Vomir / Discipline — Split
The first artist is Romain Perrot, a veteran and legend of the underground noise scene, and his project Vomir. When someone ever mentions Harsh Noise Wall to me, immediately the image of a man standing on a stage with a plastic trash bag, wearing on his head comes to mind- this, of course, was Vomir’s look for many years. Romain has always been open collaborations/splits, as there a large number of splits within Vomir’s frankly huge discography
The second artist is Joseph Ghosn, co-founder of the Scum Yr Earth label, on which this split was released. On this album Joseph presents his project Discipline, working in the genre of synth-based Lo-Fi Drone.
So, this massive split was released by the French label Scum Yr Earth in the digital form, as well as on 6 x C40 tapes. At the time of writing the review, the entire edition of the tape box sets have already been sold, but you can buy a digital version on the label's Bandcamp page.
The releases cover is a black and white abstract graphic drawing, which, judging by the information was made by the participants of the split. I would characterize this drawing as classical abstract graphics, quite popular among illustrators of Europe in the 80-90s of the last century.
So, the split consists of six cassettes, respectively, the track of each artist takes one side. Each tape starts with the artist's track, which was on the B side of the previous tape. In total, we have 12 tracks for almost 20 minutes each. After listening to this album, I decided not to dwell on each track separately, but give my general impressions about each artists contribution.
Those who are familiar with the work of Romain Perrot know perfectly well what to expect from any Vomir album. This is a rigid static noise, without any changes or dynamics, and very often almost devoid of any explicit textures. But this simplicity is only at first glance, you see Harsh Noise Wall performed by Vomir has a property of opening up during listening. Simplicity acquires depth and we can hear several layers of noise of different frequency and intensity. The tracks presented on this split do not really differ in the variety of their sound make-up, but clearly, there is audible work done via an equalizer- and this creates the different shades of sound. The 4th & 5th tracks "Le Profound Désespoir Surgi D'un Grand Désir" & "La Science Avec Une Grande Scie", seemed to be subjected to deeper processing of sound layers. Nevertheless, the principle of all the ‘walls’ are about deep humming lows, then a mid-range screech, a hiss at higher frequencies and a rustling at high frequencies.
Discipline's tracks are in sharp contrast to Vomir’s walled noise. It's quite a raw, almost static Lo-fi Drone, performed on a synthesizer. All six tracks are made in the same style. This is a sinusoidal wave in different keys and with different effects. Before this album, I not heard any of the projects work. My first impression was - God, what is this ?! But with further listening, the sound for me opened up, nuances and depth became audible. Everything happened the same as with the perception of the Vomir's tracks - I heard layers of sound. All these pulsating drones act very meditatively and pacifyingly, like the sound of Tibetan singing bowls. At points, I ’m reminded of one funny gadget called Buddha Machine. This is a cheap player, in which several looped fragments have already been recorded, the audition of which should promote meditation ... And inside this player was a small plastic figure of Buddha.
I didn’t play the whole of this four hour release in one go , but instead listered to it intermittently for three days- at times I realized that I wanted to play it. This split is a proof of how one and the same thing can be achieved in completely different ways: a complete immersion of the listener into a state close to meditation.
For all the positives I did find one big drawback in this release- and that’s the tracks sequencing- instead of having two tracks from each artists in row- I feel it would have been far more appealing if it had just been one Vomir track, then one Discipline- as this really would have added in a more of a interesting contrast. Nevertheless, this is really an excellent set, which I can see my self playing again.