Hana Haruna — [shoppers at suburban mall, May 1993]

Here’s a new two-track album from Hana Haruna (aka Portland’s Ken Jamison). We’re presented with two half-an-hour slabs of dense & texturally detailed walled noise by one of the true masters of the form.

This digital release appears on London’s Harsh Noise Wall net label. Cover artwork-wise, we have yellow hazed/ TV screened shot of what looks like the edge of a shopping escalator, and repeated/ glitch images of fruit & veg shelving- so fitting the themes of the release.

Up first, we have “[9:32, home electronics]”; here we find a tightly woven blend of taut, bothersome bass swirl ‘n’ shred & clamouring static grit grind ‘n’ hiss, with distant drill sustained pitch dwell. At times you can almost make out a beat & harmony structure that hints at bounding techno churn, but this is never fully realised- so one's mind is constantly trying to grab & uncover what is just out of reach.

The other track here is “[16:10, food court]”; here we find steadily rumbling ‘n’ tumbling low-end crustiness, meeting steadily searing mids. This track is less complex in its layered make-up, but it makes up for itself in the hacking & churning unpredictability of the low-end elements.

[shoppers at suburban mall, May 1993] is another consistent release from Hana Haruna, with the project once again summing up an engaging blend of textural detail, wonky creativity, and jittering ‘n’ juddering wall-noise gracefulness.