The Monochrome Man — Sad Sketches For The Monochrome Man

“Sad Sketches For The Monochrome Man” is the first in a series of HNW releases on Uk’s sweet Solitude  records that are themed around a notorious murder cases or murders’.  The series is subtitled Shades Of Grey, which nicely fits the series often grey & pained sounds, and of course it’s very fitting for the often grey & troubled lives of both the killers & their victims.

The Monochrome Man project brings together Texas noise/ HNW legend Richard Ramirez, and James Killick ( of Love Katy, Small Hours & also the mind behind the Sweet Solitude label). The project & this track is themed around the killings & the life of  London based murderer Dennis Nislen, who killed & dismembered at least fifteen men and boys between 1978 and 1983.  Nislen used to prowl the gay clubs & bars of London picking up men & boys,  which he took back to his flat to strangle. He often kept the bodies for many days, and he talked to & interacted with them- hence it’s believed he killed out of loneliness & for company. When the bodies became too badly decomposed or he had  got tired of their company, he dismembered them & boiled flesh off their body parts. He then flushed the flesh down the toilet, and this is how he got found out due to the sewers out side his London flat been blocked with human flesh & bone.

So a very troubling & disturbing case, and Ramirez & Killick conjure up a fittingly cold & violent slice of walled noise to fit it. The track comes in just under the twelve minute mark, and it finds the pair binding together a distant & billowing cold drone & a layer of dry, cold & oppressive crackling static. The cold drone brought to my mind the distant sound of a bath running & possible movement with-in the bath- Nislen tried to drown at least one of his victims in the bath of his flat. And the static crackle is full of stark, numbing, black & pained atmospherics- the crackle falls somewhere between distant cold rain sound & stark TV grain crackle. One can almost see  a dead body propped up in a dishevelled flat, with the only light in the night-time flat been the un-tuned fuzz of an TV, & this fuzz is reflected in the bodies dead fixed eyes.

All told this is extremely effective slice of stark, bleack & pained walled noise. It’s a pity that the track only lasts just under the twelve minute mark, and that there isn’t another track offered up here. But I guess you could just loop the track over & over for optimum grim & pained submersion. Lets hope there’s more from this project, because I think  Ramirez & Killick work well together to create a deeply bleak & unpleasant atmosphere.