Vomir — Application À Aphistemi

‘Application À Aphistemi’ finds the French king of walled noise slightly stepping outside his self inflicted “No dynamics, no change, no development, no ideas” sonic template with the albums second been track built purely from electro acoustic guitar strumming. But worry not the black bagged Frenchmen isn’t selling- out; the first track is still as brutal and unforgiving as ever, and the second track takes his sound to equally bleak and unrelenting place.

There are also a few other things that are different about this release compared with much of Vomir’s vast and ever growing discography-Firstly it’s the first Vomir release to appear in true pro-pressed cd form in large numbers(500 copies) since 2009’s ‘ Proanomie’. And secondly it’s the first release in quite some years to appear on Vomir’s own label Maisonbruit. And it’s easy to hear why Vomir  has chosen this more populist and accessible path for this release- as both tracks here at some of the best work of his career thus far.

Firstly we have ‘Paulina Semilionova Irait À L'Équarrissage’ which comes in at just under the thirty nine minute mark, and it finds the Frenchman offering up a wonderful tense and crusty slice of walled noise. The ‘walls’ built around a very rough ‘n’ crusty fast judder, which is nicely under run by this slower, slightly distant and seemingly more random and off- pattern mixture of sudden judder, static drone ‘n’ drift. The track often has this great almost three dimensional feel to it when the two key main elements are shifting and moving on there own stereo channels. The tracks two centreal noise textures remain locked and unflinching through-out, with Vomir creating the feel of shift and pattern movement by their interlocking sonic shapes. Bizarrely the Polina Semionova of the tracks title  is a 24 year old Russian born classical ballet dancer who was one of the youngest dancers to become Prima ballerina- through I’m not quite sure what the connection is between HNW & Ms Semionova.

Second & lastly we have ‘L'Apparence Du Vrai Est Un Moment Du Faux’ which comes in at the eighteen  & half mintue mark. And as already mentioned this track features just a strummed electric acoustic guitar. The guitar in question is a 12 string, and Vomir rapidly strums the instrumental to create this great black and hopeless dirge like wall of sound. The guitars fast strumming texture; like vomir’s electronic walls remain fixed and unmoving through-out. And over time the track gets very gloomly hypnotic, as one feels like there going down and down a tunnel of guitar toned despair and sonic nihilism. When I first heard Vomir was going to use an guitar to create a wall of noise I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but this track wonderfully takes Vomir’s sound somewhere rather different yet still keeps that very bleak and lo-fi vomir feel in place. I look forward to seeing if he tries something else in this vein in the near future.

With out a doubt ‘Application À Aphistemi’ is one of this years noise highlights, and one of the most effective, brutal and bleackly rewarding releases of Vomir’s career. To order direct from Vomir himself drop by here.