
RRR - L'empire Des Sens [Lost Light Records - 2016]L'empire Des Sens( English translation The Empire of the Senses) offers up a taut ‘n’ tightly knitted slice of brutal HNW from this French wall-noise project. The release comes in either a cassette or digital download, and appeared last year on spokhand Washington based Lost Light Records . The plain black tape comes in a single-sided, pro printed, and monochrome sleeve. This features a side profile photo of the bottom half of a women in stockings & high heels, sitting in a dingy room. We also get simple white lettering against a plain black spine, and back flap. As of this review the label still has a few copies of the tape left, but of course if these do run-out you can still download/ stream.
The single track featured on the release comes in at spot-on the fifty minute mark. It’s a fairly firm example of wall-craft, built around a constantly flowing, fairly rapid & hellishly tight weave of the following elements: a rip bound juddering, a cluttering & airless churning, a continual circling hissing and a selection of snapping, sputtering & popping sub tones. In the second half of the track a more wiry like scape & poking texture appears, and this gives quite effective edge to proceedings. On the whole it’s a very tight & constricting bit of HNW, with really little space between any of the textures- though each element is fairly well defined & clear in it’s detail.
I guess you’d say sound & theme wise this follows on from much of this projects recent out-put, with a sleazy & perversely suggestive cover/ title. And a taut & seared wall- it’s in no way original, or something a seasoned HNW fan wont have heard before. But on the whole RRR pulls it off in a compelling enough fashion, and I particularly like the poking/ scraping element that gets added in, as this feels like something metallic & insect like is trying to borrow it’s way into your head.      Roger Batty
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