
Smrznik - Gletscher Cassette 60 [Zvukovina - 2010]“Gletscher Cassette 60” is a c60 tape that offers up two sides of cold, dense and brutal HNW from this Sarajevo based project that’s all the work of Neven Misaljevich- one of the minds behind the great Zvukovina label and in other HNW projects like Drevne Bolesti(with Andreas Brandal) and Ïîòåðÿííàÿ Ãîðëà( with Alexander Kibanov) Each side of tape offers up a single untitled thirty minute track of mind chillingly brutal HNW. I guess the tone of both the tracks here is alot denser, thicker and more rapid in pace compared with much of Smrznik's other work, which concentrated on more stripped and chilling two or three tone layered 'walls' that had extreme electroinica or glitch undertones. The sound here is much more overwhelming and engulfing, yet that trade mark cold and bone chilling feel is still very present in each ofthe sides raging 'walls'. The first sides ‘wall’ is built around a very rapid mixture of raging juddering bound noise, fuzzing ‘n’ searing banks of static, and slightly slower jittering masses of chilled noise matter- these three elements are fed into a firm & slightly shifting wall of impenetrable and truly destructive noise that is as dense as it is unforgiving. The second sides ‘wall’ is more of a thick jittering ‘n’ raging white static type, and it finds Misaljevich unfolding a rapid, unrelenting and brutally freezing wall of noise at you. This second side I guess feels a bit starker and more bitter in it’s tone/attack, and there’s a lot less shift or movement with in the textures too, yet it still has a very full and overwhelming feel to it. I find both tracks rewarding in their thickness, extreme coldness and unrelenting attack, but I do rather miss the more stripped two or three toned Smrznik ‘walls’ of the past, because at times this does lack the very distinctive sonic flavour of the projects older work.      Roger Batty
|