Tales About Digits — Water Whistling

Now here’s an occasion where you certainly can’t judge a release by its cover- as this CD’s line drawn artwork of a boat on river suggests either folk or lulling ambience- but the sonic reality of the two nearing half an hour tracks within is battering ‘n’ brutal industrial tipped walled noise.

The CD & inner of this digipak features similar mellow line drawn artwork of a coast- the release appears on Austrian industrial/ noise label Steinklang, and it comes in a very scene generous edition of 100 copies- so if you want to score a copy of this your more likely to be in luck.
 
Each of the two tracks on offer here slide in at near the thirty-minute mark- & to my ears, it sounds as if both of these ‘walls’ may have been digitally created, as both feel fairly clipped, un-organic and processed in their feel. Apparently, this Michigan based project label their take on the genre as 'sample-based walled noise', and they often use modified pop songs, sound clips, or other samples to create their ‘walls’.
 
First up we have “Bottles in a Can”- here we find a dense blend of constantly rattling ‘n’ juddering- this is underfed by a dry-hardly there rumble. As the track progress an atmosphere of billowing ‘n’ churning industrial can be felt- there are some slight shift & movement in the textures presented. And later on one feels like we are in some vast concrete wind tunnel; getting battered into  first one side of the tunnel, then the other- as the textures seem to separate & space out slightly. On the whole it’s an ok, if not a particularly remarkable or original example of wall mater- though it did keep me held in over its just shy of thirty-minute.
 
The other track here is “Liquid Change”- and this uses the digital process feel to good effect, as we have a selection of buffeting, battering, and baying textures- which are been fed out in an almost faltering flow. So it constantly feels like the whole thing is going to complete phase-out, and while this is going on more layers of sub-tone are been added & subtracted- so we get spurting static grain, or buffeting knocking tones and baying like grain layers moving in & out of focus. The whole thing manages to be both entrancing, yet at the same time very nervy & on edge- by the end of the track I guess we’re more towards drone noise territory, but there still is just some digital HNW left in the whole things make up.
 
It’s certainly great to see labels like Steinklang releasing wall noise- as it will hopefully help the scene grow & expand. So while Water Whistling isn’t the greatest or most distinct wall noise I’ve heard of late, it passable- so if you are a fan of the more digital side of the genre I’d give this a go, just don’t expect to get blown away