Various HNW Artists — Alone (tape boxset)
The collection comes in a huge round ‘n’ tall plastic container that looks like it was either used for pills or some form of weight lifting supplement. Each tape comes in clear plastic case, and only features just a torn label with its tape number on, and no other information. On the outside of the container is a label featuring the Fusty Cunts label logo. And there’s a second label featuring a list of the artists featured- these are put against a list of numbers, but these may or may not be in the correct order which adds a little mystery and puzzlement to the proceedings- I have kindly been given the correct tape listing for this review, but to keep in the sprit of the release I will not give away any tape numbers anywhere in this review.
Featured here are HNW acts from all across the world and the following projects(in alphabetically order) offer up an hour long tape a piece: Damsel In Distress(USA), Ghoul(London, UK), Griz+Zlor (Philadelphia,USA), I Am A Slut(Lodz, Poland) Midnight Heat(Yorkshire, UK), Shining Sex( Texas, USA), Skinflint(?), Sjalvhat(Sweden), Svartvit( The Netherlands) and lastly but hardly least we have Vomir( France).
Instead of reviewing every tape in this huge set I’ve decided to pick a selection of my favourite moments, and these are in no particular order, the following: Ghoul’s tape “Regan”(which I’m guessing is named after Regan from the Exorcist movies) – which finds this London project offer up two sides of rapidly escalating and intensifying walled matter. Each sides track starts with a selection of creepy and unhinged bays, screams, reverb smothered wails and unidentified/ horror filled tones that bounce around as if there in a creepy sonic tunnel. Then slow but surely they get stirred and feed into a maelstrom of horrifying, brutally billowing, muffled and grim walled noise. As each tracks progresses you get sudden dwells or hints of textures or sounds, but nothing ever becomes fully defined which gives one this great feeling of free falling through this swampy, chilling and brutal swamp of sound. All told there are two wonderfully sides of tape which I guess you’d call horror fired psychedelic wall making.
Damsel In Distress untitled tape which on side one features the great bass battering & muffled wall that is “One Some”. This wall is built around a deeply muffled and airlessly bass ribbed rapid main tone that’s surrounded by the odd smaller battering ‘n’ juddering static tones which build in power and length as the ‘wall’ progresses, yet the wall remains thick ‘n’ unrelenting to the end. The track feels like being smothered by a huge grey pillow as some one relentless punchers and batters it. On side two & we have the track “Shameful Act” which comes off to start with like an ultra muffled tone bent & bass blow out slice of ugly and brutal electronica with mid-pace synth lines and bass raped beats just been heard. But over time theses murmurs of defined sonic or rhythmic shape become more corrupted and melted into this draining and deeply muffled brutal sonic soup.
I’m a Sluts untitled tape offers up two side long tracks. The first untitled side is a great and urgent slice of taut static texturing that finds this polish act unreeling a great single stranded but brutal line of juddering static tone- this element goes through several intense and taut patterns in it’s 30 minute life. The track feels like a line of sonic barbwire is being fed direct into your head, sometimes it’s gathers up into painful thick massers ‘n’ sudden hacks, but mostly of the time it unfolds in a taut, focused and moorish manner. Over on side two and we have another untitled track, and this ‘walls’ a lot more manic ‘n’ stuck in it’s feel. With the ‘wall’ being built around a deeply judder bound selection of tones which take in: forking feed-back, thick muffled noise gradients, and the odd hint of junk metal like lurches. It’s a great track which really keeps you on edge all the time, as it often seems like it going to grind to a holt in it’s judder ‘n’ nervy structure but it never does.
The untitled tape from mysterious project Skinflint. On side one we have a brutal and hearing ripping untitled 30 minute track that’s very rapid, thick and intense slice of wall making. The tracks built around this very pronounced boiling ‘n’ caustic bubbling bass judder, that’s shadowed by these lower and less pronounced judders ‘n’ vigorous rubs. As the track goes on the main pronounced elements seems to get more deeply drilling and bass roaring, but that maybe just be my imagination. The track feels like your inside some vast polishing and buffeting machine that’s sending you go-around and around it’s aged & worn conveyer belts. It’s a great overwhelming and very brutal slice of wall making. Over on side two and it’s another untitled single half an hour track, and this side even more bass lined/ nasty than the first side. The ‘wall’ is built around this very deep, huge and subterranean rubble and judder which seems to get more intense and loud as the track progresses. Around this main tone are smaller rumbling, cracking, creaking and hissing tones, and the whole track gives the feeling of this vast ugly, grey and blind creature expanding like a pungent and sickly vast puff ball or frogs body in a large earth underground cavern. This track seems to become more rolling and pacey in it’s last ten minutes or so. In summing up two great, bass bruised and brutal tracks from this mysterious project which I hope puts out some more work soon.
So “Alone” is huge, brutal and unforgiving ten hour submergence in highly quality worldwide 'wall-making', that’s also very cheaply priced too($30.00 for the USA/ $35.00 Worldwide Postage paid). So if you’re a wall-head and you don’t already have this go and snap it up before all there all gone!