WallKeeper - Contamination [Dead Audio Tapes - 2008]From 2008 this is a C30 cassette release of dense yet texturally shifting & dark walled noise from this Nordrhein-Westfalen German HNW project. This tape originally appeared on Richard Ramirez’s Dead Audio tapes label. The release came in an edition of 20 copies, and came in a slightly oversized spray painted plastic bag. The bag featured a still from 1971 unsettling US horror movie ‘Lets Scare Jessica to Death’- the picture used is of a living dead looking female figure emerging from out of a lake. The tape features in all two tracks- one on either side. And on side A we have “Cemeteries Are Their Cathedrals”, & this comes in at just shy of the seven & a half minute mark. The tracks starts off been built around a thick ‘n’ mid paced mixture of roaming ‘n’ pummelling higher low end & jittering/ billowing crusty mid ends- for the first three or so minutes it stays relatively fixed, with just a few subtle layer shifts along the way. Then just after the third minute a more rolling ‘n’ slow-mo drilling feeling sets into the ‘wall’, as well as a more crusty skipping static churn. The rest of the ‘wall’ plays out a mixture of the first & second ‘walls’. Over onto side B & we have the track “Tombs Are Your Cities”, and this comes in at just over the 15 minute mark. It starts off with crude ‘n’ suffocating mixture of aquatic juddering lows & jittering mids. As the track progresses the pace seem start to feel like it’s speeding up, then once again slowing down... whether this is really happening, or it’s just your mind playing tricks on you- it’s certainly damn effective & quite brutally creepy. Around the three & a half minute mark the juddering low aquatics seem to cut back, and the ‘wall’ turns more battering storm like in it’s feel, as whipping breeze like texturing meets more battering lows. This carries on in a fairly shifting, lashing & battering manner with the pace gaining more & more speed, until around the 10th minute when a mix of juddering yet chug smarted static takes centre stage. The rest of the track sort of carries on as a mixture of juddering low end crustiness, with a sped up version of aquatic mid to low texturing….before ending out on a brief snippet eerier stripped wind like hissings. All told “Contamination” offers up two consistent slices of dark walled noise- with side one been fairly active, and side two been even more active/ shifting in it’s feel. Roger Batty
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