House Mother — Chant
The release features four approximately hour-long tracks, one to each CD - there is a folded A5 insert that comes inside the release with the tracklisting and a further image - this time a man with a microphone holds up a shirt emblazoned "HOLD THAT POSE FOR ME" while an audience looks on, either past him or at him. Going in, I had no idea who the man was, but the microphone suggested him to be some kind of vocal artist - with the caption on the shirt he holds possibly some kind of lyrical slogan. The first CD's track is entitled 'one thousand one', the second 'two thousand two', continuing like this for the third - the fourth and final is entitled 'and hold that pose for me'. The last bit of information we're given is that the album was recorded in Southampton in March 2017. Upon first reading this I thought Clive might have sat on this material for some time before releasing, as this not uncommon amongst many within the HNW scene, but heading over to Clive's website I found his announcement for the release dated all the way back to May 2017. In his announcement he describes the release as "four hour-ish tracks of shifting wall noise" and as the first release under a new label alias "house of violence", "another venture to waste plastic and cobalt".
Having gone in to this almost completely blind (I had listened to the house mother on Fall Into Void), but having collaborated and performed with Clive in the past and being aware of much of his previous recorded material, curiosity got the better of me and I had to approach the artist with some questions to learn more about the project, the release and some of the motivations and meaning behind it all. Clive explained to me that the person in the artwork images is Dashaun Wesley - known for both MC'ing and voguing - and that the projects outlying themes have been 'outsider nods' to voguing from the get-go. For those who are unaware of what this is, Wikipedia has the following to say: "Vogue, or voguing, is a highly stylized, modern house dance originating in the late 1980s that evolved out of the Harlem ballroom scene of the 1960s. It gained mainstream exposure when it was featured in Madonna's song and video "Vogue", and when showcased in the 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning." Clive cites this documentary as an inspiration as well as Wesley and a number of other contemporary 'voguers' - the style of dance appears to have begun to rise in popularity in the recent years, with a discernable voguing scene here in the UK (where both myself and Clive are based). With this said about all of the outward themes the releases tackle, Clive explained that, sonically, the project had begun as dedicated to 'live to tape' shifting, dynamic wall noise but soon after derailed into the broader realm of 'harsh noise exploration'.
Entering into 'one thousand one', there is an introductory moment of abrasive slicing and scraping and for a moment I think the release might be as dynamic as the previous house mother album, out on the Fall Into Void label - but while that album is a single cassette made up of four near-ten-minute harsh noise tirades, this album is four hour-length CD-fillers and as I rightly assumed, the abrasive and dynamic introduction swiftly veered and derailed into a high-energy, rattling and railing full-frontal HNW assault with much less movement. As my description suggests, there is nothing very immersive or trance-inducing about the wall, as it builds it does become somewhat more monotonous but, for all of its visceral scraping, never allows this monotony the chance for the listener to 'zone out' - that is, the average listener. For hardened wallers, this maximal and blaring style could be considered more ideal for immersion than much ANW or other drone-based music that is less abrasive. Personally, come to the half-way mark I had found myself lulling into a bit of a 'wall stupor', something I had not anticipated as I was listening at quite a high volume on headphones and so had presumed that the abrasive quality would keep me from such a lull. I think this speaks to the walls quintessential "wall" qualities - as shifting as it is, after the erratic introduction the walls shifting takes on a masterfully delicate and super-gradual turn that leaves the listener to either fall into such a state as I described - or to forcibly keep their mind alert and active, hunting out new textures as and when they rear their faces. What had been gradually shiting but lacking intensity receives an injection of energy towards the end of the track, however, at roughly fifty minutes in. It is as though we're rendered from the immersion we were not cheaply afforded by a rubbery, bouncing mass of shredding high-end that cuts into the ripples of mid-to-low noise that had been until now accompanying the weighty low-end rumble rather harmoniously. Everything seems to 'liven' here, as though the wall, knowing it is coming to an end, whips itself into a frenzy, or at least attempts to - well aware such an attempt may be futile.
'two thousand two' has no such erratic entry, instead, it burst us into what is immediately very monotonous HNW only seconds in. The weight of the first wall is no longer present, and where the low-end falters, the mid takes up the fore, a hoarse, rattling almost animalistic and also wind-like battery with its own delicate assortment of softer hues, careful high-end crackles that scatter around the edges of the main warble and really help the listener focus on something somewhat more engaging than the otherwise run of the mill HNW "base" the track lunges outwardly from. In the small details, we're able to listen and immerse as in the first wall - perhaps significantly more easily in this case. Personally, I found much of the tiny crackling to be that perfectly 'sinewy' variety that lends itself so well to the imagination - very akin to the smoldering embers of a fire in that archetypal "snapping and crackling" manner that we associate with natural, acoustic sounds taking place within the real world. Listening further, this wall does very well to remind the listener of all the similarities HNW has with field recording - and I am sure there is likely many old field recordings in existence that could be described as approximating the "HNW sound" long before anyone could have imagined or envisioned that such a sound would be found within noise as a scene, existing as a niche within the larger noise one. I can't help but wonder, though, whether this wall truly induced these thoughts or if I am personally biased - as I trace one of my own entry-points into HNW back to a split Clive Henry put out with the French HNW titan Vomir.
Rather abruptly, at the ten-minute mark, the wall is interrupted by a high-pitched tone that really assaults the ears - before leaping head-first back into the wall. And yet the wall is changed now and begins to vault and veer with a similarly unpredictable quality to that of the opening of the first wall. Any hopes at lulling into immersion with this wall seem well and truly scarpered and the listener is put fairly 'on edge', waiting for the next sudden change throughout the rest of its veering course. The walls shifting goes from gradually changing to being very palpably erratic and back again as it winds on - there is interesting exploration here in terms of how the dynamic territory of harsh noise can be wed with the long-form listening of HNW, and it is quite hard to discern if this is done intentionally or even if it is done well. It seems acceptable for me to assume that most people listening will know and understand that Clive has a penchant for working outside of barriers and constraints often applied to form (and particularly to those applied to wall noise) - and will go to great lengths to hybridize form to arrive at the sound he desires. With this said, it might also be generally accepted that the bulk of Clive's "audience" prefer long-form HNW to be purposefully itself and not attempt to climb backward and forwards through dynamically shifting harsh noise and minimal yet abrasive walled noise trajectories. In my own personal opinion, I feel as though Clive's experimentations with from here achieve something that few other artists are even attempting to achieve - in either the HNW or harsh noise communities.
Twenty minutes in, the wall seems to have settled itself down again. I'm almost led to think that this might be a false sense of security with its own deafening siren on its way - to rip the listener from their stupor and push them back into harsh reality. I think it may have been around the thirty-five-minute mark I set aside my doubts and gave into the stupor once more, though. Come the forty-minute mark and a granular, sand-like funneling slowly closes the wall - the volume dips down, the frequencies approach that ringing high-pitched quality you might associate with low-quality pin-sized microphones that were often built into electronics (I'm thinking webcams and phones, particularly). It is as though the wall is being squashed and destroyed - someone accidentally put the CD in their washing machine. Where the sudden and swift volume slant downwards suggested this wall might close early, though, the listener is surprised to continue to stomach this new, funneled and comically low-bit miniature replica of the HNW it replaces. Ultimately, this funneling seems to have been just another experimentation like that of the brief and erratic high-pitched halt- and the HNW returns to its 'former glory' rather swiftly and yet with a notable tendency for changes to go from gracefully gradual to totally unpredictable in the blink of an eye.
'three thousand three' begins with a throbbing bass-gargle, it cuts out and we hear that classic 'TV static' kind of hum, it cuts back in with short stabs - eventually, a stab lets loose the flood of static, and the wall can begin in earnest. There is something deliciously 'gargling' to the quality that both the bass and mid frequencies to this will take on - and as we have been pushed into expecting, the line between harsh noise and HNW becomes blurred frequently - at times the dynamic nature feels 'within rights' for walled noise and at other times it is clear that most people listening would agree that this release features a marriage of both HNW and harsh noise, sometimes the two attempt to co-exist in close quarters but most of the time there are clearly delineated 'sections' for each in spite of a lack of any real 'breaks' - rather than carve each up into definitive tracks they're subtle and implied and this clearly works best. Twenty-minutes in and the 'stupor' is back - that perfectly throaty gargle has continued with moderate, subtle shifts here and there - most changes, if they really were there, almost implacable - a brooding, staunch weight has accumulated in this time and I honestly feel quite hazy and hypnagogic at this point. Edging towards the forty-minute mark, without breaking much of the haze-like immersion I've wracked up, the wall begins to heighten in intensity - everything begins to move a little quicker and a little louder - it is at once effective and subtle. Come to the fifty-minute mark and it's fair to say this has been the 'staunchest' offering so far in the release, with little diversion from the main HNW trundle, something to really soak into after the past uncertainty of the previous tracks.
In closing, we have 'and hold that pose for me' - with the title altering drastically from the first three I have to admit I expected the sound to alter as well. Funnily enough, it seems to be almost identical in opening to the third CD of the set - I find myself wondering if this may be due to human error and is, in fact, the same wall, but then I recall that there was a spluttering foray of static jabs before the floodgates opened and that this was not the case here. No, rather, this sounds as though the same wall as from the previous disc continued to record and was cut in half to fit the format - this wall begins as a logical continuation of the weighty trundle we closed on. This is interesting because it dawns on me only now in the release that there was no such transition between any of the other CD's in the set, and yet I didn't exactly 'miss' this 'natural' wholeness, in spite of it being one I've come to expect from longform releases of HNW. The slow-churning crawl of this static beast is perfectly minimal - not as abrasive as any of the previous offerings and yet hardly the 'calming' end of walled noise either, it strikes an interesting middle-ground. When the wall begins to close on twenty-minutes, it shifts in pitch taking a remarkable 'plunge' - the wall seems fairly unaltered at first, the same rasping textures wrap themselves around this new incarnation, but slowly and surely a 'new birth' is ushered in - gradual shifting claws in. Something about the textures here really begin to bring out the high-end, it becomes more piercing and 'grating' - if I was the kind to cringe or feel spine-prickles from fingernails on blackboards I would perhaps feel the same way now, but I'm not. Instead, there's something at once soothing and at the same time disturbing about it - in many ways, this duality begins to remind me of ASMR in a weird, quite roundabout way. As the gradual shifting continues this last wall seems to take on new mental imagery - it really feels to me like the wall is metamorphosing. And as it does so, the wall takes on all the weight of connotations this process brings with it - the wall becomes more and more animated and insect-like the more it pursues this metamorphosis.
All in all - Chant is an amazing release that explores fresh ground in the way it experiments with form and attempts to wed dynamic, shifting walled noise with dynamic harsh noise in a way that truly doesn't end up tilting one into the other as is so often the case when artists attempt such a feat. It's nice to hear something new and different from Clive too, having been an ardent fan of his HNW work. The presentation is not too fancy but not too shabby either for being a DIY self-release. It's a shame to think that Clive hasn't continued to churn out similar releases on this imprint - as of writing this, Clive hasn't updated his website with any new releases and I'm unsure if the label is considered to be 'operating' still or not. With that said, I think we can expect more great noise releases from Clive in the future one way or the other - if not through self-released stunners then at least through releases asked of him by labels who appropriately recognize the significance of his material. I would highly recommend this release to those interested in both HNW and harsh noise (although if you're only interested in one or the other, this release might annoy you). I would recommend contacting the artist for availability if you'd like one, he might also clear up whether the label is continuing or not for you! You can find Clive's contact on his website here