Female Harakiri - Dread [Plague - 2010]This C20 offers up two side long tracks of atmospheric, thick, bleak and bone-chilling HNW from this Japanese based project. The tape seems to be themed around ghost or Poltergeist activity and how they can effect a sleeping female....victim. The tapes sleeve has a nice pro ‘run off computer on glossy stock’ feel to it, and features a monochrome/ black ‘n’ white picture of a young women awaking in fright, with one hand pushed out to protect her from an unseen and malevolent force - this nicely sets the mood for the chilling ‘n’ brutal ‘walls’ with-in. Side ones track is entitled “By Her Command” and is built around a constantly rolling ‘n’ crusty mid-pace static judder, which is underpinned by this eerier ‘n’ slight fluctuation 'wobble board' like texture that sounds like either distant thunder or far away underground tunnel drone. Later on a just heard scouring tone can be just made out at the base on the track, and this makes the track seem even more uneasily ‘n’ brutal than it was before. So all told it’s very moorish yet grimly pleasing, darkly atmosphric and seared walled ride. Over on Side two we have a track entitled “She Can Compel Me” this is built around a fast paced, constant yet gloomy bass soaked central judder ‘n’ rumble. This main tone has several smaller and more wiry static jitters ‘n’ judders weaving about it. The track once more has a great uneasy and dark edge to it, through I think it may have been a bit more effective if the pace was a little slower, as the rapidity of the track does blow away some of it’s possible atmospherics. Never the less this is another rewarding ten minute slice of ‘wall-making’. So “Dread” offers up two ten minute slices of HNW matter that have a dark and uneasily taint to them. Well worth investigating if you like your walled matter with a grim ‘n’ bleak atmospheric undercurrents…. and who knows you may even summon up some spirits of your own while play it! Roger Batty
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