Monolithic Torment — Abandonment

Abandonment is an hour’s worth of crackle ‘n’ hiss bound walled noise- and as long-form wall matter goes it’s both entrancing & strangely lulling example of the form. This release appeared in March 2020, as both a CDR & digital download on Bangkok based Perpetual Abjection- sadly the CDR is now all long gone, but it’s still worth downloading the 'wall'- as it’s certainly a most worthy example of the long-form walled form.

The grey/ white & black paint-splattered CDR comes presented in a black spray-painted & dull silver flicked case- inside with get four monochrome inlay cards featuring  grim pictures of rundown/ abandoned areas. On the front cover, we get a grim black & white picture of plies of steel bars on-top of rocks, with Anarcho-punk like lettering for the band project/ title. The release was limited to 15 copies hand-numbered copies.

Monolithic Torment started in 2019- and is all the work of Eugene, Oregon based Cory Aideen- who is also behind the excellent nature/ science-themed wall noise project Root Cellar. Monolithic Torment has coming on for forty releases to its name- though most of these are digital-only releases- so it’s great to see this CDR released, and let's hope it leads to more as Cory certainly has a great ear for effective and entrancing wall-noise making.

The single track on offer here slides in at just over the hour mark- and the texturally selection very much fits the release title. We have a constantly bucking 'n' swinging crackle, a muddy rumble, and buffeting grain like hiss- together these conjurer up images of either a dust heavy & spiderwebbed weaved industrial building with a winter storm baying & lashing outside. Or a barren & heavily rusted unused train station where carriages loosely knock & buffet as battering rain storms cut the location. Aideen layers the textures together in a skillfully balanced manner, which managers to create great atmospherics & entrancing flow- with ones mind nicely follow first one texture then the next.  I’d say this mostly set & fixed wall-craft, though at points it does sounds like some subtle play/ shifting is occurring in all the textures- though I suspect this is just a trick of the ‘wall’.

Abandonment is another great example of the long-form wall form from Aideen- showing once more she has a real talent for creating worthy wall matter that sits in both the atmospheric & entrancing camps of the genre- to download the release head here.