Werewolf Jerusalem - The Urge To Love Or Destroy (Marebito) [Geluidsoverlast!!! - 2010]“The Urge To Love Or Destroy (Marebito)” is a single sided C90 cassette release from last year by one of Richard Ramirez most know & respected projects. And on offer here is a great slice of atmospheric & addictive walled noise. After doing a little research on-line it seems the only reference I can find to the Marebito of the tapes title is a 2004 Japanese ghost/ horror movie directed by Takashi Shimizu -who is known most for directing the original Grudge movie (Jug-on). The plot of Marebito(or The Stranger from Afar as it was for western audiences) is about a fear-obsessed freelance cameraman who investigates an urban legend involving mysterious spirits that haunt the subways of Tokyo, which I guess fits rather nicely with the sonics inside. The tape features just one untitled twenty two minute track, and this is a quite forlorn yet brutal mixture of juddering, billowing & rumbling walled noise matter. The ‘wall’ is mostly of the fairly thick, mid-paced and unrelenting variety- yet there is some nice movement and shift with-in the tracks textural layers. At one point Ramirez strips the wall down to a thinner & bleak battering ambient wind tunnel dwell, but this doesn’t remain for long & pretty soon the pace and depth of the ‘wall’ picks up once more. With-in the ‘walls’ make-up there’s definitely more than a hint of the melancholic & cold sonic trails of distant subway trains sound, or strange and lonesome billows down pitch black subway tunnels- meaning this is very atmospheric as well as been damn brutal too. So “The Urge To Love Or Destroy (Marebito)” is yet another very fine example of Ramirez's ability to mix-up shifting, moorish and highly atmospheric HNW. Roger Batty
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