Mente-Atada/ Psychiatrist/ Vomir /Napalm — Between Four Walls

As the title of this release suggests it's a four-way walled noise split- with each contributor offering up an around twenty-minute 'wall', so this digital release has a total runtime of one hour and twenty minutes. The tone/ attack of all of the ‘walls’ here are similar crude ‘n’ searing- so don’t expect either detailed textural dexterity or highly distinct/ original noise making- this release is all about thick 'n' raging wall-craft.

The release appears as a digital streamed/ downloadable release Bhopal, India based Ulka Pind Records. With it features a simplistic monochrome cover of  a crudely torn/ ripped greyed hole, with the names of the projects of each contributor in white text.  If you’d like to check this release out it can be found here.

Each of the four tracks is untitled, and the release opens with a track from Buenos Aires, Argentina based Mente-Atada. Here we find a rather simple and basic ‘wall’, which brings together a set billowing bass tone with a constantly feasting 'n' skittering static texture. As the ‘wall’ progresses we get the sonic illusion of the bass and static crust starting to blend/ blur slightly, which is appealing enough- though nothing mind-blowing.
 
Next, we have Japan’s Psychiatrist- and here we find a blend of constantly rolling mid-range churn, locked rattle, and subtone judder. Together these elements create a decidedly industrialized ‘wall’, with the judder and rattle element seemingly nicely tripping up over and piling up on each other as the track progresses. This track is much more interesting in both its textural blend, and sonic tricky than the first track- sure it’s still nothing terrible unequal, but it’s entrancing- and I could easily listen to this for an hour plus.
 
 
Next, we have a ‘wall’ from one of the long severing master of the form French project Vomir. Here we find again fairly simple textural makeup of a muffled churning rumble, and lightly cluttering-to-bubbling hazed static topping. But the appeal/ worth here is in the way the French man has treated both textures and how they are fed together. The low-end rumble is decidedly hazed and ill-defined as if heard from a  fair distance, and the static topping feels crude and bluntly cluttering like winter rain on dusk tipped Perspex roof.  The ‘wall’ has a classic feeling of numbing sonic nihilism, with the cold and crude flow of the ‘wall’ really penetrating your head.
 
 
 
Lastly, we have a track from India's Napalmed Monk. And here we find a decidedly blunt ‘n’ murky ‘wall’, which is built around very muffled bass roll ‘n’ judder and faint rattle.   Along its length we find splits into more even prolonged/ buffering bound jitter appearing- and this creates a feeling of being wrapped in a mattress then repeatedly punched by a machine fist. This feels the most simplistic of all the ‘walls’ here, which isn’t a huge issue- though it might have been nice to have a more defined blend to the textures, so one could hunt down some rewarding sub-tone detail. The ‘walls’ ok, and is appealing enough for its twenty minutes and seventeen-second runtime.

 

As a spilt Between Four Walls very much sits at the more simple and base end of the wall noise genre- and if you're looking for an hour and twenty minutes worth of numbing brutalism and muffling sear this will certainly appeal. But if you're after something new, fresh, and distinctive within the wall scene- best look someplace else.