
We Also Let Blood - We Also Bleed Neon [Neon Wall Series /Lurker Bias - 2016]Here’s another addition to Lurker Bias series of walled noise releases, and this time it’s Rock Island, Illinois based We Also Let Blood offering up a C30 (& digital download) worth of material. On offer here are two slices of decidedly industrial drone influenced wall-craft. This is my second sonic taste of this relatively new project- the first was the projects self release C90 tape Nothing I Gave You Was Ever Enough, which I found just passable. So I’m happy to report I was more impressed by We Also Bleed Neon. First up on side A we have “Endless Ridicule”. The track opens with a brief sample of someone saying “I thought you were gone for good, but looks whose back- old Neon nose!”- this is followed by some canned laugher. I’m guess this sample is from an old sitcom or comedy film. Then we’re into the ‘wall’ which a fairly fixed & dense affair- it’s built around a buzzing sustained note like churn( I’m guess this is either a held & feed back fed keyboard tone, or some kind of effect processed machine sound ). And around this we have the following: a rapid & constantly flowing mid ranged roasting, and a selection of thinner machine like sub tones, which take in simplistic cluttering, rushing, and ball-bearing like churning. The whole thing is focused into a thick & torturous sonic weave- I’m not really picking up any movement at tall in the main tones, but there maybe some extremely subtle shift in the sub-tones. Flipping over to side B, and we have the title track. This track doesn’t feature an opening sample, so we straight into the searing & head-crushing wall storm. The track brings together the following elements: A fixed mid-to-high pitched roasting rush. A rumbling & boiling judder. And a buried a distant galloping machine drone. At the centre of the track is the roasting rush, and this is what hits you first off- but as the track progresses you make out the other elements. For the first half everything feels extremely fixed & firm in it’s setting, but after the mid-way point I do detect subtle shifts in the mass- be it sudden one off tone sustains, layer sweeps, or layer thin backs. This track is just as pinning & intense as the first sides track, and once again it has quite a machine like feel to the textures. So what we have here are two very intense, mostly tightly fixed, and unforgiving ‘walls’. The project still rather lacks a stand-out quality, but I found both tracks here much more appealing & rewarding than either of the tracks on Nothing I Gave You Was Ever Enough tape. So in summing this is not world changing stuff, but it’s a name to look out for if you enjoy searing & (mostly) set wall-craft.      Roger Batty
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