Reaching Needles — Retail Shank

Retail Shank is a densely raging ‘n’ layered example of the walled-noise form. It comes in a single thirty-minute sonic shot of noise craft, which is a swim with rewarding, worthy at times moody detail. This is a digital self-released album.

The cover artwork is a ripped and torn collage affair, featuring a lying down pig, various grey and black textures, and cut out new paper lettering for the release's title- so a grimly simply, if effective enough but of art. To hear the release drop by here. 

The single self-titled track opens with a thick blend of the following: a reverberation, yet muffled churning low end. A skittering and scalding static grain, and a far-off drone. The whole feels both brutal, &  brooding in its attack. At around the three-minute twenty mark, we start to make out these strange warbling and waving higher pitches within the raging mass of the ‘wall’- these are kept distant and buried, but there is an often a mournfully seared at points rather eerier feel to their detail. By around the ninth minute, we get longer dwells of the high-pitched elements- as they take on a more pressing & worming quality, yet they still remain buried. On top, the reverberation churn feels looser more rapid in its attack, with the static textures now becoming brisker and cluttering its shredding grain feel. In the last third of the ‘wall’ we get these effective- but-occasional electro slices appearing occurring, and these both keep you held into the track- but also add in a feeling of approaching technophobic dread.

Retail Shank is the second release I’ve heard from this recently started project from Ottawa, Ontario- and I must say it certainly shaping up to be one of the great new wall noise projects. With this been a wonderful example of densely seared, yet moodily edged wall matter.