Insurgent — A Call To Arms
The box that three tapes come in is one of the more attractive and colourful you’ll see coming out of the scene too featuring a reproduction of the koran’s rich red and detailed cover design, this is nicely shadowed on the labels of the three tapes inside the long white vinyl tape box. Also inside the box is a small write-up about the releases intentions to introduce the listener to a culture, religion and mindset that has yet to bent or broken by modern traditions and western culture- which I guess is a fairly good description of the Islamic faith and doctrine.
The three tapes find Insurgent mixing together his engrossing, often complex, atmospheric and highly creative static texturing & patterning with a myriad of different samples and recordings- theses go from: passionate English speakers talking about the Islamic way mixed with rich chanting, onto all manner of prayer that’s both beautiful and ornate as well as powerful and mood setting, through to ranted Arabic talking and chatter, onto samples from American news media, to gun fire and soldier field recordings, and beyond. There are also moments here when there are no samples, and Insurgents textures come into there own showing both the way static texturing can be both powerful, detailed and very rewarding on it’s own right.
Insurgent's noise matter goes from: static texturing, through to strip noise searings, and mainly minimalistic Harsh noise wall texturing. Sonically he moves from: jumping, skipping & jittering patterns, through to atmospheric grain trails, onto sudden masses or lumps of enraged static or feedback ridges, and beyond- it’s breath taking really the variation of texture and movement on one side of tape alone which keeps you entranced, entertained and at times brutalized when things get denser.
All three tapesare really of very high quality being rewarding and moorish from start to finish, and each side of tape features a single forty five minute track. Though all four and half hours of the set are great for me the highlight of the set has the be the simply breathtaking and haunting last side of the last tape (side F) which is entitled “The Final Reflection II (Bathing In Your Glory)”. This finds insurgent building together layers of different tone/pitched Arabic chanting & Islamic pray into disorientating, hallucinogenic, beautiful and awe-inspiring mesh of vocal noise- there’s only traces elements of static texturing or noise on this side, but it doesn’t really matter as this is truly awe inspiring stuff & I guess you could call in human tongued Walled noise.
So in summing up “A Call to Arms” is a large scale, textural detailed and shifting collection of static texturing and minimalistic yet often highly creative and complex HNW matter, that’s weaved with violent, disturbing and awe inspiring sample matter. Clearly many hours and days of work has gone into creating and perfecting this masterpiece, so it’s a great pity that this is now complete out of print once more!.
In total this set has received a first tape pressing of twenty copies, and a secound pressing of thirty copies -both of which sold out in a blink of the eye. So hopefully now some wise and brave( considering the subject matter) label will reissue this heady, brutal and very thought provoking masterpiece in at least an edition of several hundred, because more people need to hear and appreciate this great, great set!