Vomir / Asleep In The Lake / Duplo Chat — Untitled Split
The CDR features handwritten black pen logos for each of the projects- this comes in a clear slip sleeve, which takes in murky & slightly creepy photocopy collages of clown faces, pen scribbles, wonky eyed faces, and tape marks. The release appeared the Cardboard Club, which is seemingly a sub-label of UK’s Hissing Frames- which is run by Robert Ridley-Shackleton(who is behind the Duplo Chart project). I’m not sure how many copies of these were made, but who knows you might get lucky & get your hands on one.
The split opens up with a (typically) Untitled track from French project Vomir- really if your reading a review about walled noise, you know who this highly prolific, influential, and unflinchingly brutal project- so I won’t bother detail this projects background. The track offered up here is the longest of the split coming in at just shy of the twenty-eight-minute mark. The very full & extremely seared ‘wall’ is a blend of deep billowing roast, constantly cross slice jittering, and a wonky trail of muffled hissing. Together these elements create a truly suffocating & total encasing mass of sound that has some nice audio tricks set into its make-up, which create the feeling of patter-nation shift when in reality the whole thing is set fast through-out. As Vomir’s work goes this ‘wall’ presents an interesting enough blend of textures, and the whole thing has that classically crude Vomir quality to it- all making this a worth start to the split’s proceedings.
Second up we have a twenty-two-minute track from Asleep In The Lake- it’s entitled “Insects Breeding Between Sheets Of Damp Cardboard”. This project has been active since 2014, releasing mostly more gothic horror-to- darkly nature-themed work, that’s blended together with atmospheric walled noise with ANW. The track to hand opens with a nicely persistent yet eerier selection of rapidly pelting hacks- which have a nice organic-meets- cable bound feel about them. Fairly soon we get the introduction of another layer of similar pelt focused textures, but these have a more ripped static rush to their flow. As the track progresses these two elements blend together to create uneven and weathered rushing wall of sound, but from time-to-time, each element is pulled back to create nicely moody dips in the ‘walls’ flow. It must be a few years since I’ve heard anything this project, and I must say I was most taken by this track- as it nicely managers to dwell between brutally pelting & atmospheric, with a neat blend of fairly distinctive textures, fed out in a rewarding manner.
Last-up we, of course, have Duplo Chat track, this is an untitled track coming in at the fifteen-minute mark. And this ‘wall’ is very lo-fi & stark in it feels- it consists of a pared-back jumping ‘n’ juddering rip based texture, with is underfed by muffled hiss & the occasional more erratic & raw jumping. At one point you can hear someone cough, so I’m guessing this is a very crude straight to tape recording of the ‘wall’, and of course, this nicely enhances the bluntly hacking & spluttering feel of the whole thing. Seemingly the Duplo Chat has been active since 2015, though this is the first thing I believe I’ve heard from the project, though I am familiar with Robert Ridley-Shackleton work under his own name.
For the most part split releases can be decidedly mixed in quality- but this one every track is worthy, and there’s a nice variation in different types of wall-craft. So if you're able to, it’s worth trying to track down a copy of this CDR.