairly fixed through out the tracks runtime with Peters creating a really nicely pressing, brutal & sinister feel. The only really noticeable change here is in the track last 8 or 9 minutes when purring bass drone seems to get more drilling ‘n’ purring in it’s feel. To me the track brings to mind been locked inside a grim oil & blood stained black room whose walls are slowly but surely moving in on you, and your surrounding space is getting smaller & smaller.
Onto the second side of tape one we have “Let The Venom Out”, and this starts out with a crashing ‘n’ forking 20 seconds of Harsh noise texture before in drops into the ‘wall’. The tracks ‘wall’ is built around an mixture of rumbling & battering noise tone, and ever so often Peters sends shards of forking ‘n’ crashing harsh noise underneath the main ‘wall’- these forking elements seem to lessen as the track goes on to be replaced by off-pattern skipping static tonalities, billowing noise storm fronts and some controlled almost junk metal like smarts ‘n’ bashers. The track is fairly dense & thick through-out, though it’s quite active in it’s attack as Peters shifts the battering & rumbling ‘walls’ textures around a fair bit- yet it never moves too far away from it’s original intent and attack. The track starts to atmospherically fade out in the last few minutes with a muffled rumble that has a slight chug in it's tail-you could say the end is quite ambient HNW in it’s hazing & fading wall feel. I guess you’d call this track active HNW with strong Harsh noise undercurrents at play.
Tape twos first sides track is bizarrely entitled “With Blindfold And Stilettos” and this features a rapid juddering ‘n’ swirling wall of noise that’s underfeed by this mass of chattering voices, which sounds like a mixture of muffled radio like chatter, amassed tv banter & other piled up layers of human chatter. The track gives one this great manic ‘n’ overloaded feeling, yet there’s some neat sonic details that catch your ear from time to time like a sudden swiping judder, backwards voice chattering, and even this repetitive harmonic element that appears at one point in the maelstrom of sound.
Tape twos second side is entitled “Kindled, Bridled, Shot Through With Pain”. This track starts out being
built around a huge sounding & crusty mixture of fixed low toned rumbling, which has a muffled sounding mass ripping, tearing, and juddering noise texture over it's top. To start with the tracks active yet lumbering & vast in it’s feel, and to me it brings to mind like two huge woolly mammoths made of purely static fighting in a slow billowing winter storm. As the track goes on it seems to get more fixed & set in it’s feel for quite long dwells, but still from time to time the tracks path shifts & changers from juddering & purring muffled motor like dirtiness, through to hacking ‘n roaring encasements, to slipping fan belt slipping meets crusty juddering and billow noise fronts, and beyond. The tracks a great slice of atmospheric & huge sounding HNW that both dips it’s toe both in active textural shift & also moments of massive crusty dwelling too, yet the track never lose it’s huge ‘n’ crusty vibe….well maybe a little bit towards the end of the track when it drops into this great screeching gear meets slowly searing static textural boil & stream dwell.
Onto tape three & the first sides track is entitled “Blood Rush”. And this track starts out with a haunting & compressed winter storm fixed billowinging & whip wind tone, this is over scored by reverb & drifting noise tones. Then around the second minute it locks down into this big sound buzzing judder 'n' churn meets more shifting & at times bombastic noise tonalities. Latter on some great creepy 'n' spacey like textural screams & ebbs coming out of this texturally rich & swirling track. The rest of the track sees Peters pull the tracks for all manner of textural territory with some neat sudden drops into silence ever so often which makes the noise seem all the more powerful & moody when it kicks back in again. I guess you could say this is an active, yet atmospherically sound mixture of walled noise, noisy & pitch black psychedelics, and lumbering ‘n’ scorching harsh noise. There’s a hell of a lot of shift & movement with in this track, yet it never loses it’s great seared atmospheric walled edge.
Tape threes second sides track is entitled “Pathogen” and this starts out in a surprising quite manner with this spaced out bird like chirp tone, but with in 20 secounds or so a 'wall' suddenly bites in for a few moments then once more we return to the bird chirp tone for another few seconds before a mixture of scraping almost junk texture & stop/ start pumping texture juddering kick-in’s. As the track progresses Peters moves the track through all manner of textural judder, scraping, cluttering and dragging- yet it all still feels very 'wall' like in it’s textural quality, but the lay-out of the noise textures are jerking & seared improv like as if heard through a tunnel of textural muffle, throb and reverb. As the track goes on Peters nicely swings from thick & blunt denseness, through to thinned & swaggered dwells, onto spluttering & spurting like compositional lay-out. All told the tracks a great ‘n’ varied textural ride, and it shows Peters applying a compositional lay-out and attack you wouldn’t normal expect to hear with-in the HNW genre.
Onto the last tape, & the first side of the tape is taken up by “Sometimes At Your Shoulder”. This track start out in quite a thick and more battering manner with Peters mixing a blunt juddering with drilling ‘n’ violently skip/ ripping static texturing on top. As the track goes on Peters takes us on another varied & shifting textural ride, with the track thinning back to juddering ‘n’ rumble textural trips, stop/ start crusty jitters mixed with wiry static hiss fields, blunt rumblings ‘n’ gallopings, and beyond…really this tracks goes through a lot of great & rewarding textural changes. The track is all about rough, crusty ‘n’ muffled sonic geography, and it makes for a great searing and varied sonic ride that nicely drifts then suddenly bites the listener.
So onto the last side of tape & this side’s track is fittingly called “Last Breath”, and this last track rather strips things back for a slice of more tense, thin & brooding wall making. The ‘walls’ built around this great tight rolling meets juddering tone that Peters feeds out along the tracks length in a fairly unchanging manner. On top of this main tone he adds in subtle flecks of other textural sound like warped judders, muffled ‘n’ reverb static echos and darts, taut tinny jitters & all manner of subtle atmospheric detail. I guess you could say that this is edging towards ambient HNW, through the ‘wall’ never really fades or drifts the tones out- I guess it’s down to what you call HNW & what you call ambient HNW. Anyway what ever you want to label it the tracks a great ‘n’ tense end to this box set with Peters showing wonderful sense of self control & great mood setting skills.
So in conclusion this is a very rewarding & varied set which shows Peters push the HNW genre in some very interesting & original directions. Clearly a hell of a lot of time & effort has gone into the noise here, and the great packaging. With out doubt one of this years great HNW releases, which any self respecting 'wall-head' can’t be with out!. So head over to Phage Tapes & pick up one of the 50 copies of this box set before there all gone!