Small Hours — Performs the Songs of Bacharach and David
Altar of waste often do great covers/artwork for their releases, and the artwork for this release is suitable groovy & colourful to fit the vibe & cheesiness of Bacharach and David’s work. The house style see-through DVD case features a double sided colour cover that takes in painting/ drawings of 1950’s to 1960’s party goers either lounging or dancing against bright yellow backdrops. The font used for the text is suitable groovy too, and it appears on the sleeve in orange, red, blue & purple.
The release opens with “What The World Needs Now Is Love”, which starts out with a minute or so sample of the 1965 Bacharach and David classic of the same name which was sung by American singer Jackie DeShannon. From the start Small Hours is building up a growing line of chopping & jittering static over the top of the sample, and by the minute twenty two mark the sample dropped out & we’re left with this quite complex yet to start with fairly fixed bit of ‘wall’ making- it mixers together purring & throbbing noise drone with jittering/chopping/ripping/ cluttering static noise tones. Around the three minute mark the ‘wall’ shifts into a mixture of downward pour & roar noise texturing which is sliced over by detailed cutting & slightly jittering static. Around the 5th minute things seem to tense up more as we get a mixture of pile driven low end jitter purr that’s bayed by small & rapidly cut noise tonalities. The rest of the track sees a few switchers back between the more downward roaring ‘n’ cutting/ jittering, and the low end purring ‘n’ cutting static noise elements.
Track three “Walk On By” starts off with a mixture of 1964 Dionne Warwick sung song of the same name, and once again Small Hours slowly builds up the textured noise elements over the track. By around the one minute twenty mark the sample has drop out & we’re left with a urgent yet quite stark mixture of taut jerking low end cable crackle that’s bayed by smaller crisper clumps of jittering static.
The rest of albums four tracks sees Small Hours going through a fairly varied & creative selection of wall-making which stays more in the HNW side of things instead of ANW dwells. And on the whole each track here is effective & creative in it’s own right, the only thing that let it down for me was the actually Bacharach and David song samples. I know there seen as classic ect, and some of their work is certainty pleasing enough in a cheesy sort of manner, but I found playing through track sample after to track sample that each track sounds very similar utilizing much the same chord structure, melodies & moods.
So to sum up I think Small Hours did his best to try & work his walled noise magic with Bacharach and David work, but ultimately the source material & influence for this release is just a bit too bland, samey & repetitive for it’s own good…..but maybe that’s the point!.