Willows — Vistor
The unmarked CDR comes wrapped inside a piece of A4 white paper that features photo-copied artwork. On the front there’s a picture of a creepy male figure standing under a park street light, and on the other side we have the track listing, and a small bit of mood setting text. The text talks about the enclosed recordings been influenced by the entity that lives in the writers attic- the entity has made footstep sounds, and muffled voice like sounds….but when the writer opens the attic door nothing is there.
With the above story one might expect this release to be maybe creepy ANW based( like the excellent split The Structure put out last year with France’s Ghost), but instead what’s on offer here is two tracks of thick, battering, yet ominous walled noise. First-up we have “Obscured By Light”, and this 19.38 track starts with a fairly thin ‘wall’ of rumbling ‘n’ buffeting locked noise. With-in a minute or so the ‘wall’ kick-up to a ticker more punishing attack, and this is centred around a fairly tight noise weave of juddering ‘n’ rumbling low to mid ranged noise, which is tipped with roasting jittering/ almost skipping sub-tones. There’s a nice buried mix of throb ‘n’ darting malevolent bass weaved into the tracks guts that almost brings to mind a brooding heart beat like feel. The track remains firm, thick & brutal through-out, with a few subtle textual shifts here and there. The track end as it started with the thinner rumbling ‘n’ buffeting texture, though there’s still something left of the darting bass element. All told it’s an effective bit of walled noise brutality & the weird darting heart like texture is most effective ‘n’ seared yet creepy.
Track two is entitled “Face Emergers From The Shadow”, and this comes in at 13.20 mark. The tracks starts off sounding a bit like the first track’s denser centre with a mix of low to mid end bass ripped jittering, but with-in a minute or so a looped crackling almost flaying tentacle like texture has been added to the ‘wall’. As the ‘wall’ goes on it takes on this strange creepy yet brutal galloping like feel, and deep in it’s guts you can almost make out the odd sort of baying/ muffled barking like repetitive texture that sounds like a chesty older person gasping for breath. As the track goes on it remains fairly fixed in its structure through it does seem to get more & more intense/ inclosing in its feel. In it’s last moments it thins down slight before coming to a jarring stop.
So all in all “Visitor” is an effective & rewarding opening release that offers up two atmospheric & creepy shots of walled noise brutality. I look forward to hearing how the projects sound develops in future releases.