Hearse Fetish — The Bound Man
This Maryland project has been around since late spring 2011, and this is their first release to not appear on their own label. Instead this two track CDR appears on Italy’s Claustrophilia Records, which is run by Lorenzo from suicidal wall noise project Nascitari.
The CDR comes in a slim-line CD case which features a black ‘n’ white inlay. The whole thing is wrapped in a length of rope or cord which of course nicely fits in with the theme of the release. The release is based around a Ilse Aichinger(respected Austrian writer who is most known for her accounts of her persecution by the Nazi) story of the same name, which details A man awakened by strong spring sunlight discovering that he is bound but in a loose way that makes him smile. He can move his legs a little, and his arms are bound to themselves, not to his body.
Both of the tracks on offer here come in at just over the thirty minute mark, and first of these is “He Had Never Felt So Much At One With His Rope”. This first track is a raging ‘n’ dense yet fairly active bit of walled noise which moves from billowing cluster of noise that are ripped by crackle bound noise patterns. Onto jittering ‘n’ juddering industrial noise drone buzzers that are surrounded clamouring roars. Through to baying billows that are mixed with slowing jitters, and beyond. The ‘wall’ stays fairly thick through- out, and when the tones do shift it’s relatively subtle as the tones are fairly similar in their low to mid ranged setting, though there are a few moments that move towards high end noise, but these never last long. On the whole this is an acceptable enough bit of dense yet active walled noise.
Track two is entitled “The Freedom That He Felt From Having to Adapt to the Rope That Tied Him”, and this track is a much more active take on ‘wall-making’. Basically the track is built around a layer of fixed dense ‘n’ muffled static, and underneath this is blown-out & barely recognisable bit of looped easy listening or country music- all you can make out of this is this jaunting ‘n bobbing bass line melody that just goes on & on. I can appreciate what’s trying to be said here, but for me the bass line is just too happy sounding, and it gets very, very grating quickly.
So to sum up the first track here is an effective enough slice of active yet dense walled noise, and the second track is somewhat of a failed experiment with a truly annoying bass line running through it. You’ve got to give kudos to Hearse Fetish, as they do keep trying to do something a little different with-in the HNW setting on each thier new releases- it’s just sometime these experiments are not as successful as others.