Worship — Focus
Focus is a four-track album from Worship- the decidedly mysterious wall noise/ textured noise project. It themes all of its releases around a non-smutty/ arty celebration of the female form- with its sound often gently pushing & pulling at the genre's tropes/ ties.
The release is as with much of the wall noise scene output at present in the form of a digital release. It appears on the project's own Bandcamp, and can be found just here. Cover artwork-wise we get a monochrome photo of a woman sitting on a stool- the side of one of her breasts just shown, and a bunch of down-pointing flowers in one hand.
The album opens up with “Come Full Circle”- this comes in at the sixteen and half minute mark, and is best described as industrial focused ‘walling’. It’s built around a constant rapid chopping tone- which over the track length gets more layers of sub-tone churn ‘n’ reverb added. In the end, one feels like you have been engulfed by some vast piece of chopping, rolling, and churning machinery- before everything whites out.
Next, we have “Relive The Tension” which comes in at dead on the nine-minute mark. Here we find a blend of a mid-ranged scrubbing & more rapid buzz ‘n’ scape- this second element from time to time goes slightly off pattern. This is a most compelling track- as one's mind keeps attempting to lock into & follow the more locked/ persistent elements- but each time you try, your attention gets pulled away.
Track number three is “Perfect Vision” which is one of the longer tracks here at just over the twenty-minute mark. It’s constructed around a mixture of slightly uneven/ sluggish flow of static buzz, crackle, and fuzz. This underfed fed by this haunting almost harmonic mid-ranged drone, and from time to time we can make out the skittering ‘n’ hazed hoover.
Finally, we have “Headspin” which slides in at the eight-minute & fifteen-second mark. Here we find a locked & rapid machine like chop- as the track progresses we get the addition of sweeping & lightly cluttering subtones. With seemingly the sound picture building & building- before mid-way dropping a manically swirling & rotating element into the ‘wall’.
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Focus is yet another highly skilled & creative take on the walled/ textured noise genre. With the looped, but building industrial-toned elements rather bringing to mind Aube’s work with chains & metallic elements- but of course in a walled-noise setting. Like so many of this project's releases, Focus really is crying out for a full physical release- as more people need to hear & appreciate Worship's work. I do think it is such a pity- that there seems to be barely anyone now releasing physical releases from the walled noise genre- because if/when these Bandcamp finally goes down- there’ll be so much of the genre’s output lost, and when it comes to releases of this calibre that is a true tragedy.