Otomo Hava - Blue Velvet: Volume Five [Altar Of Waste - 2014]This is the 5th Volume in Altar Of Wastes' Blue Velvet themed releases. Each part in this open ended series sees an underground sound artist putting their own sonic take on David Lynch’s cult classic movie. For this release we find Greece based Otomo Hava offering a up a just under thirty minute track, which moves from oppressive & tense looped string based dense ambience and seared walled noise. Each release in this series follows a fairly uniformed looking- with the CDR coming in a paper slip sleeve that comes inside a double sided printed A5 folded sleeve, which takes in images or artwork relating to the movie. On the front cover of this volume we get a murky & shadow heavy still of two of the films main characters- troubled night club singer Dorothy Vallens, and naive small town older teenager Jeffrey Beaumont. The track opens up with a single layer of clipped & darkly swooned sampled string work from the movies soundtrack. As the track progresses more subtle & looped layers of sinister string matter are added to create this great intensely brooding & pitch black wall of set & angular string drone. At around the 10th minute the tension & loops break for a sudden dart of a long string element, but fairly soon this ushers in another loop which brings together a stuck chiming string tone & a taut mesh of blistering ‘n’ seared walled craft. Then for last seven minutes we return to the more sinister string loop hovering- but this time it's a less urgent & more shadowy ambient loop.
This track perfectly captures the films feeling of maleficence & very troubling darkness in a small town USA. I’ll have admit I’ve found this project work a little mixed in the past, but I was very much taken by this track, and the way it perfectly captures the films pressing & tense darkness/ oddness
   Roger Batty
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