Stoned To Death - All Earth [Claustrophilia Records - 2013]Stoned To Death is a Dallas Texas based HNW/ ANW project who create a lo-fi, bleak & drone based sound. "All Earth" is a CDR release that consists of two tracks- one fairly short (by HNW standards), and one longer track The Pro made CDR comes in a black & white thin card slip sleeve, which features on it’s front cover an out of focus picture of what looks like folk art picture of a donkey(!!). And on the back cover a old print of dark ages men throwing stones at some one. The disc comes in a hand numbered edition of 25 copies, and is released on the pretty much always consistent Italian HNW label Claustrophilia Records which is run by L. Abattoir(of suicidal & unrelenting HNW project Nascitari). First off we “Term Death”, and this comes in at the 9.17 mark. The tracks built around a very crude, muffled & lo-fi mass of rumbling low end noise. The 'wall' rather brought to mind a lo-fi field recording of constantly buffing & unrelenting wind storm, and I must say the track is a most pleasing bit of barren walled-noise. For the most part it’s fairly fixed in it’s battering ‘n’ billowing state, through from time to time a few sub-tones seem to rise up slightly in the ‘wall’. Next we have “Rock ‘n’ Roll”, and this is sequenced directed in from the first track so you get a nice jarring moment when the tracks switch. This track takes up the lion share of the release at 37.06 mark. This ‘wall’ is a more press & intense mix of jittering, juddering & rolling noise. Tone wise it’s a mix of very muffled low end, and slightly high toned/clear noise….though later on I can make out a few crisper/thinner static sub-tones. Around the 13 minute mark it pans right the way done to a distant & very muffled billowing texture, but pretty soon the meaty/ thick muffled ‘wall’ kicks back –in, and this time the tones seem to blur & run together in a sludgey roll of sound. There is only one other really shift in the 'wall's' stucture, when a more dense & drill brooding bass juddering is added to the mix in the tracks last moments. I guess if I was to described the main of the ‘wall’, I’d say it’s akin to tumbling down a hill inside a barrel. Once again this track is fairly lo-fi/muffled, but this does have a bit more ‘bite’ than the first track. Structure wise this is fairly fixed in place, save for a few subtle sub-tone movements, and the odd moments when the whole thing pairs down into a thinner hope muffling haze. So in conclusion "All Earth" offers up two consistent & rewarding slice of muffled & lo-fi walled noise. This is the second release I’ve heard from this project( the first been 2012’s “The Sky Opens” on Breaching Static), and I must say they have managed to create quite a distinctive & bleak take on wall-making, so I look forward to hearing more from them. Roger Batty
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