Torturing Girl — Torturing Girl

Here is another vinyl album from the Urashima label, presented in its customary, house style: silver ink, sparsely printed on black sleeves. As the name suggests, Torturing Girl is a collaboration between Alo Girl (the project belonging to the owner of Urashima) and Torturing Nurse; with the briefest of information on the album, suggesting that its a collaboration over distance (Milan and Shanghai). The album also comes with a small, smartly printed booklet; reprinting an old photo-story from a pornographic magazine. The album has two long tracks, each a side of vinyl and both untitled.

The album begins as it continues to its end, really: a wall of noise, with other elements buried underneath or dancing other the top. On the first side, after a brief intro of screaming and feedback, the wall of noise rises up; grounding the overall sound into a thick sludge of noise. Out of this, poke squalls of feedback and vocal screams; all of which are subject to pedal abuse (delay, in particular) - with some sections of feedback almost attaining bird-like sounds. Thats how it starts, and thats how it ends. (To be precise, it ends with the wall of noise fading out; before the remaining vocals, feedback and percussive thumps also disappear.) There is no real change or development, no real dynamics - it has the modus operandi of HNW, but its not wall noise.

The second side is more of the same - again, a wall of noise, again, more kinetic, ‘loose’ elements flying around (its probably reasonable to assume that Alo Girl is providing the ‘wall’, and Torturing Nurse these ‘other elements’). Here, though, the vocals are near non-existent (they do reappear briefly near the end); replaced instead by junk sounds and synth-like skrees - with the feedback remaining as a staple sound. Its an effective wall of noise - more effective than the first side, certainly - but still a little unsatisfying.

This is, on balance, not the most perfect collaboration. For my ears, both parties get in each other’s way, a little. The first side is definitely a mis-match of efforts, with the vocals nullifying the more barren ‘wall’ elements and somewhat ‘lightening’ the tone of the track - they’re not exactly Schimpfluch-ian bellows or shrieks. The second side is much more solid, but still sits too much between the ‘static’ and ‘chaos’ stools, for my mind. It never fully lets go, or engulfs the listener, in my opinion - and thats perhaps my clearest summary of the release as a whole.