Kadaver — Watch It Die

Kadaver is a noise project that often deliberately blurs & melds noise sub-genres to create a dense & disturbing sound that’s often difficult to peg- and with this recent(ish) C40 the project is very much doing it once again. Over the two untitled side long tracks here, we find elements of death industrial, textured noise, PE, dark ambience, industro-drone, muddy–to-seared harsh noise, and general dense-yet-unease industrial sound craft blended together, to create a sound that is equally searing 'n' unsettling ghoulish in its attack.

Watch It Die appeared on Italian noise label Murderabilia Records- with seemingly the red shelled cassette presented in a red ink printed black baggie. We were only sent a digital DL for review, so I can’t comment any more on the physical presentation, but it looks neat from the pictures I’ve seen. The tape was Ltd to twenty-five copies, and these sadly are now all sold out with the label.

The first side kicks off with a sample of a decidedly troubled & moody man saying ‘Don’t do this you’ll regret it’- then we’re into the dense & disturbingly searing sways of noise. To start we find a bluntly baying mix of choppy billow, gunning mids, cluttering judder and churning static grain sweeps- from time-to-time one can make out churning wails & moans in the mass, but it’s very faint, which creates a feeling of both distant pain & disquiet. As we get to around the five-minute mark the eerie wails & moans feel slightly nearer, and this creates almost a noise/ dark ambient crossbreed- like if early Yen Pox was been attacked by churning, chopping & muffled harsh noise. At around the mid-way point, the blend of choppily forking-to-baying noise & grimly sweeping darkly ambience has started to lean more towards the intense side of things- with blunt bays, grim grinds, and cluttering billows becoming more prevalent. Yet it still retains this decidedly muffled & bleakly hazed air, and this pulls you into deeper & more fully to see if you can pick out the details in the grim churning sonic maelstrom of the whole thing.

Flipping over & we, of course, have the second untitled track- and this starts in a slightly more defined, though no less grimly atmospheric state- as we find a blend of looped electro churn ‘n’ throb, grinding judder & feasting clutter. The churn & throb is certainly at the centre of the sound picture to begin with, but as we progress we get sways of caught cluttering, bass muffle, and industrial machine texturing appearing. If the first sides track was encasing-yet-murky trip into dense ghoulish tipped noise craft, this is more of growing & layer shifting journey into industrial-focused noise matter. Around the seventy-minute, we get this wonderful urgent ringing 'n' searing sweeping tone carrying through the mass, and this both nicely intensifies but pulls you in deeper. By around the ninth minute, this tone has died back, and we instead find a more deeper churning 'n' droning quality appearing that gives the whole thing an almost searing mediation quality. In the last, five or so minutes of the track we get this spiralling grinding & tensely juddering tonal feel set into the track, and this nicely shifts back into the more uneasy & grimly atmospheric side of things. And the track nicely plays out with a film sample of bickering & talking about someone been held underwater.

In finishing Kadaver really is a noise-maker who puts a lot of time, effort & thought into creating & layering his work. Sure both sides here are hellishly dense & searing, but each has it’s own distinctive edge/ feel. It’s always a pleasure to listening to noise created by someone who is both knowledgeable & highly talented at creating the genre, and Watch It Die shows both of these quality in spades. It may be difficult to label, but it’s damn well made & rewarding noise craft!.