The Rita — Leopard Skin
From the folks at Ominous Recordings & Phage Tapes here’s Leopard Skin- the next in the series of reissues of classic material from Canadian harsh noise/ walled noise master The Rita. The release comes in the form of a pro pressed CD and features two long out of print releases.
The rather groovy purple & grey leopard print CD’s come presented in a six-panel digipak. On its front, we have a rather disturbing painting of a headless and naked woman wearing stockings with her legs open. And inside we get a selection of pictures of a tight wearing & Leopard tailed woman, nude and blood crawled film stills of a woman, and picture of cheap-looking female decapitation. It came in an edition of 300 copies, and this can still be ordered direct from here.
The set features a release per CD- so on disc one we have Revealing Leopard Skin, this appeared originally as a double c20 on Skeleton Dust in 2008- which came in an edition of 100 copies. And on disc two we have Headless With Leopard Skin, originally released as a double c21 by Definitive Circumstances in 2009 in an edition of 30. There was also a second CDR edition of this release the same year, and on the same label- this had a pressing of 50 copies. Each of the releases is themed around Spanish exploitation actresses of the '70s and their films.
So on the first disc, we have the four tracks that make up Revealing Leopard Skin- and each of these slides in at around the ten-minute mark. We kick off with “Kali Hansa (FX59 x2)” here we open with a firm 'n' fixed blend of thick billowing and skittering static grain. As the track progresses both elements subtle shift in their patterns- so for example, at points the billow seems more grinding & bothersome, at others the static grain seem more narrow & hissing. By track three “Maria Kosti (FX59 x4)” we find a blend of buzzingly bass droning met by a skittering-to-manically juddering static topping- and as the track moves on the low end and static elements seem to switch between the front and the back of the thick sonic mesh of sound. With the CD finished off with the rapid buzzing ‘n’ purr bass meets skittering, to hacking, to cluttering static topping "Loli Tovar (FX59 x5)" - there is a fair bit of shift, movement in this secondary element- while the low end remains manically grinding in its intense & fixed attack.
Over on disc two, we of course have Headless With Leopard Skin, and its four tracks- which once again hit around the ten-minute mark. We go from the thick & tight juddering hack & fine slicing static grain of “Loli Tovar (Part 2)”, which as it moves on becomes more jolting/ stop ‘n’ start in its flow. We have cluttering-yet-tight hack meets jittering of “Loretta Tovar” which as it progresses has these great seemingly lengthening grey static hacks coming off of it. And lasty we have “Loreta Tovar” which is a wonderful wonky tribal take at noise texturing- as we find hovering and buzzing bass stabs, doing battle with this overloaded industrial-like ritual tone batters, wailing and baying ethnic vocalising, and overloaded percussive tones which keep getting overloaded/ engulfed by the thick bass brutality and skittering static grain.
So in finishing this double-disc set presents us with two fine examples of tense-yet-masterful & subtle shifting textured noise from The Rita. It really is so great to see this reissue series continuing, and if you have even the slightest interest in either textured bound noise or walled noise – this is most certainly a must-have release!.