The Night Porter — Seasonal Decay

Seasonal Decay is a new three-track release from this up ‘n’ coming/ most promising new UK walled noise project. The release is a self-released digital album and severs up three fairly active examples of the wall-noise form.

The releases cover features a colour photo of a mysterious darkly dressed woman walking by a rural river- it looks sort of familiar from maybe a cult horror film or similar, though I could be wrong. It sets the tone well enough for the eerier autumn-tinged elements featured in some of the tracks here.

First, out of the gate we have just shy of ten minutes of “A Plague Of Our Own Making”- this starts off with a brief snippet of thin jittering static, though fairly soon it layers up-bringing into the fold a blend of rapid scrubbing, swirling hiss, and thicker roaring noise. I particularly like scrubbing elements, and all in all it’s a fairly sawing- yet unpredictable start to the release.

Next, we have the 14.41 of "Rinderpest"- here we find a blend of roaming ‘n’ droning billow, jitter 'n' juddering static, and the return of the scrabbing element. As we move on one can make out what sounds like buried shouts/ raised voices in the mix, as well as layer dips where we find pulsing-lightly- whooping low-end move with a grainy static chop, slight textured swirl, and bay. Again another worthy example of active ‘wall-craft’, and I’d say I prefer this to the first track, as the buried/ just heard elements create an 3ffective feeling of unease/ eeriness.

The release is finished off with the longest track here “Eyes low! She’s not Real” which slides in at the eighteen and a half minute mark. Here we find a blend of machine purr like droning, and jittering’ n’  juddering static crispness.  There’s a nice feeling of taut foreboding about this track, and this track most certainly amps up the uneasy/ lightly creepy sides of things- with the scabbing textures coming into use- with the track been finished off with a sudden voice sample, and background textural unease.

After been most impressed by Somewhere, there is light- an early 2021 release by The Night Porter, I once again enjoyed what’s on offer on Seasonal Decay. I can’t say I was as blown away by the inventive textures been used this time around, but on the whole, we get a good selection of ‘walls’ featured here that connect together with the use of scabbing texturing. To check this release out here