Wilt — Mold The Earth

Wilt is an Illinois-based project that blurs the boundaries between dark ambience, uneasy field records, and low-key/ brooding noise texturing. The projects been active since the late 90’s, with over one hundred and twenty releases to date. Mold The Earth is a CD album release from 2024, taking ten tracks.

The tracks featured here have runtimes between two and nearly nine minutes, with the whole album having a decidedly organic yet alien feel, which moves between low-key brooding to unnervingly seared. On a few occasions, Schloss Tegal were brought to mind, especially their 1995 Oranur III "The Third Report" album- though there are no really clear/recognisable dialogue samples here.

We open with “The Skies Are Haunting” here we find a blend of uneasy wind tone ebb, faint static crackle/ water bubble, and sourly warbling high-pitched tone flow, with moments of shrilly uneasy sear.  As we move through the first half of the release we come to the slowed brooding knocks & eerier liquid bubblings of “An Invisible Violence”, which late adds in unsettling, sharping blade tones/ eerier knocking textures.

In the album's second half, we move from the steady billowing void meets uncomfortable pitch climb of “Psychic Space”. Onto weird swimming textures/ uneasy whistling tones of the title track, which suggests some very freaky/ creepy aquatic creature passing through a body of water. Finishing off with reverberating error crunch, hiss, and high pitch sear of “Spacial Reorientation” .

I feel sure I’ve heard Wilt’s work in the past- but I just can’t recall when or how.  But I must say I was rather taken with what Mold The Earth, had to offer, and if you enjoy where dark ambience, field recordings, and low-key unsettling noise meet, I think you also dig whats on offer here. Drop in here to buy directly from the label.