Norfolk Trotter — Gone

Gone is a C16 cassette release late 2016, and it offers up two slabs of battering, hellishly dense, and nasty HNW. The Norfolk Trotter is the new ‘wall’ project from Norwich  based Multimedia artists Michael Ridge, and it’s his first foray into the genre since 2014, when his Acerbitas project came to an end.

This release is from late November 2016, in a hand numbered edition of just six copies- these have now all gone, so maybe it’ll be reissued in digital form at some point, or in some other form?!. Anyway  the black cassette features rubber-stamped round red labels with black ink. And this comes  in a clear cassette case, and features monochrome  collage art work of trees & buildings printed onto light orange paper stock. Just a fairly simple yet effective enough packaging.

Both untitled tracks come in at spot on the eight minute mark, and both tracks are very crude, lo-if, non-nuanced examples of HNW. The first side ‘wall’ is a rapidly swirling & searing affair that has a consistent yet roughshod churning quality to it. It  brings together a muffled low-end circular churn, and a crust of thinner & more coarse  juddering static. Underneath the seared mass of the two main textures you get this on /off muffled knocking sub-tone.

Flipping over to side B we get the second untitled track, and this feels a bit more meaty, yet blunt in it’s attack compared with the first side. The ‘wall’ offers up a deep ‘n’ coarse spinning blade  central tone- this is crudely hovering over a matt of smaller feaster & constantly rushing static grains. The whole thing feels very bothersome, ugly, and heavy in it’s attack. And of the two sides I’d say this is my favourite, due to it’s crushing weight & more moorish texturally blend.

So in summing It’s great to see Mr Ridge offering up some new ‘wall-work’ again, and is “Gone” is a worthy (if slight) debut from the Norfolk Trotter project. Certainly worth tracking down if you enjoyed his past work, or if you enjoy no-nonsense, nasty, and old-school HNW.