Various Artists — Stasis:001
The compilation is in DVDR format meaning there’s just short of five hours worth of varied and high quality bound ‘walls’ on offer here over the 13 tracks. And unlike some HNW compilations this takes acts from all over the world and the following are featured here: Hour of the Wolf (Norway), Crash At Every Speed(Texas,Usa), Skönhet(Sweden), Unearthed(London, Uk), Gomeisa( Canada), Fatale (USA), Smrznik(Sarajevo), Vomir (france), Fragile(Italy), Is(USA). All of the tracks here are of a good, searing and creative standard,and highlight the quality, variation and brutality of the worldwide HNW scene.
Instead of dissecting each of the 13 tracks here, I thought I talk about a few of my present favourites, as with such a large/lengthy collection these are often changing. “No outlet” finds Richard Ramirez's Crash At Every Speed project offering up near on forty minutes of highly tense and locked ‘wall-making’ that’s made up of interlocking taut and jittering static tones, repetitious and muffled voodoo like drum like texture, and an almost looped/ nasty/ overloaded industrial vibe. London’s Unearthed offers up the nearly 25 minutes of grim and pressing wall matter in the form of “Skinwalker”- the track starts out with 70’s horror reverb noise tones then settles down into a bleak low down drilling throbbing, before going all revered-up and blacked with a deep and deadly engine like caustic drones.
Fragile is another project by Alessio Mininel who was in the excellent and often futuristic sounding HNW project TFT, and he also runs the sleek and high concept HNW label TTM Incisioni Musicali. Here he offers up three tracks “crumbs I”, “crumbs II” and “crumbs III”- each track takes inbetween 19 and 25 mintue runtime a piece. Each of the three track are built around a wonderful series repetitive & stripped machine drones, seared electro judders and jittering static tones, which Mininel links together in a very appealing, moorish yet often almost walled ambient manner. Certainly these three tracks are one of the highlights of this collection, and once more shows Mininel utilizing the HNW genre in a very original and fresh manner.
So “Stasis:001” is a thoroughly worthwhile, lengthy and creative collection of some of the best HNW artists working in the genre today. This is of course is a must have item for any long time ‘wall-heads’, but it's also a great introduction to those who have been curious about the scene, but have yet to experience the wonders of a really good ‘wall’. This has a slightly larger edition then many HNW items with 50 copies available, so hopeful this will help spread the scenes hypnotic yet highly brutal charms.