Wehrmacht Lombardo/ RRR — Red Tape

Red Tape is a C60 release that brings together two close to half-a-hour slice of noise craft themed around Burlesque. Featured here is Mexican based Wehrmacht Lombardo, who offers up a blend of spiralling guitar based drone, stark ambience & wall noise. And Frances RRR, who offers up a formal example of walled noise.

The red & black tinged cassette comes in a single sided colour sleeve, which features a playful picture of two women getting dressed in corsets. The tape came in an edition of thirty copies, and as of writing the label still has copies left.

So first up on side A we have Wehrmacht Lombardo, and this is entitled “Burlesque Void”. The track opens with a fairly defined, unsettlingly harmonic, and looping guitar pattern, which has a slight bleak jazz feel to it.  As the track progresses the loops get more noise bound & seared in their repetition, though to start with there is a more stark ambient edged beneath the surface, by the second half this has mostly departed. Also by the second half it’s switched from more drone based loops, to more textured noise based texturing.  On the whole it’s a worthy enough cross-breed between guitar drone, subtle & bleak ambience, and textured noise- though at times I did feel it lacked both focus & shape, coming off quite jam like in places.

Flipping over to side B, and we of course have the RRR track- this is entitled "Crasy Red Pulsion". And after the  shifting & at times unfocused first side, this track a lot more set & straight to the throat. The ‘wall’ is a dense & overloaded affair, which brings together repetitive  & rapid lower-to-mid ranged curls of noise, with a rapidly forking & twitching blend of thinner/ higher ranged textures. The base elements have quite a locked bucking or trusting feel about them, while the smaller & higher toned top elements add a seared focus the whole thing. Of the two sides I’d say this is my favourite, as it has so much more focus to it, and to be honest I’m not the biggest fan of the guitar drone genre, much prefer no-nonsense walled noise instead.

So in conclusion, I certainly like elements of the first side, but felt it was let down by lack of focus, and my dislike of (most) guitar based drone. But the second side is another rewarding & densely seared example of wall-craft from RRR. I wanted to give this a 2 & a 1/2 mark, but as we only do full marks I've gone for a 2 instead.