Fragile - Canzoni Da Etichette Morte – Raccolta [Toxic Industries/Irritant - 2013]It’s been two or so years since anything by this Italian HNW project has appeared, so it’s nice to see this CDR offering up just shy of sixty five minutes worth of industrial/ junk seared walled noise. Fragile is all the work of Alessio Mininel (of stripped and often futuristic HNW project TFT, and HNW labels TTM Incisioni Musicali & Mediterranea) I’ve pretty much enjoyed all of Mininel's output under the TFT banner, but I have often found Fragile’s work to be very hit ‘n’ miss affair, and I’m afraid to say “Canzoni Da Etichette Morte – Raccolta” is sadly once again some what mixed in it’s quality. This release consists of a collection of unreleased tracks, tracks 1 to 3 were supposed to be released on Absence Tapes under the name "foglie", and tracks 4 to 7 were supposed to be released on Jersey Flesh- both labels sadly folded before the tracks could be released. All seven tracks date back to 2010, are all seven are untitled. The first three tracks offer-up a rather dense if bland mixture of several locked industrial & junk lined tones- the ‘wall’s are built around a mixture of mid to high pitched noise textures which are forced together to form a searing & nasty slices of walled noise. Sadly I just found all three of these early track rather dull, bland & uninteresting….sure HNW is often a fixed repetitive form, but if the textures used are dull & uninteresting there’s no chance of the track it’s self been rewarding or interesting. Track four is a bit more rewarding & memorable, as it’s mixtures together drilling ‘n’ juddering low end crustiness, with rumbling & shredding mid-ranged noise that has a nice scoring edge to it. Track five is a more semi-chopped up, descending & all-most wallish Harsh noise version of track four- it’s ok, but no great departure from the pervious track. Track six once again is fairly similar to the other two tracks, but this one is more on par with first track as it has a memorable descending cluttering glass/ crusty descending crunch to it that really pulled me in, and latter on there sounds like there could be baying noised up vocal lines mixed into the ‘wall’. Track seven once again users similar sounds/ attack to the other three tracks, and I’m afraid to say by this point the sounds & similar structure have well & truly out stayed their welcome for me, so this track just seems very tiresome/ bland. I’m afraid to say on the whole that I found much of this release to be rather bland, un-rewarding & more than a little dull. For me HNW has to have interesting, creative or atmospheric noise textures to build it’s ‘wall’s’, and sadly most of the tracks here feel like just point-less & uninvolving raging storms. Roger Batty
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