Kay Lawrence — Gills Cut Into Women
The 12inch black on black vinyl follows the Urashima label's distinctive, simple but effective house style, and once more comes in the silver ink on black card slip sleeve that features a large picture of a Gill-man on it's front cover. Also in side is an inlay paper that features on one side the track listing, and on the other two pictures of 1950’s women’s legs- I guess these must be taken from stills of Ms Lawrence.
The albums concept/ theme is 1950’s women been attacked by Gill-man, and their descent into watery black & white depths. McKinlay & Renzoni just utilize water as their sound source here, and they create two sides of often quite active textured noise/ crunching ‘n’ crackling based HNW. Each side of vinyl is taken up by single 15 minute track.
Side ones track is entitled “Helen”, and it starts out been built around a fairly lose crunching 'n' tumbling noise textures. At around the two minute mark the track seems to get more urgent, violent & taut in it’s mixture of tumbling/ juddering & descending rumbling/ crunchiness- this is underfed by mid to high pitched forking tears. At around the 6th minute the track returns to more loser tumbling crunching noise, that mixers in rumble & textured rips. The rest of the track plays out switching between the lower/ loser crunching, and the more taut mix of rumbling/ crunching & mid toned forking/crackling dwells- these later moments often bring to mind the rapid escape of oxygen underwater, which of course suggests a starlet been attacked by a Gill-man.
Side twos track in entitled “Marcia”, and this starts with a rapid line of tumbling, crunching & hacking noise- this is flanked by jittering ‘n’ grating mid-tone textures. This track is less active in it’s first half compared with side ones track, and is around tumbling/ crunching/ crumbling rapid crusty noise descents, which have the odd line of mid-tone forking or horn like wails mixed in. At around the 8th minute the tumbling/ crusty tones seem to start to slow, and this causes great weighty mass of piling-up tonality- this effect feels like your slowly tumbling on & on through murky aquatic depths. A few chopping/ crackling mid-tone textures try to break through, but pretty soon the weighty of the tumbling/ crusty tones take over as they become more urgent- yet they never lose their tumbling feel.
So “Gills Cut Into Women” gives the listener two sides of creative & atmospheric Gill-man themed noise- this release will certainly appeal to those who enjoyed the more water bound textural noise scaping of albums like The Rita’s- The Voyage Of The Decima MAS.