North Korea — Untitled
This untitled or self titled release is the first sonic fruits from the project and it offers up a two C40 tape box set which fittingly has four colour screen printed case that features the North Korea flag on the front and inside there’s a seven page colour booklet with an assault rifle on the front and a picture of Supreme Leader of North Korea Kim Jong-il on the; along with the tracks lyrics in both English and North Korean.
The first tape is called 'Dear Leader' and it’s first side is taken-up by a track entitled ‘Preservation Of National Character’. This track finds the pair creating this great, intense and neck vein raised ‘wall’ of sound build around: slipping ‘n’ screeching fan belt loops, circular caustic abusive dwells and caught yet distant tight militant drum hammerings. The pace remains extremely intense and unforgiving through-out, through there are shifts in the domination of each tone with in the sound wall, as well as slight shifts with in the ‘walls’ textural rub and grain, but the track stays purely HNW through-out. The buried vocals appear at about the mid-way point in the track, and are just a series of very deep and mega distorted croaks and growls, they really act as another layer of noise texture and ramp up the tracks intensity to well into the red.
Over onto the second side and we have a track called ‘The Vulnerabilities Of Imperialism’ which takes up the whole side once again. This sides ‘wall’ starts out with quite a crude, rolling and crusty mass of sound that’s thick ‘n’ deep with static rumble ‘n’ roll- it sounds like either rolling down a rock strewn hill in a wooden barrel or caught ‘n’ looped roaring thunder tone. The track is quite fast and unrelenting in its continuous battering and rolling presences, though there are a few shifts and textural move along the way, but it still keeps firmly with-in HNW restraints through-out. The coarse, gruff and growled vocal textures appear once more around the fifteen minute mark, but they stay around for only for a few minutes before the bombarding sound layers close in over them once more.
Tape two is entitled ‘Great Leader’ and the first side is taken up by a track called ‘Glorious Victory Over Imperialism’ this 'wall' starts out with a thick and slightly throbbing, almost harmonic and cinematic noise tone sustain. In under a minute this is filled in with choking ‘n’ ripping rocket engine like dwell which seems to suck all the air from your listening space. As the track progresses the track takes on longer thick noise tones and burring in it’s self roaring muffle and suffocating engine flooding. The textures change, but it just seems to be bottomless and completely hopeless in it’s scorching and debilitating wall of sound. Around the five and a half minute mark very buried laser drill like tones start appearing at spaced gaps of twenty five seconds or so which seems to pull you in even deeper to the truly devastating, but oddly appealing ‘wall’.
Coming up to the twelve minute mark a more slipping fan belt ‘n’ slow sheering drill tone snakes and appears ever so often in the tracks fiery grain and by the fifteen minute there are uncurling and trails of static texture streaming with sudden drill attacks. According to the booklet there are once more vocals present here, but there there a lot less clear and defined than the previous two tracks as I hear a few moments that could possible be vocal elements doted through-out the whole track, but I’m uncertainly were exactly they are.
Over onto the last side and we have a track entitled ‘Inextricable Quagmire Of Ruin’ this 'wall' is a lot more billowing, raging and fast-paced static chug ‘n’ roar in it’s feel. To start with you feel like your on a overloading and speeding train, as times goes by the track switchers between: flighty and flicking percussive like attacks, to stuck billowing ‘n’ roaring tones, through to hectic judders and bays. This track is still very ‘wallish’ in it’s feel through I guess you could say this is slightly more Harsh noise than HNW in it’s feel as there are a fair few random noise attacks that are not so constant or repetitive in nature. Once again the lyric booklet claims more vocals, but I couldn’t make out anything that even sounded vocal like here.
So in summing up this is a great fierce, sprit crushing and head boiling excise in militant and ballistic charged Harsh Noise wall matter from this Canadian and American project. Another great looking and sounding release from the always the always consistent Phage tapes.