Various Artists — Brick By Brick
The seven discs come in a very neat & classy small plastic box which has black ink on black paper outside cover & inside the box you find a twelve page booklet detailing each track, a near A4 manifesto by Vomit & a 1” badge/ button. Each of the seven discs has it’s own plastic see-through sleeve which is attached to the box by two little plastic ring binders- as I said a very classy, distinctive & thought out package.
So we move onto the ‘walls' of sound inside & disc one offers up a single twenty minute piece from A View From Nihil( who I can’t seem to find much info about) entitled “Creation In Order To Subdue The Torment Of Perception” – the piece is a nicely punishing slice of active rolling & thick bass crunching noise with a low grade sort of electro purring & burning quality about it. The track attacks straight from the off and does not let go until near on twenty one minutes later; it’s pretty unrelenting & changeless in it’s intent & it’s a nice fiery start to the set.
Onto disc two we have a single twenty minute track by Canadian based noise artist's Ryan Bloomer entitled ‘Taking It on the Jaw’. The track starts off with this nice jittering & tight static tone that’s underfeed by a slow gas escaping hiss. As the track progresses Bloomer nicely & subtle alters the main jitter pattern, but around the five minute mark it becomes a lot more tighter & airless in it’s feel; the gas hiss tone also becomes more active & pronounced taking on almost running away or stuck glitch feel. By the seven minute mark he’s turned up the intensity once more with a tighter & more digital hacking take on the sound & the rest of the track follows in a similar brutal, wall like but progressive manner as Bloomer turns the sonic thumb screws more & more. This is certainly one of my favourite tracks of this collection showing Bloomer being true to the HNW sound, yet trying to be creative & inventive with it too.
Disc three offers up two tracks by Four Files- who for this track were Richard Ramirez, Christian Perdome, Matthew Solondz & Hageshiseto Ohno( the project is now just Ramirez). The first track is entitled “I Was Made Of Blisters And Remorse” and it's just short of sixteen minutes mark. The piece is built around the meeting of these rapidly juddering & crunching tones; with one of the tone having an almost nasty & over loaded techno bass line feel about it. The track has a nice urgency about it & it keeps fairly focused on it’s punishing pounding & crunch, though there are a few rewarding slight sonic shifts & moves in the tracks thickness along the way. The second track is entitled ‘The Beast Of Scars’ and comes in at the four minute mark- this track is a lot more wiry, static, lower toned, and slower than the first track with it opening with looped tonalities which shift into more droning & drilling feeling ever-so often.
On disc four we have a twenty minute untitled track by Griz+zlor & it’s a nice example of this projects often storm bound, thick & murky take on HNW. The track really feelings like your trying to make your way through a high wind tearing, snow heavy storm- it’s very thick, near unchanging yet rather for filling in it’s constant & brutally hypnotic attack. Disc five takes in a single twenty minute track from Infirmary entitled ‘Hold’ which has a roaring & thick standing under a huge pipe quality about it as the project pretty much loops out the same roaring & huge deep pouring tone for it’s length- it’s ok though maybe lacks that magic hypnotic or Moorish feel the best ‘walls’ have.
Disc Six features a untitled track by the French HNW master Vomir which nudges in at the nineteen & a half minute mark. The tracks made up of two main tones; one a barbwire tight static tone & the other one a more rumble bound tone-Vomir nicely rolls them along together in a fairly unchanging yet rewarding matter & I found my mind getting nicely shucked in to the grooves of each & like the best HNW wall’s feeling a little empty when it finishers. Lastly on disc seven we return to USA with two piece HNW project White Plague who offer up a just over eighteen minute track entitled ‘Viral Replication’. This is an nice brutal, but somehow almost cosy feeling track which is built around two running together roaring or heavy rolling tones that have slightly crackled edger’s to them. The pair keep the track very constant & thick in its progression, yet there are some nice yet subtle shifts in the textures of the track which nicely pulls you into the constant rolling tunnel of walled sound.
All told a very nicely presented & thought-out celebration of the steadily growing HNW scene, which works as a wonderful primer for those who have still to taste this extreme but often exhilarating & hypnotic form of Noise, but i'ts also a must have item for anyone who’s already an admitted wall addict. To buy direct drop into here