Vargrwulf — Black Supremacy
The sets concept and themes are not based on black Power or the Black panthers or such as the title may suggest, but instead the tapes packaging, images and texts hint at secret orders, child smuggling rings, sinister FBI investigations and subliminal messages with in advertising- this all nicely adds an extra sinister and paranoid edge to the recordings with-in. Each side of tape features a single thirty minute or just over track and each track is entitled “Black Supremacy”.
Tape ones first side is built around a series of taut, sinister and subtle morphing ‘walls’ of noise that are built around throbbing & brooding noise bass tones, and jitter 'n' juddering static textures. Gates forces this two elements together in such a powerful chilling and deeply entrancing manner. Though the ‘wall’ does shift and vary ever so often the structures kept tense, unrelenting and truly unforgiving- hell when this first side finished my ears and mind was still buzzing and seared with the ‘walls’ textures for at least a minute or so after they stoped.
Tape ones second side starts out sounding like a appealing mix of pneumatic drill meets juddering table texturing. As the track progresses Gates stretchers and pulls the ‘walls’ structure though judders ‘n’ jitters, hypnotic skipping static trails, though to creepy ‘n’ stripped break downs that mix together sinister air vent recordings and atmospheric tense static texturing, and onto roaring ‘n’ tearing explosive textural attacks. This side's a bit more varied in it’s textural dips ‘n’ peaks than the first side, but it never losers your attention or fear!.
Tape twos first side mixers together brooding ‘n’ brutally noise bass throbs ‘n’ judders with field recordings of water. The water recordings go from tap like dips onto sudden cascades of painful tone, and the bass throbs go from taut and creepy to violent and extremely nasty. Again Gates leads the track through some great textural changers as it slices and drowns it’s way though it’s thirty minute length. The track really brings to mind someone going through various forms of water torture in some grim windowless goverment building. Though-out the track Gates expertly flits between atmosphere and torture, and once again he keeps your pined into the track structure.
Tape twos second side opens with a sinister fridge like drone that’s smarted over by juddering mid-pitch textures. As we move into the third minute a roving and hovering bass noise grain is the centre of attention, and this creates a wonderful intense yet damn eerier vibe. By the five minute mark these juddering ‘n’ ramshackle hollow metal tribal like drags ‘n’ rips are added on top of the bass grain to give this feeling of some strange ritual take place in the decaying walls and smeared glass of an abounded tower block. The rest of the track unfolds in a nice intense yet brooding manner with the primal electro bass judder being abused by textural rips, hacks and judders.
So onto the third & last tape in the set. The first side finds Gates underfolding a tight and suffocating wall of crusty and cruelly judder bound static that plays out in a fairly locked and simple manner, but it’s damn moorish, nasty and has an almost wonky/ramshackle groove about it. Side two offers up a similar crusty judder to start with, then it’s starts getting bucked and messed with by sudden breaking off higher screams of noise textures and juddering textures that nicely rolling and chugging into each other like slow motion stream train crashers. Again this sides fairly simple and stuck in it’s structure, but it has such a low down 'n' dirty yet appealing feel to it.
Sadly this tape box set is now out of print which is such a pity as Gates really offers up over three hours of near perfect Harsh Noise wall matter here. Lets hope either Gates himself or another label sees fit to re-release this because everything here is such a great mixture of intense and brutal sound-making, sinister and brooding atmospherics, and damn fine noise making!.