Tab In/Tab out - Rose McGowan [Hot Fuzz - 2023]Rose McGowan is a four-track walled noise release themed around Italian American actress and activist. Each track hits at dead on the quarter of an hour mark, and each is an excise tightly taut-yet often texturally rewarding wall craft. The album is due to be released on the 30th of Jan as both a cassette and digital download on Fort Worth Texas-based Hot Fuzz. Cover artwork wise we get a picture of Ms McGown smoking a cigarette, with a black bob haircut, and low-cut black dress- it’s a still from 1995’s crime thriller/ dark comedy The Doomed Generation, where she plays Amy Blue- the angry, speed taking, and tough as nails lead character. The album can be pre-ordered from here. First, out of the bag we have “Doomed Generation” here we find a ‘wall’ built around a tight reigned rolling low end- which is edged with a mixture of smaller swipe, scrape, and rattling tones. The low end has a rapidly bothersome feel to its attack, while the smaller tones feel busier, at times quite playful as we get these wonderful sudden off-pattern swipes and glitches which really pulls one deep into the wall. Next, we have “Amy Blue”. This ‘wall’ is constructed of a worming-slight-judder low end, which is surrounded by a mesh of pop, snap, and jitteringly tight static grain flow. The whole has a very tight and on-the-edge feel to it, which fits well with the character it is named after. Track three is “Jawbreaker” which takes its name from the 1999 colourful, yet dark comedy set thriller of the same name where three popular girls at high school kidnap the prom queen, and things go more than a little wrong. This track is constructed around a rapidly beaded ‘n’ buzzing low end, which is edged static roll ‘n’ snorting stream like hiss. Finally, we have “Courtney Shayne” which is named after the character McGowan played in Jawbreaker. The ‘wall’ is built around a mixture of a climb, then slightly buckling low-end tone, which is surrounded by a cage of feasting static skips’’ pops. Where the other tracks felt very much focused on taunt tense-ness, this felt nervier, and at points almost haphazard manner- yet it never full breaks down. Seattle, Washington-based Tab In/Tab out is the project of Tim Burkland, and It’s been active since 2018, and has so far put out around 100 releases- taking in both splits and stand-alone. So it’s great to see it continuing with quality-bound releases like this one- which sees well-built and tooled walls that relate nicely to the release's theme Roger Batty
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