Nar — I Don't Care
Like most things put out by Smell The Strench this release features a fairly lo-fi/ budget underground label packaging- the blank CDR comes in a hand cut/folded single sheet of computer printed off paper, which features a stark photograph of hill side land scape. And the whole thing comes in a thin lime green slip sleeve.
The track featured here is a very dense, bleak & claustrophobic take on walled noise. And structure wise it’s a fairly thick ‘n’ focused example of the form, that subtle shifts though a few slightly different textural pattern settings over it’s near on twenty five minute life time. The track opens up with a rapid, raw & thick blend of dense ‘n’ crusty static texturing- there are three or four layers here that seem to be set to slightly different patterns- one has a tunnelling/ worming feel, while another is set towards a lose judder like attack, and another has a deep bubbling type vibe. At around the 5th minute a more pronounced & thicker juddering ‘n’ jittering tone comes into play, and this is joined by this stuck sort of aquatic churning texture. The next subtle shift seems to take place around the 7th minute, when the next set of tones move into place, and these bring togeather-a more rapid tumble ‘n’ judder that is mixed with a rapid yet dull background pelting/ battering tone. As the track progresses on from this point we go though a few other shifts in the ‘wall’ structure, I won’t detail any more in this review, as I always think it’s nice to have some surprise left in a release.
I’ll have admit on the first three or four plays through of this release it rather left me a little cold & unimpressed, as it felt like it lacked the moorish & focused presence of Nar’s past work. But I persevered with it, & now I find “I Don’t Care” quite a rewarding bit of subtle shifting yet extremely dense wall-making…it’s still not my favourite Nar release, but it’s certainly something a little different from this project.