Lurid Hallway — Door Two

Lurid Hallway is the new walled noise project from Mayfield USA based Ryan Barber (Hearse Fetish & Tomb Of Trickets). This new project follows a fairly similar path to his other work, as it sits squarely in industrial & looped based walled noise, but I’ll have to admit the whole thing has quite an grim, starkly appealing, and at times quite moodily surreal vibe about it.

“Door Two” is this new projects first release, and it comes in the form of a CDR release on Bad Rip series, which is a subdivision of France’s Ink Runs Recordings- that  releases HNW with a rawer aesthetic & a mostly movie based theme. 

The CDR takes in a single self titled track that comes in at just shy of the thirty eight minute mark. And it’s themed around 1967 Spaghetti Western Death Rides a Horse, which was directed by Giulio Petroni, who also directed Mexican Revolution themed Spaghetti Western Tepepa. The movie stared Lee Van Cleef, as a cowboy who betrayed his partners, and hooks up with a young man who wants revenge for the death of his parents .

The single track opens with a brief dialogue sample from the movie, which features a man talking about so many years passing by. Then we’re straight into the walled noise which is a mixture of two main elements-  a looped metal bang ‘n’ rumble element, and a constant thin ‘n’ lo-fi trail of hissing ‘n’ lightly searing static. Just over the first half of the track focuses in on the repetitive loops of the two main elements, and this (over time) becomes quite grimly hypnotic.  At around the twenty minute mark a looped crackling ‘n’ fixed rumbling drum fuzz element is added into the ‘wall’, and this nicely intensifies things adding an almost slightly surreal feel to proceeds, as just at the edge of this new texture you can just barely make out this weird ‘n’ moody muzak loop.

I’ll admit I’ve found Mr Barber's out-put in the past somewhat mixed, but I must say “ Door Two” is very much of a keeper, and I look forward hearing to what he does next with this new project.