Tissa Mawartyassari — Yûrei

Yûrei offers up a just over eighteen minutes worth of searing yet unsettlingly atmospheric walled noise from this female HNW/Harsh Noise project. Tissa Mawartyassari is all the work of Texas based Mexican Monica Isabel Sanchez, and it’s been active since 2007 releasing sporadically around twenty release in total,which take in stand alone tapes, splits & CDR’s.

This  release is part of Corpse-Grained Series, which is a recent HNW/Static noise label from the highly prolific Paris based walled noise/harsh noise maker Julien Skrobek( of Butch Bag, Static Park, Sadistic Fall, Flesh Clocks,The Killer Came From The Bronx, Ghost, The Sandman Wears A Mask, Ruine). Each of the label releases come in the form of a 3inc CDR, which appear in rather classy & arty over sized envelope packaging- these feature stuck on front & back artwork, inlay card & separate plastic slip sleeve. This release is the second release from the label, and it features a red envelope- on it’s front cover is a line drawing of a fancily deformed oriental looking female figure- this is a picture of a  Yûrei- a type of ghost from 17th century Japanese folklore.

The track opens with this dense ‘n’ rushing  snow storm like mixture of juddering ‘n’ churning noise tones, and underneath this is you can just make out this weird wavering harmonic or pitch hovering type element- but you can never fully define what this element is. All the noise textures are focused  towards fairly narrow tonally range- which falls somewhere between lower & mid range. At around the six minute mark you get a sudden rush of denser low-end searing & roasting noise- this pans back very briefly & you can almost make out the under element, but you still can't fully comprehend it...you just get hints of it’s haunting presence. The rest of the track alternates between the  dense & pummelling snow storm wall attacks, and sudden shifting sweeps of more defined roasting & dense shifts- with all the while the buried atmospheric elements just staying at the edge of the track.

I’ll have to admit in the past I’ve found this projects work a little hit & miss, going from effective & rewarding wall-work, to slight lacklustre fare …but I must say Yûrei is one of the better releases I've heard from this project & I really dig the constant battle between searing ‘n’ overwhelming wall textures & the buried atmospheric under belly, which of course works perfectly for this releases ghostly theme.