Silver Dove — Heart Of Grief

Heart Of Grief is a recent four-track release from Liverpool’s Silver Dove, which finds the project mixing in elements of formal guitar playing, pedals, and field recordings into their walled noise sound.

This is a self-released digital album. Cover artwork, we get a monochrome overlaid cartoon of two humanoid fox-like figures embracing each other. The album can be found just here 

Each of the four untitled tracks lasts between seventeen and thirty-seven mintues, with each clearly having a fair bit of thought put into its creation. Making this one of the most impressive and atmospheric releases I’ve heard from the progressive side of the wall noise in a long time.

The first track opens with a moody and formal played guitar- bringing together introspectively picked guitar tone and steadily churning feedback haze. But as it opens up, the formal guitar moments die back to be replaced with a ‘wall’ that brings galloping/ churning low end, jittering/ knocking static grain, and the original feed back haze. Within the last moments, the guitar-picking tones reappear.

The second track is the longest here, at just over the thirty-seven-minute mark. It starts off bringing together a blend of constant woody knocks and grain crackle. As it opens open the textures seem to subtly widen their sonic detail- with the knock becoming more woody, and the grain roll becoming more bucked/ worn.

The third track is built around a tyre slowly rolling on rough ground lows, crisp grain crackle, and woody/ rapidly knocking subtones. It’s a wonderfully detailed track- that feels both rewardingly organic, yet subtly electro fed in its attack.

Finally, the fourth track is built around a constantly rolling/guttural drone( which could be pitch taken down rainfall recordings), textural scratch ‘n’ score, and skittering grain detail. As the track opens up, a purring/ lightly searing harmonic element appears, which creates a wonderful feeling of simmering & mysterious disquiet.

 I must say I was blown away by Heart Of Grief, as it really offers up a wholly consistent slice of progressive and atmospheric walled noise- with the non-wall elements used sparingly and creatively throughout.