Willowbrook — The Black
This project started at some point in 2011, and has so far amassed coming on for around 30 releases- taking in split tapes, cdrs, digital release, etc. Though I’ve heard this projects name mentioned in the past, The Black is my first taster of it's work.
The artwork takes in a stark picture of two or three strips of light in complete black-ness( possible it’s a picture from inside a dark barn, where boards have been removed). And the reverse of the cover takes in a bleak black & white picture of line of what look like bedraggled refugees covered in layers of clothing/ scarf’s…suggesting a very cold & bleack environment.
The single self titled track here comes in at the forty eight minute mark, and basically what you get is a set & dense ‘wall’, which has some very subtle sub-tone detail from time-to-time. The tracks main focuses in a fairly rapid mass of mid-ranged similar toned static, which is set into a simple & unrelenting jittering pattern. And from time to time, you can make out sudden one tone breaks or shifts with-in the ‘wall’…imaging staring into a mass of rapid descending & seemingly unbreakable hailstone fall, and ever so often you can a single slightly smaller hail stone darting in another direction. All so around mid-way I’m sure I can detect a slightly slower rattling tone moving through the ‘wall, and in it’s last eight or so mintues the ‘walls’ seems to faltering/ flickering around the edges- though I’m not sure if these shifts are happening or not. In its last three mintues it sudden pares down to just one layer of static pattering.
As dense, fairly simplistic structured yet brutal & unrelenting ‘wall-craft’ go, this is'nt bad at tall & the sudden shifting sub/micro tones adds a nice edge to the proceedings. So all in all I enjoyed my first experience of Willowbrook, and I look forward to hearing more.