Werewolf Jerusalem — Spiral (Dedicated To Chop Shop)
Werewolf Jerusalem is one of Ramirez’s most known, respected & prolific of his many, many projects. The projects a solo project, and it’s been going since 2001, and since then the project has put out around ninety releases taking in splits, cdr’s, cassettes, vinyl and plan Cd format. The projects sound is based around atmospheric static studies, brutal drone matter,and mood setting HNW. Theme wise the project often focus in on old horror, sci-fi or Giallo movies.
The single track on offer here is just shy of the twenty two minute mark, and as it’s sub-title suggests it’s a sonic tribute to stark, atmospheric & noisy sound maker Chop shop(aka US sound artist Scott Konzelmann). The track rolls in with a tow pronged static down pour- you have a lower & a distant static texture, and a slightly higher more battering static texture. Ramirez weaves these two elements into a persistent & atmosphere heavy wall of noise. The wall has a nice chilling yet brutal feel to it, and it brings to my mind a killer stalking his panicked victim down rain pelted & lashed fully glass corridor. The ‘wall’ stays relatively fixed for it first five or so minutes, then at just under the six minute mark an more cruel ‘n’ tight static tone is added to the mix which causes the ‘wall’ to become a lot more tense and inescapable.
By around the nine minute mark the new tone seems to be easing back slightly, and as a result the track seems to ease back on the tension. At around the ten minute twenty mark the new tone drops out & we seem to return to a more battering version of the original two pronged ‘wall, and as this goes on I’m sure I can make out buried off-tone static rain washes…but this could be my imagination & a trick of the ‘wall’. Also as the track goes on I’m sure it’s slowly descending & slowing down. At just before the nineteen minute mark the track sudden thins out to just a distant static rain crackle, & this new twists makes you nicely jump. And just when you think it’s going to fade out & end Ramirez puts in two more textured twists with two sudden layers of static been added back into the 'wall' as the track closers. All told this track is a great example of Ramirez at the height of his clever & atmospheric static texturing & mood setting HNW skills.
Like many of this series it’s a pity that this is limited to so few subscriber copies, as really more people need to hear great work like this. With out a doubt one of the highlights of this series thus far.