Naughty/She Walks Crooked — Self Titled
The plain black & unlabelled tape comes in a single-sided monochrome sleeve- this features a line drawn picture of a standing women’s tight covered feet- one foot in a stiletto the other not, and a crumbled paper illustration of a women in a Basque. I’m not sure what the physical edition of this release was, but sadly they are all sold out now…so the digital download is the only option.
So on the first side we have "Sur La Pointe Des Pieds" ( translated On Tip-Toes), and this opens with a barren ‘n’ constantly rolling weathered drone. Fairly soon we get a small scraping ‘n’ knocking textured added on top, and this is added to by a thinner swirling sweep. As the track progresses the initial additions seem to increase in there appearance, and added to this we more smaller textural patterns- and these really pull you deeper & deeper into the stark, detailed, and at times eerier-yet- building- atmosphere of the ‘wall’. Though the layers & textural slowly build & shift though-out, at no point does the whole thing ever become too crowded or in anyway muddle- as Naughty skilful balances the weave perfectly.
So flipping over to side two, and we have the She Walks Crooked track, which is entitled “(On) Tiptoe”. And this track brings together a tight ‘n’ growing cluster of bass bothering judderings, thinner textural snappings, and tonally snaking’s. This ‘wall’ rather brought to mind a more blunt & mangled version of a autechre track, think one of the more texturally noise bound tracks off Confield- slurred, muffled & twisted into it’s self. Once again this track is quite detail shifting in its feel- at times it pares back slightly, at other gets quite dense & manic. I guess compared to the Naughty track it’s less layer defined & clear in it’s make-up; but this is part of both it’s appeal & effectiveness- as your mind struggles to quantify & map-out the ‘walls’ make-up.
All-in-all this is extremely appealing wall-noise split. With both artists here presenting the listener with creative & distinctive noise-craft. As I mention above sadly the physical version of this is long sold-out…but it’s most certainly worth download this from Ominous Recordings bandcamp.