Stand Master — Purple Haze
The tapes cover has a color scheme of several shades of purple, black and white- on it's front cover is a thin hairy-chested man in a harlequin shaped costume with the project's name in white text behind it. The inside takings in a comic panel, Japanese writing and the tracklisting. The tape version of the release appeared in an edition of seventeen copies- and as of this review, the label have only a few copies left for purchase.
I heard this project first release Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap- a CDR that appeared on Void Singularity Recordings early this year, and that offered a single forty five minute wall. So it’s nice to see how Stand Master works with-in the shorter walled format. The first track here is “The Definition Of Ferocity”, and here we find a tightly packed blend of hacking lows and thinner snaps, pops, and clutters- together these create a nicely gripping & encasing ‘wall’, that rather nicely pulls you in with its tense sort of permanently cascading quilty. I really enjoy the small & thinner textures here, as there ‘s just enough play/ variation in them to keep you entranced/ hooked- yet they are also fed out in a rewardingly urgent manner.
Flipping over to the other of tape, and we find “Attack Like An Explosion... And Retreat Like A Storm”- and this side ‘wall’ feels slight bit lose in its attack, yet never the less it remains a dense & continually pelting example of HNW. We find a mixture of slight bubbling and feasting lows/ mids, which are bayed by cluttering slightly spitting static meshing. Again the whole thing grabs you from the off and keeps you held though-out. If pushed I’d say the first sidetrack was my favorite of the two, as I love the cascading hypnotic feel of the whole thing- but this ‘wall’ is none too shabby.
So in concluding I’d say Purple Haze is a good follow-up to the promise of Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap- with both ‘walls’ keeping the urgent and tight feel, as well as offering a memorable enough selection of textures at play.