The Sleeping Quarter/Carrie — Lana/You’re All I Ever Wanted

This split comes in a DVD case, with a card insert, and a plastic bag containing two further cards - both the inlay and the various cards carry images of the split’s devotees: Lana del Rey (The Sleeping Quarter) and Carrie Underwood (Carrie). The artwork is worth commenting on further. It is overwhelmingly dark, and if anything is reminiscent of more standard PE fare. The images on the inlay cover both have their eye sockets blacked out, as well as scribbles and scrawls across the photos. I mention this, purely because it is somewhat at odds with James Killick’s (as Carrie) usual aesthetics, which normally go towards a release that amplifies and pays tribute to its subject. Indeed, one of the cards depicting Carrie Underwood is printed so that her eyes are blacked out, and her white teeth picked out - giving her a very skull-like appearance. Whether this is deliberate, or an accident with the photocopier, it does generate very different ideas to the artwork we might normally expect from Carrie, or Love Katy.

In terms of sounds, we have one long, 30 minute plus track from The Sleeping Quarter, two tracks from Carrie amounting to a similar time, and a bonus remix of one of the Carrie tracks, from Cory Strand.

The first piece, Lana, is one long obliterated tribute to the singer, by The Sleeping Quarter. It begins with one of her songs distorted (disclaimer: I have never properly heard Lana del Rey), before slipping into a structure which holds for most of the track: a churning bottom end, which is often static, but has moments of snaking and grinding, and a more active top layer of agitated noise bursts. The steady low end is fizzy and over-saturated - setting up a simply noisy atmosphere, rather than anything brooding or oppressive. The energetic noise bursts that skate over this, are often staccato, arhythmic explosions; they break in and out of the wall of noise, flaring up like turbulent solar blasts. At various points these become trebly spurts of hiss and fizz, or expand to become short trails of noise. Throughout the track, music can be heard trying to break out of the skree - presumably the works of del Rey - and whilst this is interesting as an idea, in sonic terms it’s less pleasing. At the end, Lana finally breaks free and is heard disappearing into reverb.

You’re All I Ever Wanted, by Carrie, begins with a section from the Carrie Underwood/Randy Travis song, I Told You So (disclaimer: I have never properly heard Carrie Underwood). After Underwood has sung the first verse and chorus, the track is taken over by a dry, bassy, rough wall, which scratches away like gravel. Less restrained elements arise out of it and the wall becomes fleshed out with speeding high-mid frequency crackles; later, Killick pulls the bass up out of the wall, and it becomes a very hard scourge, with small treble details that almost sound looped and tonal. In the final section, the lower wall elements subside, leaving a lurking, malignant bass and near-whiteout treble washes, before the song reappears - this time sung by Travis. I’m Tired of Spending All My Time Alone, the third work on the CDR, begins with Travis singing - again from I Told You So. This is slowly consumed by a nice, dry wall of small crackles, which in time take on sounds akin to rain. To continue the weather theme, there is a slight buffeting movement to the wall, as if pushed by the wind. The wall turns into a mid-paced, strong crunch, with very defined - and sometimes exquisite - textures; about halfway through, like the first Carrie track, it hollows to become dominated by bass and treble. Buried in this section, are the sounds of abused metals, which clatter away, before the piece ends with a return to Underwood singing.

The final work, You’re All I Ever Wanted (Eternally Hollow Remix) by Cory Strand, begins with a stark contrast to the preceding tracks: an expansive, breathy drone, subtly modulating, and drenched in reverb. This boils over into a seething, surging river of wall noise, that cascades relentlessly for the rest of the 12 minute piece. It’s very fast indeed - there’s almost a machine gun pace to the wall - and it is unswervingly focussed, though there are movements and shifts within the skree. There’s a particular nice layer of loose, treble flail, which dances around on the tide.

This is a very diverse, complimentary split (especially with the remix), from several respected artists. The track from The Sleeping Quarter is perhaps the weakest - though still very nice in places - and is so active that we might not add ‘wall’ to ‘harsh noise’. It has moments of wall-like solidity, but overall there’s no sense of the monolithic. Carrie’s pieces are unusually shifting, compared to most of Killick’s work that I’ve heard, but I’m certainly not complaining - and the use of junk sounds in I’m Tired of Spending All My Time Alone is an unexpected, but very welcome, turn! Killick is always dependable, but these are particularly nice tracks. The Cory Strand remix is a fine end to the album, and really the release is worth getting for these last two mentioned pieces alone.