Nar/Vomir - Split [Self release - 2017]This untitled HNW split has one of the more artily brutal & primal presentations I’ve seen- the shell scratched cassette comes wrapped in a black piece of ripped fabric, and this comes inside a bent, battered & scratched sheet of steel. The C46 brings together two of the most darkly intense, brutal unforgiving, and nihilistic focused HNW projects on the planet- Frances Vomir, and the USA based Nar- with each party offering up a similar nasty & unrelenting example of HNW roasting. The release appeared as an edition of 47 copies back in April 2017, and I’m not completely sure who released it, as we got it sent as a review copy & neither the packaging or disogs indicates who released it. The only texts we get on the release is on the tape it’s self- with each project name just read under the layers of scratches. So I’m guessing you best to try & get this is discogs.
Anyway moving onto the noise within, and on the first side of the tape, we have the untitled Nar track- this rather mysterious & completely nihilistic US project has been sporadically releasing work since 2012, and this release is one of the more recent additions to its discography. The wall is crude & constantly rolling blend of muffled rushing ‘n’ churning, which is nastily edged with juddering ‘n’ hiss bound stream like juddering. It summons up in one's mind images of been constantly dragged behind a slow running & erratic steel beast of a steam train, as it's sailing through the seeming constant & sour darkness of a rundown railway tunnel.
Flipping over to the second side, and really Vomir should need little or no introduction to both HNW fans or anyone who enjoy intense & brutal full sonic art. The Vomir project has been active since 2005 and has released a truly, truly huge selection of releases. The ‘wall’ is a lo-fi & suffocating meeting between a blunt rolling & roasting textures, which is tightly wrapped by slicing & rattling mass of static sear. It’s like jumping headfirst into a focused-yet- total overloading maelstrom of sound. Like the first sides ‘wall’ the textural layers of the track of neither sophisticated or masterfully tooled- but what the are is face melting intense.
It’s great to see these two masters of nihilistic & hope crushing do a split together, and really it’s exactly what you’d expect soundwise- zero finesse, zero change, and zero hope. Roger Batty
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